Peter A. Diamond, a nominee for a Federal Reserve Board position, and two other economists were awarded the 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on markets where buyers and sellers have difficulty finding each other.

The work of the winners, Professor Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dale T. Mortensen of Northwestern University and Christopher A. Pissarides of the London School of Economics, is best known for its applications to the job market.

The researchers spent decades trying to understand why it takes so long for people to find jobs, even in good economic times, and why so many people can be unemployed even when many jobs are available.

Traditional economics, after all, would predict that wages should simply drop, helping the labor supply to meet labor demand automatically and sweeping jobless workers into whatever positions were immediately open.