Bengt Holmstrom

Bengt Holmstrom is the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also served as head of the Economics Department from 2003-2006. He holds a joint appointment with MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Holmstrom is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and an elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the executive committee for the Center of Economic Policy Research. Holmstrom received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel in 2016. He was awarded the Banque de France-TSE Senior Prize in Monetary Economics and Finance in 2012. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Vaasa, Finland; Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, and the Hanken School of Economics, Finland. Holmstrom is a board member of the Aalto University Foundation and a former board member of the Nokia Corporation. He is a Research Associate of NBER. In 2011, he was the President of the Econometric Society. Holmstrom received his doctorate degree from Stanford University. He has served as an Associate Professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and as the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Management at Yale University’s School of Management.

Bengt Holmström is a Professor of Economics at MIT, known for his work in contracting, incentives, corporate finance, and financial crises. His research explores how contracting mechanisms influence economic outcomes, particularly in environments with moral hazard and incomplete information. He has examined the design of incentive contracts, the role of asset ownership in firm performance, and the impact of financial intermediation on the real sector. His contributions to the theory of the firm include analyses of agency costs, wage dynamics, and the internal economics of corporate governance. Holmström's work has significantly advanced understanding of how firms function as incentive systems and how they interact with financial markets.