DHAKA: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has declared The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2014 to Jean Tirole of Toulouse 1 Capitole University in France.

The Academy press release said that he is awarded ‘for his analysis of market power and regulation’.

According to the release, Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

Many industries are dominated by a small number of large firms or a single monopoly. Left unregulated, such markets often produce socially undesirable results – prices higher than those motivated by costs, or unproductive firms that survive by blocking the entry of new and more productive ones.

From the mid-1980s and onwards, Jean Tirole has breathed new life into research on such market failures.

BDST: 1715 HRS, OCT 13, 2014