Nobel figure quits after Swedish body's #MeToo scandal

Digital Journal – AFP, by Gaël BRANCHEREAU (AFP)

Swedish scholar Sara Danius stepped down Tuesday from the academy that
awards the Nobel literature prize, almost a year after she quit as its permanent
secretary amid a sex scandal unveiled by the #MeToo movement.

The academic's resignation is the latest development in an affair that sprang from the movement to highlight sexual abuse, and forced the Academy to postpone awarding the literature prize in 2018.

"I have decided to give up my seat... once occupied by the first woman elected to the Academy, Selma Lagerloef," Danius, 56, said in a statement.

"It has been an honour," she added, without giving a reason for her decision.

In April 2018, Danius was forced to step down as the Academy's permanent secretary, the first woman to hold that position, owing to a scandal sparked by Jean-Claude Arnault, an influential figure on Stockholm's cultural scene.

He was convicted of raping a young woman in October and December 2011, and the academy was caught up in the affair because Arnault was married to one of its members, Katarina Frostenson, who has also resigned.

Arnault, who is French, was accused by 18 women in a statement to respected Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, but has appealed his conviction to Sweden's Supreme Court.

The Swedish Academy had generously funded Arnault's Forum club, which was popular among aspiring young authors hoping to make contact with publishers and writers, and he had boasted he was its "19th member."

Danius, a scholar at Stockholm University, joined the Academy in 2013 and became its permanent secretary two years later.

Former Swedish Academy permanent secretary Sara Danius never flinched from
the controversial choice of Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize in Literature - Jonathan
NACKSTRAND, AFP

As such she was the voice of the body that awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievitch, US songwriter Bob Dylan and British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.

Her departure highlights a rift in the Academy between those who seek to revive it and an ageing male-dominated clique alleged to sustain a culture of silence that had protected Arnault.

It might paradoxically open the door to more female members, as permanent secretary Anders Olsson said Tuesday that three vacant seats would likely be filled by women.

"It is necessary for the Academy's balance of men and women," said Olsson, who is leaving himself because he has reached his position's age limit of 70 years.

Madelaine Levy, a critic at the daily Svenska Dagbladet agreed, telling AFP: "There is a problem of male/female balance, but also one of the member's advanced age," which she said was an average of 73 years.

With Danius however, the Academy was "losing its most popular member, and one of those best known by the public," Levy noted.

The impassioned intellectual is also known for her sense of fashion that brightened up often austere galas in the Scandinavian capital.

Frenchman in Nobel rape scandal appeals to Supreme Court

Yahoo – AFP, December 27, 2018

Once an influential figure in Stockholm's cultural scene, Jean-Claude Arnault (C)
was in early December sentenced to two years and six months in prison
for raping a woman (AFP Photo/Jonathan NACKSTRAND)

Stockholm (AFP) - A Frenchman at the centre of a scandal that led to the postponement of the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize has appealed his rape conviction to Sweden's Supreme Court, the highest court said Thursday.

Once an influential figure in Stockholm's cultural scene, 72-year-old Jean-Claude Arnault was in early December found guilty by a Stockholm appeals court of two counts of rape against one woman and sentenced to two years and six months in prison.

Arnault "has appealed the appeals court ruling and asked the Supreme Court to reject it in its entirety," the Supreme Court wrote in a statement.

The tribunal said it had given Arnault until January 28 to provide further argumentation for why the court should consider his case.

Sweden's Supreme Court only takes on cases that may set a legal precedent, or when there are exceptional reasons to reconsider a ruling.

Arnault, who has been locked up since his district court conviction in October, has made no public statement regarding his decision.

His was one of the first big trials to come out of the #MeToo movement.

The revelations also tore apart the venerable Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize.

Arnault is married to Katarina Frostenson, a Swedish Academy member who has rarely spoken out about the scandal that erupted in November 2017, one month after rape and sexual abuse accusations surfaced against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

At the time, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published the testimonies of 18 women claiming to have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by Arnault.

The Frenchman ran the Forum club, which he founded in 1989 as a meeting place for the cultural elite and was popular among aspiring young authors hoping to make contact with publishers and writers.

The Swedish Academy, which funded his club for years, has 18 members and Arnault often referred to himself as its "19th member". He reportedly occasionally leaked the names of Nobel winners to friends.

The scandal left the prestigious body deeply divided over how to manage its ties with Arnault and his wife, with some members quitting the Academy.

His accusers claim the Academy was aware of Arnault's behaviour but ensured that "a culture of silence" reigned in cultural circles.

Discredited and without a quorum to make key decisions, the Academy postponed for one year the announcement of the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, for the first time in 70 years.

Several allegations against Arnault were dropped due to lack of evidence or because the statute of limitations had expired.

Nobel laureates challenge world to end sexual violence

France24 – AFP, 9 Dec 2018

Murad and Mukwege will be jointly presented with the prize in Oslo on Monday for
"their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed
conflict"    Oslo (AFP)

Nobel peace laureates Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege said Sunday they hoped their award would help them push the international community to act to end rape in conflict and deliver justice for victims.

Yazidi activist Murad and Congolese doctor Mukwege will be jointly presented with the prize in Oslo on Monday for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".

Murad, 25, who was taken hostage in Iraq by the Islamic State group (IS) in 2014 but escaped, said the prize was an honour for all of her Yazidi community, and "a sign" for the thousands of women still held by jihadists.

"This prize, one prize cannot remove all the violence and all the attacks on pregnant women, on children, on women and give them justice," she told a press conference in Oslo.

But she said she hoped it would "open doors so that we can approach more governments", to bring the perpetrators to court and "so that we can find a solution and actually stop what is happening".

Fellow laureate Mukwege, who has spent two decades treating rape victims at his hospital in conflict-torn eastern DR Congo, said the Nobel spotlight made it harder for the world to ignore sexual violence.

"We cannot say that we didn't act because we didn't know. Now everyone knows. And I think now the international community has a responsibility to act," he said.

He said the prize was not a "victory", but could be seen "as the start of a new struggle, a new struggle against this type of evil".

Murad has spent the years since her escape campaigning for the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community that follows an ancient religion and was targeted by IS as it swept through her homeland.

More than 6,800 Yazidis were kidnapped, of whom 4,300 either escaped or were bought as slaves, while 2,500 remain missing, according to a recent report from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The United Nations is due to send a team into Iraq next year to investigate atrocities, following a Security Council resolution in September 2017 to bring those responsible for IS war crimes to justice.

The UN has described the massacre of the Yazidis by IS jihadists as possible genocide.

Murad, now a UN ambassador for victims of human trafficking living in Germany, said the "steps towards justice" had given her hope.

But she stressed that "not a single ISIS terrorist" has appeared in court, adding "this injustice will continue in this world if it is not dealt with now".

Frenchman in Nobel scandal jailed for 2 years for rape

Yahoo – AFP, Gaël BRANCHEREAU, 1 October 2018

Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault went on trial at Stockholm district court in September

A Swedish court on Monday sentenced a Frenchman at the heart of a Nobel scandal to two years in jail for rape in a scandal that emerged during the #MeToo campaign.

An influential figure in Stockholm's cultural scene, 72-year-old Jean-Claude Arnault went on trial last month on two counts of rape relating to incidents dating back to 2011.

In its ruling on Monday, the Stockholm district court found him guilty on one of the charges while acquitting him of the other.

"The defendant is found guilty of rape committed during the night between the 5th and 6th of October 2011 and has been sentenced to imprisonment for two years," a court statement said.

Prosecutors had called for a minimum sentence of three years in what was one of the first big trials to come out of the #MeToo movement.

"There is no reason why the sentence should be less than two years," presiding judge Gudrun Antemar told a press conference, saying the victim had been put in a situation where she was "helpless".

Arnault's lawyer Bjorn Hurtig told news agency TT his client, who has maintained his innocence from the start, had asked him to appeal the verdict.

The victim's lawyer, Elisabeth Massi Fritz, meanwhile called the ruling "a huge relief for my client and a victory for justice".

Arnault is married to a member of the Swedish Academy which selects the Nobel Literature Prize winner, with the scandal prompting the postponement of this year's award.

The scandal erupted in November 2017, one month after rape and sexual abuse accusations surfaced against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

At the time, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter published the testimonies of 18 women claiming to have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by Arnault, who had close ties to the Academy.

Discredited, divided

The Frenchman ran the Forum club, which he founded in 1989 as a meeting place for the cultural elite and which was popular among aspiring young authors hoping to make contact with publishers and writers.

The Swedish Academy, which funded his club for years, has 18 members who are elected for life and Arnault often referred to himself as its "19th member".

But the revelations have left the prestigious body deeply divided over how to manage its ties with him and his wife, poet Katarina Frostenson.

In delivering the Swedish court's verdict against Frenchman Jean-Claude 

Arnault, Judge Gudrun Anteman said the victim had been left "helpless"

Eight of its members have either resigned or are on leave, and several of them regularly trade ugly barbs via the media.

Discredited and without a quorum to make key decisions, the Academy postponed the announcement of the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize for the first time in 70 years.

"It is great that justice has been served and that the court noted the gravity of such (Arnault's) crimes," Peter Englund, who stepped down from the Academy in April over the affair, told TT.

'Intense fear'

Prosecutors investigating the allegations against Arnault dropped several of them due to lack of evidence or because the statute of limitations had expired.

The two counts of rape involved one woman.

According to the prosecution, Arnault allegedly forced the woman -- who was in a state of "intense fear" -- to have oral sex and intercourse in a Stockholm apartment on October 5, 2011.

He was also accused of raping her during the night of December 2-3 while she was asleep but the court found there was insufficient evidence to convict him on that charge.

The trial was heard behind closed doors to protect the victim, whose identity has not been disclosed.

Arnault has been held in preventive custody since the end of his trial on September 24 and will remain in jail until the formal start of his sentence, the court said.

Culture of silence

His accusers claim the Swedish Academy was well aware of his behaviour, and blame the institution for having helped create a "culture of silence" that pervaded Sweden's cultural circles.

An internal Academy probe concluded there were conflicts of interest between Arnault and the Academy, and that several female Academy members and people close to them had been harassed or assaulted by the Frenchman.

It also found he had leaked the names of Nobel literature laureates to his friends on several occasions.

According to the Svenska Dagbladet daily, Arnault was born in Marseille in 1946 to Russian refugee parents and came to Sweden in the late 1960s to study photography.

No Nobel Literature Prize as Academy's bell tolls

France24 – AFP, 29 September 2018

US singer Bob Dylan was controversially awarded the 2016 Literature
Nobel Price (AFP)

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - In tatters after a #MeToo scandal, the Swedish Academy has postponed this year's Nobel Literature Prize, leaving an empty page for 2018 as it attempts to reform the venerable institution.

Created in 1786 by King Gustav III and modelled on its French elder, the Swedish Academy has selected the winner of the prestigious literary distinction since it was first awarded in 1901.

The "Holy Grail" of authors, poets, and playwrights, the Nobel has gone to some of the greatest writers of all time, from Albert Camus to Samuel Beckett and Ernest Hemingway.

But the list of recipients also includes US rock icon Bob Dylan, the 2016 choice harshly criticised by some who lambasted the Academy for overlooking other popular and critically-acclaimed authors -- such as American novelist Philip Roth, who died in May 2017 without getting the nod.

After the Dylan controversy, the Academy attempted to smooth things over last year with an uncontroversial laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro, a British author of Japanese origin whose nomination enjoyed broad consensus.

But just three weeks after that announcement, the institution again found itself in controversy, this time in the eye of the #MeToo hurricane.

Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, married to an Academy member, and the head of an influential cultural club in Stockholm, was accused of rape and sexual assault.

An internal Academy probe also revealed conflicts of interest between him and the institution, which had funded his club for years.

Arnault ultimately faced trial on two counts of raping a woman in 2011. His verdict is due on Monday, and the prosecution has sought a three-year sentence.

A haemorrhaging Academy

The Academy has been deeply divided over how to deal with Arnault and on the reforms it needs to undertake.

Some of the 18 members, who are appointed for life, have refused to participate in the Academy's work over the row -- including its first female permanent secretary Sara Danius -- leaving it without a quorum.

And in the months since the scandal erupted, the usually-discreet members have exchanged ugly jibes in the media.

Paralysed and ridiculed around the world, the scandal forced the Academy's hand: it announced in May that it would postpone by one year the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, a first in 70 years.

The 2018 laureate will be announced at the same time as the 2019 prize.

"I could see that there were weaknesses in their organisation but I would never have thought something like this could happen," Lars Heikensten, director of the Nobel Foundation that finances the prizes, told AFP.

"We hope that they will be able to clear up their things."

'Ridiculous' and 'chauvinist'

With the Academy in shambles and no literature prize to look forward to this year, a group of Swedish cultural figures decided to create their own award pending the Nobel's return next year.

The "New Academy Prize in Literature" was devised as a protest to denounce "bias, arrogance and sexism", and "remind people that literature and culture at large should promote democracy, transparency, empathy and respect, without privilege", according to the founders who include authors, artists and journalists.

It will be announced on October 12.

The Swedish Academy, a hermetic circle whose deliberations in Stockholm's cobblestoned Old Town whose deliberations are kept secret for 50 years, is seen as out-of-touch with reality and modern times.

"Lifetime membership and an ageing population also create a difficult situation, with some members still active at an age where they no longer have the capacity to work professionally, or understand how the Academy is perceived by the public," Madelaine Levy, literary critic at daily Svenska Dagbladet, told AFP.

The public has lost confidence in the body, perceiving it as "ridiculous" and "chauvinist", she said.

"The Academy needs reform, namely more transparency and stricter conflict of interest regulations."

Publishers meanwhile fear the Academy's crisis is far from over.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed but as things are now I would say I am uncertain" there will be a Nobel Literature Prize in 2019, Hakan Bravinger, an editor at Sweden's second-biggest publishing house Norstedts, told AFP.

Three quit in protest as #MeToo scandal rocks Nobel literature academy

Yahoo – AFP, Gaël BRANCHEREAU, 6 April 2018

The prestigious Academy has been reeling since it was revealed as part of the
#MeToo campaign in November that several members, as well as members'
wives and daughters, had allegedly been assaulted by the well-known figure
at the centre of the scandal

Three prominent members of the Swedish Academy resigned on Friday in protest at close ties between the institution, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, and a high-profile man accused of sexual assault.

The Academy has been reeling since it was revealed as part of the #MeToo campaign in November that several members, as well as members' wives and daughters, had allegedly been assaulted by the well-known figure at the centre of the scandal.

Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper broke the news, publishing the testimony of 18 women claiming to have been assaulted or raped by one of the most influential figures in Stockholm's cultural scene.

The Academy has since cut all ties with the man, who has not been publicly identified.

But his identity is generally known by the public as he is a high-profile person in cultural circles.

The alleged sexual assaults occurred between 1996 and 2017, according to Dagens Nyheter.

One of the resigning members Peter Englund said the scandal had deeply divided the Swedish literary world.

"Over time, a crack that appeared has continued to grow," he said in a letter to the Aftonbladet newspaper, adding that the Academy's permanent secretary Sara Danius had been subject to "unjustified" criticism.

The fallout continued Friday as King Carl XVI Gustaf was informed of developments as the director general of the Nobel Foundation Lars Heikensten expressed concern over a "serious and difficult situation".

'Tower of Babel is crumbling'

Along with Englund, members Klas Ostergren and Kjell Espmark decided to step down after the group's normal meeting on Thursday at a Stockholm restaurant.

"It is with great sadness that after 36 years working at the Academy, including 17 as chairman of the Nobel Committee, I feel forced to make this decision," Espmark said in a letter to the media.

"When prominent academy members put friendship ahead of responsibility and integrity, I can no longer participate in its work".

Ostergren condemned "a betrayal of the founder and his great protector", referring to the Academy's founder, Swedish King Gustav III, and inventor Alfred Nobel, who left some of his fortune to the institution.

The three men are lifetime members and cannot technically resign, but there is nothing forcing them to attend meetings.

Of the academy's 18 members, five are no longer active after two women, Kerstin Ekman and Lotta Lotass, went on leave for several years.

Bjorn Wiman, the culture editor of Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, said the resignations are "a disaster" for an academy "in ruins".

His counterpart at the Aftonbladet newspaper, Asa Linderborg, said "the tower of Babel is crumbling".

The allegations against the man were first revealed as part of the #MeToo campaign exposing sexual misconduct, which began in Hollywood and went on to shake artistic, media and political circles in Sweden, one of the most gender equal countries in the world.

In March, Stockholm's public prosecutor's office announced that part of the investigation, into claims of alleged rapes and assaults between 2013 and 2015, had been called off as the statute of limitation had passed or due to lack of evidence.

Nobel literature academy shaken by #MeToo sex scandal wave

Geotv - AFP, 24 November 2017

STOCKHOLM: The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, has been rattled by a sex scandal as several members, their wives and daughters accused an influential person with close ties to the prestigious institution of assault.

The #MeToo wave exposing sexual misconduct which began in Hollywood has shaken artistic, media and political circles in Sweden, one of the most gender equal countries in the world, as thousands of women have spoken up and campaigned against harassment.

Sweden´s prestigious literary scene was drawn into the fray on Tuesday when newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter published the testimony of 18 women claiming to have been assaulted or raped by one of the most influential figures in Stockholm´s cultural scene.

The accused man´s name has not been published in the media due to Swedish laws on the presumption of innocence. But his identity is generally known by the public as he is a high-profile person in cultural circles and his name has appeared in online chat forums discussing the issue.

The man did not respond to AFP´s request for a comment, though he told Dagens Nyheter he was innocent.

Married to a writer with "close links to the Swedish Academy", the man runs a cultural club showcasing exhibitions, readings and performances by both the cultural elite and hopefuls -- including Nobel literature laureates -- and dubbed by some as "the Academy´s living room".

The club was partly funded by the Academy.

'Everyone has always known'

The alleged sexual assaults occurred between 1996 and 2017, some of them in the club´s premises, according to Dagens Nyheter.

Several women spoke openly, allowing the newspaper to reveal their identities, and their stories were corroborated by eyewitnesses, the paper said.

One of them claims to have been raped in an apartment in a posh Stockholm neighbourhood.

"Everyone knows and everyone has always known," that he was attacking young women, she says.

The women said they remained silent out of fear of jeopardising their careers because of the man´s connections and close relations with leading publishers, producers, directors and composers.

After a "crisis meeting" on Thursday evening, the Swedish Academy announced that it was cutting all ties with the accused, whom it had funded and allowed to manage an apartment it owns in an upscale Paris neighbourhood.

The Academy said in a statement that during the meeting, "it emerged that members of the Academy, daughters of Academy members, wives of Academy members and staff of the Academy have experienced unwanted intimacy or inappropriate behaviour" by the man.

The prominent institution said it would launch an internal inquiry to find out if the man "has had any direct or indirect influence on the Academy´s prizes, scholarships, and fundings of any kind".

Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke said she regretted honouring him with the 2015 Order of The Polar Star, awarded to members of the Swedish royal family and foreigners for services to Sweden.

Economics Nobelist Holmstrom: CEO pay 'just a mess'

Yahoo – AFP,  October 10, 2016

Bengt Holmstrom, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said his research hasn't always
gotten through to those who design pay packages (AFP Photo/Kayana
Szymczak)

Washington (AFP) - Bengt Holmstrom, the Finnish economist whose contract theory research earned him a Nobel economics prize Monday, said that executive compensation has gotten out of hand, and contributed to the collapse of Enron Corp.

Holmstrom, who shared the Nobel with fellow economist Oliver Hart, explored the way employment contracts can shape behavior and reach mutually beneficial outcomes for the hirer and hiree.

But he told an audience Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he now works, that their research hasn't always gotten through to those who design pay packages.

"I was on the Nokia board for two or three years. And I think executive compensation went from reasonable to absolutely dreadful," he said, pointing to stock and option incentives given management.

Likewise, he said, the collapse of Enron, the high-flying energy company that failed in 2001, related to executives' pay deals, with generous stock options, that did not align their interests with the company's.

"I think the main problem with that scheme was that they were not vested, that executives could cash out very quickly," he said.

He told journalists that executive pay had gotten too complicated. "There's so many pieces of it and it's just a mess... I wish they would listen a little bit more about what we know or understand about executive compensation."

Holmstrom, 67, said he was delighted to receive the Nobel. He and Hart will share the eight million kronor ($924,000) prize.

"I feel dazed.... I am still wondering whether I will wake up or not."

He described himself as "lucky" for having gotten into a research topic just at the time it was garnering broader interest, "for being in the right place at the right time."

But he was not ready to offer a prescription on how pay should be decided, saying it is difficult to fiddle with the power of the market.

"Economics doesn't really have an opinion on the level" of pay, or why CEO pay has soared in recent years, he noted. "It is what it is. It is somehow demand and supply working its magic."

After years of working on theoretical topics, Holmstrom said he was now thinking about real-world issues.

"In the last six years, since the financial crisis, have been intellectually very rewarding."

"I'm back into the mode of really thinking about problems, which you can lie in bed and wake up at night and feel excited about."

Cheers in France as economist Tirole wins Nobel

Yahoo – AFP, Hugues Honore, 13 Oct 2014

French economist Jean Tirole, seen here in June 2008, was awarded the Nobel

 Economics Prize "for his analysis of market power and regulation", according to the

Royal Academy of Sciences (AFP Photo/Eric Cabanis)

Stockholm (AFP) - Jean Tirole won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for research on reining in corporate giants, a second French award this season hailed as a slap in the face for "France bashers".

"One of the most influential economists of our time," the jury called Tirole, whose fellow countryman Patrick Modiano took the prize for literature last week.

"Most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms," it said of the 61-year-old professor at Toulouse 1 Capitole University.

Taming huge corporations, and ensuring they don't reap huge profits at the expense of ordinary consumers, has emerged as a growing concern in recent years.

The global financial crisis -- triggered by a small number of giant players in the banking sector -- has further pushed the complex issue up the agenda for global policymakers.

"Banking is a very hard thing to regulate, and we economists have to do more work on this," Tirole told the Nobel Committee after learning he had won the prize, worth eight million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, 878,000 euros).

Thumbing noses at 'French-bashing'

News of his win triggered delight in Paris -- as well as a note of vindication from the French prime minister, irked by a string of articles decrying the morose state of the nation.

"After Patrick Modiano, yet another Frenchman has come to the fore: Congratulations to Jean Tirole!" Manuel Valls tweeted after the announcement. "Talk about thumbing your nose at 'French-bashing'."

Modiano's win last week was already hailed as a boost for a country in the doldrums with a stagnating economy and deeply unpopular government.

President Francois Hollande said the prize puts the spotlight on "the quality of the research carried out in our nation."

Tirole's work, the Nobel jury said, has provided a framework for designing policies for a range of industries from banking to telecommunications.

His citation comes amid growing controversy over the market power of such companies as Amazon and Google.

"Drawing on these new insights, governments can better encourage powerful firms to become more productive and, at the same time, prevent them from harming competitors and customers," the jury said.

The concentration of corporate power has been a key concern for policymakers since the 1980s, when advanced countries moved progressively to allowing markets a freer role.

The trend has been strengthened across industries by technological advances and globalisation, which produced unprecedented wealth but also exacerbated inequality.

Dominate thy neighbour

Laureate of the 2014 Nobel Prize in

Economics, French economist Jean Tirole and

his wife Nathalie are seen at the Toulouse

School of Economics (TSE) on October 13, 

2014 in Toulouse (AFP Photo/Remy Gabalda)

A lot of Tirole's research has focused on motivation and salary, with regard to large companies and the rise in pay among the top tiers of leadership -- like Wall Street chief executives.

But his Nobel Prize came for his work on oligopoly and game theory -- or the study of how strategic interactions affect an outcome.

An oligopoly is a state of limited competition, a popular example being the cellular companies Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, which together control around 90 percent of the market. A monopoly, on the other hand, is the dominance of one seller in the market.

Tirole's research has also shown how some companies -- for example producers of widely-used but patented software -- are able to dominate not just their own industry, but also related ones further down the production chain.

One of his chief contributions is the notion that market dominance works differently in different industries, according to the Nobel jury.

His research suggests, for example, that it can sometimes make sense to allow firms to undercut each other by setting prices below production costs -- something traditionally disciplined under competition, or anti-trust, law.

"The best regulation or competition policy should therefore be carefully adapted to every industry's specific conditions."

American near-monopoly

The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prizes' creator, Swedish scientist and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

Appropriately for an economist who has dedicated much of his career to the study of monopolies, Tirole's award reduces an American near-monopoly over the Nobel economics prize in recent years.

Over the past decade, 18 out 20 economics prize laureates have been from the United States, including one Israeli-American.

Last year, US scholars Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller won for their work on spotting trends in the asset markets.

The economics prize winds up this year's Nobel season, marked by the award Friday of the peace prize to 17-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai and India's Kailash Satyarthi.

Related Article:

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“… 5 - Integrity That May Surprise…

Number five: There will be those who think it impossible to have a search for integrity and fairness in all things. In other words, Human Beings will not simply go with what they are told is the status quo. They will look at it and they will say, "Well, I think it could be better. I'm going to look around for something that has more integrity and fairness." Yes, there will be those who tell you, "Look, the institutions hold all the cards and you have to do it their way. If you want health insurance or you want loans from the banks for your home, you better do it their way." I have news for you. Even this is going to change.

"What are you going to do?" the Human asks. "They hold all the power!" In the past, there was nothing you could do. Now I'll tell you what the potentials are. You're going to pull out the puzzle and look past the walls of the maze. You're going to say, "Well, then I'll start my own institution." And some will. The new institutions, based on integrity, will sweep right past an old energy. In other words, there will be those who are young today who are going to start a new way of banking, a new way of health care, and a new way of insurance. And when you see these plans, you'll say, "Why didn't we think of that?"

Have you seen innovation and invention in the past decade that required thinking out of the box of an old reality? Indeed, you have. I can't tell you what's coming, because you haven't thought of it yet! But the potentials of it are looming large. Let me give you an example, Let us say that 20 years ago, you predicted that there would be something called the Internet on a device you don't really have yet using technology that you can't imagine. You will have full libraries, buildings filled with books, in your hand - a worldwide encyclopedia of everything knowable, with the ability to look it up instantly! Not only that, but that look-up service isn't going to cost a penny! You can call friends and see them on a video screen, and it won't cost a penny! No matter how long you use this service and to what depth you use it, the service itself will be free.

Now, anyone listening to you back then would perhaps have said, "Even if we can believe the technological part, which we think is impossible, everything costs something. There has to be a charge for it! Otherwise, how would they stay in business?" The answer is this: With new invention comes new paradigms of business. You don't know what you don't know, so don't decide in advance what you think is coming based on an old energy world. …”