US economists Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson have won the 2009 Nobel Prize for economics.
The prize committee said the award was for their work on the organisation of co-operation in economic governance.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the €970,000 prize recognised Ms Ostrom for showing how common property can be managed by user associations and Mr Williamson for a theory on corporate conflict resolution.
'Over the last three decades, these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention,' the committee said in its statement.
The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968.
It is not part of the original group of awards set out in the dynamite tycoon's 1895 will.
