As is customary, all the other lesser Nobel prizes are awarded first as a sort of opening act for the real star of the show, the Economics prize (which, it is often pointed out, isn’t a real Nobel prize, but that’s just the talk of sore losers). This year, instead of going to Paul Krugman again for his groundbreaking work in beard cultivation, the prize was awarded to a couple of people you never heard of.

Co-laureate Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize, shattered the glass ceiling with research that bucked conventional wisdom that natural resources were better off privatized or managed by regulation, or some other such nonsense. We all know that only when the fish control the means of their own production will there be efficient usage of natural resources.

The other winner, Oliver Williamson, doesn’t have a full beard either, opting instead for a close-cropped goatee. His award was for analysis of why some economic decisions are made internally while others are left to the market.

“The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement,” the judges said. “The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of [Mr.] Williamson’s theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets.”

Sexy! I joke, but Williamson’s work is pretty widely used by quite a few large corporations, and it’s taught in high-level finance classes as well. Ostrom more or less confirmed the direct link between economics and the environment. So it’s not like the prize committee just drew a couple of names out of a hat. Still, until either one of them starts writing snarky columns for the New York Times, I’m going to vote that Krugman doesn’t have to give away his tiara at the Nobel pageant ceremony in December.