Mr Simon was happytoacknowledge that he had once touched the real world in commerce (and in the United States navy, where he spent three years), although in fact nearly all his adult career was in academe.
Mr Harsanyi, who shared a Nobel prize in 1994 with two other economists in the same field, John Nash and Reinhard Selten, was happytoacknowledge that game theory had been around in some form for a long time.