French economics professor Jean Tirole of the University of Toulouse won the 2014 Nobel Prize in economics this week for his work on the thorny issue of government regulation of monopolies and oligopolies (when there are a few large players with a lot of market power), the threats they pose to consumers, and policies for curbing abuses. “This year’s prize in economic sciences is about taming powerful firms,” noted Staffan Normark, the permanent secretary for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awarded the prize. Many reports point out that Tirole’s work avoided the traps of simplicity that had limited the effectiveness of most other research in this area.…