The two American economists who on Monday won a Nobel Prize for their work on "matching methods," theories on how to link supply with demand, are both modest political donors with a decidedly partisan streak.

Both Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth have exclusively favored Democrats in their campaign contributions, Sunlight's Influence Explorer reveals.

Shapley, with the University of California at Los Angeles, was more active as a donor earlier in his career. The professor emeritus hasn't made a contribution since Democrat Gray Davis was governor of California in 2001, and his earlier donations were all to Democratic causes — to former senator and one-time presidential candidate Bill Bradley, to the Democratic National Committee and to the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a liberal group founded by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Roth, who teaches at Harvard, appears to have first begun giving four years ago, when he made three contributions, totalling $1,250 to help Barack Obama win the presidency.