From auction theory to market design: Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson’s contributions to Economics

The 2020 Economics Nobel Prize was awarded to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson. Both laureates have made seminal, crucial contributions to auction theory and practical market design. Here, we briefly describe those contributions and their significance within the general context of auction theory and practice. We also review the laureates’ substantial and highly influential work in other areas of economics.

The principles of auction theory (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2020)

Auction theory is the core of modern economic theory, and standard auctions are the basic elements of many models in microeconomics, public economics, and finance. Theoretical studies of auctions have shaped the modern understanding of the economic role of information in competitive market, and of price theory. Applied analysis of auctions has underpinned important practical mechanisms — for example, mechanisms of privatization and re-privatization of electromagnetic spectrum and public procurement. The 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom both for their contributions to the foundations of auction theory and for the development of largescale practical applications.

Nobelpreis für Robert Wilson und Paul Milgrom: Zwei Ökonomen, die echte Märkte schufen

ZusammenfassungRobert Wilson und Paul Milgrom erhielten am 10. Dezember 2020 den Preis der Schwedischen Nationalbank für Wirtschaftswissenschaften zu Ehren von Alfred Nobel. Die Ökonomen erhielten den Preis für ihre Beiträge zur Auktionstheorie und für die Entwicklung neuer Auktionsformate.

A Century of Economics and Engineering at Stanford

This article documents the disciplinary exchanges between economists and engineers at Stanford throughout the twentieth century. We outline the role of key scholars such as Kenneth Arrow and Robert Wilson, as well as engineers turned administrators like Frederick Terman. We show that engineers drew upon economic theories of decision and allocation to improve practical industrial management decisions. Reciprocally, economists found in engineering the tools that they needed to rethink production and growth theory (including linear programming, optimal control theory, an epistemology of “application” that emphasized awareness to institutional details, trials and errors and experiments). By the 2000s, they had turned into economic engineers designing markets and other allocation mechanisms. These cross-disciplinary exchanges were mediated by Stanford’s own institutional culture, notably its use of joint appointments, the development of multidisciplinary “programs” for students, the ability to attract a variety of visitors every year, the entrepreneurial and contract-oriented vision of its administrators, and the close ties with the industrial milieu that came to be called the Silicon Valley.

ONTOLOGIA E POÉTICA VISUAL NO ESPETÁCULO ADAM’S PASSION, DE ROBERT WILSON

O artista Robert Wilson é uma importante figura para o teatro contemporâneo, pois seus espetáculos teatrais são compostos de uma virtuosa visualidade, que se constitue em metáforas e signos que precisam ser decodificados pelo espectador de acordo com sua observação perante a obra. Com base em sua trajetória artística e pessoal é que percebemos a construção da identidade cênica e a maneira que são concebidas suas obras. Uma das formas de enunciação poética do artista acontece através da liberdade dada ao fruidor para experimentá-la, fazendo com que seus espetáculos sejam um conjunto de espectros de paisagens a serem elucidadas pelo próprio observador. Devido a isso, para adentrarmos em questões ontológicas evocadas pela visualidade do artista, é necessário que contextualizemos alguns relatos de sua trajetória pessoal. Essa foi uma das principais instâncias que fizeram com que questões conceituais fossem exploradas cenicamente por esse diretor teatral ao longo dos anos. Portanto, para que afunilemos este estudo, iremos visualizar os caminhos da narrativa do personagem bíblico Adão, no espetáculo Adam’s Passion. Ademais, nossos materiais metodológicos para esta investigação se imbricam nos pensamentos de ontologia da arte, concatenados por Currie (1989), e pela abordagem da análise de espetáculos de Belém (2014).