About
Economist Roger Myerson has made seminal contributions to the fields of economics and political science.
In game theory, he introduced refinements of Nash’s equilibrium concept, and developed techniques to characterize the effects of communication among rational agents who have different information. His analysis of incentive constraints in economic communication introduced several fundamental concepts that are now widely used in economic analysis, including the revelation principle and the revenue-equivalence theorem in auctions and bargaining. Myerson has also applied game-theoretic tools to political science, analyzing how political incentives can be affected by different electoral systems and constitutional structures.
Myerson has received many honorary degrees and appointments and has published widely in professional journals. He taught for 25 years in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, before joining the University of Chicago in 2001, where he holds the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professorship of Economics. His many awards include the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The prize was awarded in recognition of his contributions to mechanism design theory, which analyzes rules for co-ordinating economic agents efficiently when they have different information and difficulty trusting each other.
Awards
- President, Game Theory Society, 2012–2014
- Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, 2011
- Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize, 2009
- President of the Econometric Society, 2009
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009
- Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2007
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993; Vice President, 1999–2002
Relevant Publications
Myerson, R.B. Probability Models for Economic Decisions. San Francisco: Thomson/Brooke/Cole, 2005.
Myerson, R.B. Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Myerson, R.B., and M.A. Satterthwaite. “Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading.” J. Econ. Theory 29, no. 2 (April 1983): 265–81.