Myerson, Roger B.

▪ American economist

in full  Roger Bruce Myerson 

born March 29, 1951, Boston, Mass., U.S.

      American economist who shared, with Leonid Hurwicz (Hurwicz, Leonid) and Eric S. Maskin (Maskin, Eric S.), the 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on mechanism design theory.

      Myerson earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1973. In 1976 he was awarded a doctorate from Harvard; in his thesis he examined cooperative games, a subject he explored further in his landmark 1981 paper on optimal auction design. In 1976 he took a post in the economics department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He remained there until 2001, when he accepted a position at the University of Chicago.

      At its most basic, mechanism design theory tries to simulate market conditions in such a way as to maximize gains for all parties. As buyers and sellers within a market rarely know one another's motives or ambitions, resources may be lost or misallocated because of information asymmetry. Myerson addressed this problem by proposing the revelation principle, wherein buyers are offered an incentive for truthfully reporting what they would pay for goods or services.

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