Roger B. Myerson

Roger B. Myerson is an American economist and winner of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, along with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin. Myerson's award-winning research deals with mechanism design theory. His contributions to mechanism design theory analyze rules for coordinating economic agents efficiently when they have different information and thus, challenges trusting each other.  

Roger B. Myerson was in Boston in 1951, he earned a PhD in applied math from Harvard. He was a professor of economics at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management for 25 years and then became a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, where he is currently listed as a Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics. He is the author of "Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict", published in 1991 and "Probability Models for Economic Decisions", published in 2005 and the author of several professional journal articles, including "Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Decisions, American Political Science Review, Mathematics of Operations Research, and International Journal of Game Theory."

Myerson has a PhD from Harvard University and taught for 25 years in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University before coming to the University of Chicago in 2001. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has received several honorary degrees, and he received the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2009. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of his contributions to mechanism design theory, which analyzes rules for coordinating economic agents efficiently when they have different information and difficulty trusting each other.

Myerson has contributed primarily to economics and political science fields, especially in game theory. For example, he refined Nash’s equilibrium concept and developed techniques to characterize effects of communication between rational agents with differing information. Many of his incentive constraints fundamentals and concepts in economic communication are now widely used in economic analysis, such as the revelation principle and the revenue-equivalence theorem in auctions and bargaining. His applied game-theoretic tools are also used in the field of political science to analyze how political incentives can be affected by different electoral systems and constitutional structures.

Myerson's revenue equivalence theorem, now widely used in auction design, was his major contribution to mechanism design theory. Mechanism design theory explains how institutions can achieve social or economic goals given the constraints of individuals' self-interest and incomplete information.