2007 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 15 October 2007.

The citation

The citation reads: "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Leonid Hurwicz was born in 1917 in Moscow, Russia, and is affiliated with the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Eric S. Maskin was born in 1950 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Roger B. Myerson was born in 1951 in Boston, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of Chicago, Chicago.

Why it matters

Mechanism design theory helps design rules, markets and auctions so that they achieve their goals even when people act in their own interest. Hurwicz, aged 90, is the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895. Strictly, this award is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968, but is presented alongside the Nobel Prizes.