Milgrom and Wilson, Two Microeconomists Fundamental for Game and Auction Theory
Pierpaolo Battigalli, Professor of microeconomics and game theory and Director of the Department of Decision Sciences at Bocconi, comments on the 2020 Nobel Prize for Economics
Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, Nobel laureates in economics: "They made fundamental theoretical contributions, but then they also used them to advise the US government on a particular auction format to sell radio frequencies starting in1994," explains Pierpaolo Battigalli, Professor of microeconomics and game theory and Director of the Department of Decision Sciences at Bocconi. "Milgrom had in particular formulated, together with Weber, a general theory of auctions considering various aspects, such as the private information that the participants in the auction have, if the asset has only private or also common value". Wilson, has specialized more on this aspect, "on auctions for goods that have a common value that is not known at the time of bidding, but on which the different bidders have private information. He explained, for example, how you have to bid lower than your best estimate of the value of the goods you are going to buy", adds Battigalli.