Roger Myerson

Roger Bruce Myerson (born March 29, 1951) is an American economist and professor at the University of Chicago. He holds the title of the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts in the Harris School of Public Policy, the Griffin Department of Economics, and the College of the University of Chicago. Previously, he held the title The Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics. In 2007, he was the winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin for "having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory". He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

Biography

Roger Myerson was born in 1951 in Boston into a Jewish family. He attended Harvard University, where he received his A.B., summa cum laude, and S.M. in applied mathematics in 1973. He completed his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1976. His doctorate thesis was entitled A Theory of Cooperative Games.

From 1976 to 2001, Myerson was a professor of economics at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he conducted much of his Nobel-winning research. From 1978 to 1979, he was visiting researcher at Bielefeld University. He was visiting professor of economics at the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1986 and from 2000 to 2001. He became professor of economics at Chicago in 2001. Currently, he is the inaugural David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the University of Chicago.

Awards and honors

Bank of Sweden Nobel Memorial Prize

Myerson was one of the three winners of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the other two being Leonid Hurwicz of the University of Minnesota, and Eric Maskin of the Institute for Advanced Study. He was awarded the prize for his contributions to mechanism design theory.

Myerson made a path-breaking contribution to mechanism design theory when he discovered a fundamental connection between the allocation to be implemented and the monetary transfers needed to induce informed agents to reveal their information truthfully. Mechanism design theory allows for people to distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not. The theory has helped economists identify efficient trading mechanisms, regulation schemes, and voting procedures. Today, the theory plays a central role in many areas of economics and parts of political science.

Memberships and honors

Myerson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow of the Game Theory Society, and serves as an advisory board member on the International Journal of Game Theory. Myerson holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel in 2002 and received the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2009. He also served on the Social Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2016.

Personal life

In 1980, Myerson married Regina (née Weber) and the couple had two children, Daniel and Rebecca. His daughter, Rebecca, is a health economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Publications

Game theory and mechanism design

• "Bayesian Equilibrium and Incentive Compatibility," in

He wrote a general textbook on game theory in 1991, and has also written on the history of game theory, including his review of the origins and significance of noncooperative game theory. He also served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Game Theory for ten years.

Myerson has worked on economic analysis of political institutions and written several major survey papers:

• "Economic Analysis of Political Institutions: An Introduction," Advances in Economic Theory and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, volume 1, edited by D. Kreps and K. Wallis (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pages 46–65.

His recent work on democratization has raised critical questions about American policy in occupied Iraq:

Books

Lectures

• Fundamental Theory of Institutions: A Lecture in Honor of Leo Hurwicz, presented at the North American Meetings of the Econometric Society, at the University of Minnesota, on 22 June 2006

Political views

In June 2024, 16 Nobel Prize in Economics laureates, including Myerson, signed an open letter arguing that Donald Trump’s fiscal and trade policies coupled with efforts to limit the Federal Reserve's independence would reignite inflation in the United States.

Concepts named after him

• Myerson–Satterthwaite theorem
• Myerson mechanism
• Myerson ironing

See also

• List of economists
• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

External links

• Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture Perspectives on Mechanism Design in Economic Theory
• Webpage at the University of Chicago
• ABC News Chicago interview
• Template:PAGENAMEBASE at the Mathematics Genealogy ProjectTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• The scientific background to the 2007 Nobel prize: Mechanism Design Theory
• Myerson participated in panel discussion, The Global Economic Crisis: What Does It Mean for U.S. National Security? at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library on April 2, 2009