Works
- Optimality and Informational Efficiency in Resource Allocation Processes, in Kenneth Arrow, Samuel Karlin, and Patrick Suppes, eds., Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences, 1959, Stanford University Press, 1960
In Thinking Tools
Known for
The founder of mechanism design, which treats the rules of an economic institution as the unknown to be designed for a desired outcome. He framed institutions as systems for communicating and processing information and introduced incentive compatibility, the requirement that participants do best by acting as the rules intend. He shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson.