Eric S. Maskin
Facts
© The Nobel Foundation Photo: U. Montan
Eric S. Maskin
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007
Born: 12 December 1950, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA
Prize motivation: “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”
Prize share: 1/3
Life
Eric Maskin was born in New York City, but grew up in New Jersey. Maskin studied mathematics at Harvard University under Laureate in Economic Sciences Kenneth Arrow. He taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1977-1984, after which he went on to become a professor at Harvard and subsequently Princeton University. He returned to Harvard in 2011.
Work
Eric Maskin has worked in diverse areas of economic theory. He received the Nobel Prize for his work on mechanism design theory, a specialized form of game theory that attempts to maximize gain for all parties within markets. Maskin and fellow laureate Roger Myerson built on the mechanism design work of Leonid Hurwicz, who was the pioneer in the field.
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