Robert Wilson, Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economy
US mathematician Robert Wilson, honored with BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award for “his pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and imperfect information about their environment.”
Wilson, professor at Stanford University, broke new ground in the use of noncooperative game theory, applying it to auction design and pricing in sectors such as electricity.
According to the award's international jury, chaired by Nobel laureate Erik S. Maskin, “his research on auctions, electricity pricing, reputation and dynamic interactions under such informational circumstances was groundbreaking and pervades economic analysis to this day.”
Thus, for instance, one of the key questions that modern economic sciences try to answer is getting stakeholders with imperfect, asymmetric information to cooperate with each other. Robert Wilson, has devoted his career to researching how economic interactions are developed under circumstances of informational inequality, found a solution: agents should build a reputation that will foster cooperation