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Economics Professor Robert Wilson Honored With the BBVA Foundation 2016 Frontiers of Knowledge Award

His research on market design, pricing, negotiation, and related topics concerning industrial organization and information economics broke new ground.

Robert Wilson | Nancy Rothstein Photography
Robert Wilson | Nancy Rothstein Photography

February 16, 2016

The BBVA Foundation honored Robert Wilson, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus, with the 2016 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management, citing “his pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and imperfect information about their environment.”

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.”

Wilson has devoted his career to addressing one of the key questions of modern economic sciences: how to get stakeholders with imperfect, asymmetric information to cooperate with each other. He found that in situations of informational inequality, agents should build reputations that will foster cooperation.

A 400,000-euro award accompanied the prize.

 

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