American trio wins the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics



The 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to three Americans – Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson – "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory."

The Nobel Prize, which includes ten million Swedish Crowns (US$1.54 million), was assigned by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on behalf of the Bank of Sweden, which instituted the prize in 1968 in memoriam of Alfred Nobel.

"Mechanism design theory, initiated by Leonid Hurwicz and further developed by Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, has greatly enhanced our understanding of optimal allocation mechanisms in such situations, accounting for individuals' incentives and private information," said the jury while assigning the prize.

Furthermore, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences added that the theory "allows us to distinguish the situations in which the markets work fine from those in which they work bad."

The attribution of this Nobel Prize closes the 2007 Nobel Prize awarding; prizes will be handed on December 10, 2007, in Stockholm, Sweden, on Alfred Nobel's death anniversary.