Robert Litan on Milgrom and Wilson

In Trillion Dollar Economists, Robert Litan wrote (p. 254),

Various economists had ideas for how the commission could best achieve these apparently conflicting objectives, but none were as influential as Paul Milgrom, his colleague Robert Wilson, and longtime senior economic advisor at the FCC Evan Kwerel. . .

The key mechanism these economists designed was the simultaneous auction that required bidders to remain active in every round of bidding in order to be eligible to receive any licenses

Litan’s 2014 book about economists whose work proved valuable in practice is remarkable in that it included several subsequent Nobel laureates: Richard Thaler (2017), William Nordhaus (2018), Banerjee/Duflo/Kremer (2019) and now Milgrom and Wilson.

2 thoughts on “Robert Litan on Milgrom and Wilson

  1. The educational backgrounds and employment history of Milgrom and Wilson are interesting.

    Per Wikipedia:

    “Milgrom graduated from the University of Michigan in 1970 with an A.B. in mathematics.[citation needed] He worked as an actuary for several years in San Francisco at the Metropolitan Insurance Company and then at the Nelson and Warren consultancy in Columbus, Ohio. Milgrom became a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 1974. In 1975, Milgrom enrolled for graduate studies at Stanford University in the MBA program. After his first year, he was invited to the Ph.D. program, earning an M.S. in statistics in 1978 and a Ph.D. in business in 1979.[citation needed] His dissertation on the theory of auctions (Milgrom, 1979a) won the Leonard Savage prize.[citation needed] This also led to the first of seminal articles on auction theory (Milgrom, 1979b). His thesis advisor, Robert B. Wilson, would later become his collaborator in designing the spectrum auction used by the Federal Communications Commission.

    Milgrom assumed a teaching position at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he served from 1979 to 1983.”

    And:

    “Wilson was born on May 16, 1937 in Geneva, Nebraska. He graduated from a high school in Nebraska and earned a full ride scholarship to Harvard University. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1959. He then completed his M.B.A. in 1961 and his D.B.A. in 1963 from the Harvard Business School. He worked at the University of California, Los Angeles for a very brief time and then joined the faculty at Stanford University. He has been on the faculty of the Stanford Business School since 1964. He was also an affiliated faculty member of Harvard Law School from 1993 to 2001.”

    Score another for economics outside the Econ departments.

  2. How long before the Nobel Committees go woke? Or, is Nordic region somehow insulated?

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