, Columnist
Making Auctions Work in Practice Is Worth a Nobel
How economists Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson gave the invisible hand a little help.
There’s an economic science to it.
Photographer: Ramin Talaie/Getty Images
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Quite literally since the days of Adam Smith, economists have been great believers in the invisible hand that guides markets. But sometimes, we give the invisible hand a little help.
When coordination problems or other complexities stop the market from finding the right price on its own, we often bring people together and discover prices through auctions. That’s the specialty of Paul Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, two Stanford economists — and it’s the reason they received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday.