Paul Robert Milgrom (born April 20, 1948) is an American economist. He is the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, a position he has held since 1987. He is a professor in the Stanford School of Engineering as well and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Research. Milgrom is an expert in game theory, specifically auction theory and pricing strategies. He is the winner of the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with Robert B. Wilson, "for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats".
He is the co-creator of the no-trade theorem with Nancy Stokey. He is the co-founder of several companies, the most recent of which, Auctionomics, provides software and services for commercial auctions and exchanges.
Milgrom and his thesis advisor Wilson designed the auction protocol the FCC uses to determine which phone company gets what cellular frequencies. Milgrom also led the team that designed the broadcast incentive auction between 2016 and 2017, which was a two-sided auction to reallocate radio frequencies from TV broadcast to wireless broadband uses.
Early life and education
Paul Milgrom was born in Detroit, Michigan, April 20, 1948, the second of four sons to Jewish parents Abraham Isaac Milgrom and Anne Lillian Finkelstein. His family moved to Oak Park, Michigan, and Milgrom attended the Dewey Elementary School and then Oak Park High School.
Milgrom graduated from the University of Michigan in 1970 with an AB in mathematics. 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 and earned an MS in statistics in 1978 and a PhD in business in 1979.
Academic career
Milgrom assumed a teaching position at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he served from 1979 to 1983. Milgrom was part of a group of professors including future Nobel laureate Roger Myerson, Robert B. Wilson, Bengt Holmstrom, Nancy Stokey, Robert J. Weber, John Roberts and Mark Satterthwaite that helped to bring game theory and information economics to bear on a wide range of problems in economics such as pricing, auctions, financial markets, and industrial organization.
Weber recounted his collaboration with Milgrom. During what was supposed to be a brief meeting to ponder a problem faced by Weber, Milgrom had a key insight. Weber wrote, "And there, in a matter of a few minutes, was the heart of our first two joint papers."
From 1982 to 1987, Milgrom was a professor of economics and management at Yale University. In 1987, Milgrom returned as an economics professor to his alma mater, Stanford University, where he is currently the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics.
Milgrom held editorial positions at the American Economic Review, Econometrica and the Journal of Economic Theory. He became a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1984, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. In 1996, he gave the Nobel memorial lecture honoring the laureate William Vickrey, who had died three days after the Nobel prize announcement. In 2006, Milgrom was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Awards and honors
Milgrom received the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics in 2008 "for contributions dramatically expanding the understanding of the role of information and incentives in a variety of settings, including auctions, the theory of the firm, and oligopolistic markets."
Upon receiving the Nemmers Prize in 2008, the official release highlighted the following:Milgrom's path-breaking work has developed and popularized new tools for the analysis of asymmetric information and strategic interaction and, most significantly, has shown the usefulness of those tools for the analysis of applied problems," said Charles Manski, professor and chair of economics at Northwestern. Milgrom's work on auctions helped lay the groundwork for one of the most fruitful research areas in microeconomics over the last 30 years. His work on the theory of the firm has been equally influential. Milgrom has also made important contributions to the study of how asymmetric information can affect firm behavior in oligopolistic markets.