The Nobel Peace Prize for Economics was jointly awarded to economists Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson on Monday for their research into auctions.
Accoridng to Royal Swedish Academy, Paul Milgrom is a professor of humanities and sciences while Robert Wilson is an emeritus professor of management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. They both had done pioneering work in auction theory, which helped develop better real-world transactions in everything from home-buying to government sales of radio spectrum.
The ceremony was live-streamed on the institute's website.
The Nobel Prize Committee took to twitter to announce the same.
"The 2020 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson 'for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats'," it tweeted.
The committee said the men were honored for theoretical insights into developing the best rules for bidding and for establishing the final price.
Wilson, 83, developed a theory explaining the tendency of successful bidders to place bids lower than their own estimate of the item's value to themselves or other buyers, because they feared paying too much.
Milgrom, 72, developed a more general theory of auctions involving values that vary between bidders. After analyzing bidding strategies in several popular auctions, he showed the best format to be one in which bidders learn more about each other's estimated values during bidding.
Previously, a total of 84 laureates had received the prize, known formally as The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
