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Leonid Hurwicz (1917-2008) was a major figure in modern theoretical economics whose contributions over sixty-five years spanned at least five areas: econometrics, nonlinear programming, decision theory, microeconomic theory, and mechanism design. While some of Hurwicz's work were published in journals, many remain scattered as chapters in books which are difficult to access and others were never published at all.
The Collected Papers of Leonid Hurwicz is the first volume in a series of four that will bring his oeuvre in one place, to bring to light the totality of his intellectual output, and to document his contribution to economics and the extent of his legacy, with the express purpose to make it easily available for future generations of researchers to build upon.
List of contents
- Preface
- PART ONE: BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES
- 1. Leo Hurwicz: A Biography
- 2. Leonid Hurwicz: An Appreciation
- 3. A Twenty-One-Year Collaboration
- 4. Some Reminiscences of Leo and His Work on Informational Requirements
- 5. Leonid Hurwicz: A Reminiscence
- 6. The Hurwicz 1940-41 Year When MIT Launched Its Graduate Degree Rocket
- PART TWO: MECHANISMS AND INSTITUTIONS
- 7. On the Concept and Possibility of Informational Decentralization
- 8. Centralization and Decentralization in Economic Processes
- 9. The Design of Mechanisms for Resource Allocation
- 10. On the Interaction Between Information and Incentives in Organizations
- 11. Mechanism Design Without Games
- 12. On Modeling Institutions
- 13. Toward a Framework for Analyzing Institutions and Institutional Change
- 14. Economic Design, Adjustment Processes, Mechanisms, and Institutions
- 15. Institutional Change and the Theory of Mechanism Design
- 16. Institutions as Families of Game Forms
- 17. Issues in the Design of Mechanisms and Institutions
- 18. But Who Will Guard the Guardians?
- 19. Fundamental Theory of Institutions
- PART THREE: OTHER ESSAYS
- 20. Environmental Issues: Economic Perspectives
- 21. The Theory of Economic Behavior
- 22. Book Review: The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
- 23. What Has Happened to the Theory of Games
- 24. Game Theory and Decisions
- 25. Book Review: The Theory of Value
- 26. A Voting System Reform Proposal to Provide for Minority Representation
- 27. Publications of Leonid Hurwicz
- Index
About the author
Samiran (Shomu) Banerjee is Teaching Professor in the Department of Economics at Emory University. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota under Leonid Hurwicz and was a faculty at Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology before moving to Emory. His research interests are in applied microeconomic theory, mechanism design, industrial organization, and experimental economics.
Summary
Leonid Hurwicz (1917-2008) was a major figure in modern theoretical economics whose contributions over sixty-five years spanned at least five areas: econometrics, nonlinear programming, decision theory, microeconomic theory, and mechanism design. In 2007, at age ninety, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson) for pioneering the field of mechanism design and incentive compatibility.
Hurwicz made seminal contributions in the other areas as well. In non-linear programming, he contributed to the understanding of Lagrange-Kuhn-Tucker problems (along with co-authors Kenneth Arrowand Hirofumi Uzawa). In econometrics, the Hurwicz bias in the least-squares analysis of time series is a fundamental and commonly cited benchmark. In decision theory, the Hurwicz criterion for decision-making under ambiguity is routinely invoked, sometimes without a citation since his original paper was never published. In microeconomic theory, Hurwicz (along with Arrow and H.D. Block) initiated the study of stability of the market mechanism, and (with Uzawa) solved the classic integrability of demand problem, a core result in neoclassical consumer theory.
While some of Hurwicz's work were published in journals, many remain scattered as chapters in books which are difficult to access; yet others were never published at all. The Collected Papers of Leonid Hurwicz is the first volume in a series of four that will bring his oeuvre in one place, to bring to light the totality of his intellectual output, to document his contribution to economics and the extent of his legacy, with the express purpose to make it easily available for future generations of researchers to build upon.
