“I wanted game theory to be more useful for the field of Economics”

On the occasion of receiving the 8th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management, mathematician Robert Wilson explains how he has helped make game theory a more useful tool for analyzing strategic behavior, incorporating information differences and the role of reputation in cooperation and negotiation. He also highlights economic engineering, which applies economics to the design of markets and auctions, as well as his current work on gift-exchange games to study how memory or computational ability influence cooperation.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category has been granted in its eighth edition to Robert Wilson for pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and different information about their environment.