Rate My Professor Roger Myerson

Roger B. Myerson is the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies in the Harris School of Public Policy and the Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as University Professor in the Department of Political Science and the College. A distinguished scholar in Business & Economics, he earned an A.B. summa cum laude and S.M. in Applied Mathematics in 1973 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1976 from Harvard University, with his dissertation on "A Theory of Cooperative Games." Before joining Chicago in 2001, Myerson taught for 25 years at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, rising from Assistant Professor to Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences (1976-2001).

Myerson specializes in game theory, mechanism design, information economics, political institutions, electoral systems, bargaining, and state-building. He received the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Leo Hurwicz and Eric Maskin, for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory. Other major awards include Guggenheim and Sloan Foundation Fellowships (1983-1986), Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2009), Oskar Morgenstern Medal (2013), and honorary doctorates from the University of Basel (2002) and Università degli Studi di Perugia (2025); he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), American Philosophical Society (2019), and Council on Foreign Relations (2011). He authored Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1991) and Probability Models for Economic Decisions (Duxbury Press, 2005; second edition with Eduardo Zambrano, MIT Press, 2019). Selected publications include "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem" (Econometrica, 1979), "Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal" (Econometrica, 1983), "Multistage Games with Communication" (Econometrica, 1986), "Nash Equilibrium and the History of Economic Theory" (Journal of Economic Literature, 1999), "The Autocrat's Credibility Problem and Foundations of the Constitutional State" (American Political Science Review, 2008), "A Model of Moral-Hazard Credit Cycles" (Journal of Political Economy, 2012), "Moral Hazard in High Office and the Dynamics of Aristocracy" (Econometrica, 2015), "Local Politics and Democratic State-Building" (Journal of Democracy, 2022), "Game Theory and the First World War" (Journal of Economic Literature, 2023), and "Focal Coordination and Language in Human Evolution" (Human Nature, 2024). Myerson served as President of the Game Theory Society (2012-2014) and Econometric Society (2009).