Introduction to the issues in honor of Leonid Hurwicz

Abstract

In my second year in graduate school in 1965, Stanley Reiter gave me copy of "Optimality and Efficiency in Resource Allocation Processes" published in 1959 by Leonid Hurwicz. The article had a remarkable effect on me. I knew immediately that these were the questions I went into economics to study and the precision with which I wanted to carry out that study. At the time there was no word for the area, today we call it Mechanism Design. The field and Leo's role in creating it were recognized with a Nobel Prize in 2007.

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