Professor Paul Milgrom's lecture “The Promise and Problems of Market Design" was delivered on Thursday, November 5 in the James L. Allen Center at Northwestern University.

Paul Milgrom (www.milgrom.net) is the Shirley and Leonard Ely professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University and professor, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is founder and chairman of Auctionomics (www.auctionomics.com), an auction software and services company that makes Milgrom's work accessible to firms in energy, environment, advertisting and commodity markets.

The Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics is awarded every two years to recognize "work of lasting significance". It was established through a generous gift from the late Erwin Esser Nemmers and his brother the late Frederic Esser Nemmers. In particular, the prizes recognize "major contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis." Three out of the eight winners in economics have since received the Nobel Prize: Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Edward C. Prescott (2004), Robert J. Aumann (2005).