Eric Stark Maskin (born December 12, 1950) is a American economist and Nobel laureate recognized with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory."^[1] He is the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a visiting lecturer with the rank of Professor at Princeton University.^[2]

Biography

Maskin was born in New York City, New York on December 12, 1950, to a non-religious Jewish family, and grew up in Alpine, New Jersey.^[3] He graduated from Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey in 1968^[4], and attended Harvard University where he received his A.B. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics. After he earned his doctorate, Maskin went to the University of Cambridge in 1976 where he was a research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. He taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1977-1984 and from 1985-2000 at Harvard University, where he was the Louis Berkman Professor of Economics. In 2000, he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Maskin has worked in diverse areas of economic theory, such as game theory, the economics of incentives, and contract theory. He is particularly well known for his papers on mechanism design/implementation theory and dynamic games. His current research projects include comparing different electoral rules, examining the causes of inequality and studying coalition formation. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Econometric Society, and the European Economic Association, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was president of the Econometric Society in 2003.

Software patents

Maskin suggested that software patents inhibit innovation rather than stimulate progress. Software, semiconductor, and computer industries have been innovative despite historically weak patent protection, he argued. Innovation in those industries has been sequential and complementary, so competition can increase firms' future profits. In such a dynamic industry, "patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare." A natural experiment occurred in the 1980s when patent protection was extended to software," wrote Maskin. "Standard arguments would predict that R&D intensity and productivity should have increased among patenting firms. Consistent with our model, however, these increases did not occur." Other evidence supporting this model includes a distinctive pattern of cross-licensing and a positive relationship between rates of innovation and firm entry.^[5]

References

External links

• Maskin Nobel Prize lecture
• Webpage from ''Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science''
• Profile in The Daily Princetonian
• Nash Equilibrium and Welfare Optimality
• IDEAS/RePEc

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