The 2020 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences has been jointly awarded to Prof. Paul Milgrom and Prof. Robert Wilson «for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats». Since 1996, four Nobel prizes in Economic Sciences have been awarded to leading theorists in one blossoming branch of modern microeconomics, which is sometimes referred to as «social engineering». By using a purely intuitive and non-technical approach, this paper reviews some of the most relevant theoretical achievements of «auction theory» as well as some real-world applications.
