On Dec. 30, 2018, School of Economics held the inauguration ceremony for Maskin Research Center of China’s Economic Development (MRCCED) on Yuquan Campus. Eric Maskin, the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics and the Adams University Professor at Harvard University, attended the ceremony and delivered a keynote speech on “Mechanism Design Theory”.
“The university will lend immense support to MRCCED,” said REN Shaobo, executive vice president of Zhejiang University. “I hope that MRCCED will capitalize on Mechanism Design Theory, take into consideration the defining features of China’s economic development and Zhejiang characteristics, focus its research on the challenges in the economic development and reform of China and Zhejiang Province, put forward viable ways to resolve the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life, and make theoretical breakthroughs which can lead and expand the cutting edge of economics.”
The establishment of MRCCED will help bring together a constellation of academic dignitaries and promote the globalization of economics, added REN Shaobo.
Prof. WANG Ruqu is appointed Director of MRCCED. He stressed that MRCCED would be committed to research into the application of Mechanism Design Theory in China. He was supremely confident that MRCCED would be built into a world-class research center in the field of mechanism design, promote the implementation of the Double First-class initiative and spare no effort in making contributions to the socioeconomic development of China and Zhejiang Province.
In his keynote speech, Prof. Maskin pointed out that mechanism design was literally a process of reverse thinking in which design starts at the end of the game and then goes backwards. In addition, he also introduced Vickrey auction, aka second-price sealed-bid auction, to illustrate the complicated application of mechanism design in real-life scenarios.