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Getting an unexpected knock on your front door in the wee hours of the morning doesn’t usually bring good news, but that’s how one man found out that he had won a Nobel Prize.
Economist Paul Milgrom won the economics award alongside his colleague Robert Wilson for their work benefiting sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world.
But the award organizers had not been able to communicate with Milgrom, so Wilson took it upon himself to inform his colleague of his victory.
“You know, I was asleep and my phone is set to not receive calls from unknown numbers,” Milgrom said. “So they never understood me.
“But someone knocked on my door and my co-winner, Bob Wilson, who also lives across the street, came up and knocked on my door and said, ‘Paul, wake up! Nobel Prize! ‘”
Mr. Milgrom stuttered for a moment before saying, “Wow.”
Security footage at Milgrom’s home captured the moment he found out in the early hours of the morning.
Both men are based at Stanford University in the United States and won for their auction formats that have been used to sell radio frequencies, fishing quotas and landing spaces at airports.
Milgrom was humble about his award, although his work has been used for good.
“This is economics. It is not the Nobel Peace Prize or something like that, it is not like it has gone out and helped people solve a war,” he said.
His victory was announced in Stockholm by Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, completing a week of Nobel prizes.
The committee said its work showed “why rational bidders tend to bid below their best estimate of common value,” that is, “value that is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone.” .
It also included an explanation of how bidders try to avoid the so-called “winner’s curse” of overpaying.
