2004 JEA-NAKAHARA PRIZE: ANNOUNCEMENT

2004 JEA-NAKAHARA PRIZE: ANNOUNCEMENT

By MAKOTO YANO Keio University

The JEA-Nakahara Prize was established in 1995 and is funded by a donation from Mr Nobuyuki Nakahara. The prize was established to honour economists under the age of 45 who have produced internationally recognized research.

It is my pleasure to announce that the 2004 JEA-Nakahara Prize has been awarded to Professor Hitoshi Matsushima. Born in 1960, Professor Matsushima gained his BA in 1983 and doctoral degree in 1988, both from the University of Tokyo. He is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo.

Professor Matsushima has made a number of important contributions to the theories of mechanism design and repeated games. In his 1988 Journal of Economic Theory (JET ) and 1992 Econometrica papers he has demonstrated that, if a decentralized system is appropriately set, it is possible uniquely to implement all social choice functions that are based on agents' preferences for consequences in a virtual sense. His 1989 JET, 1998 Econometrica, 2001 JET and 2004 Econometrica papers are considered as major contributions to the theory of repeated games. The 1989 and 2001 JET papers demonstrate that, in a repeated game with imperfect public monitoring, the existence of a collusive equilibrium can be established simply by exploiting imprecise information on who breaks collusion. The 1998 and 2004 Econometrica papers are concerned with the existence of a collusive equilibrium in repeated games with imperfect private monitoring.

Professor Matsushima currently works on the design of exchange mechanisms that are detail-free and the design of constitutions based on agents' non-consequential moral preferences.

Professor Matsushima's major research articles include:

“A New Approach to the Implementation Problem”, Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 45, No.1, June 1988.

“Efﬁciency in Repeated Games with Imperfect Monitoring”, Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 48, No. 2, August 1989.

“Virtual Implementation in Iteratively Undominated Strategies: Complete Information”, Econometrica, Vol. 60, No. 5, September 1992; also in Eric Maskin (ed.), Recent Developments in Game Theory (with D. Abreu), International Library of Critical Writings in Economics No. 109, An Elgar Reference Collection, 1999.

“Private Observation, Communication and Collusion” (with M. Kandori), Econometrica, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1998.

“Multimarket Contact, Imperfect Monitoring, and Implicit Collusion”, Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 98, No. 1, May 2001.

“Repeated Games with Private Monitoring: Two Players”, Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 3, May 2004.