Michael B. Maschler

Aumann and Maschler, with the collaboration of Richard E. Sterns, were honored for their book Repeated Games with Incomplete Information, published by MIT press in 1995.

The Lanchester Prize Committee cited the work of Aumann and Maschler as "representing a landmark contribution to the theory of repeated games, which has profoundly influenced economic thinking in recent decades." The theory about relationships between rational decision makers involving repeated interaction over time, developed by Aumann and Maschler, places particular emphasis on the strategic use of information between the parties. Their theory delineates how much to reveal and how much to conceal, when exactly to do it, whether or not to believe the revealed information, and so forth. The award further cites: "An important conclusion is that the 'solution space' of a game typically expands when it is played repeatedly; much more subtle forms of cooperations and stability arise in repeated interaction than in single-shot games.

"In addition to its many and varied insights into applied problems, the theory developed in this book involves deep and subtle mathematics, with significant contributions to convexity theory, probability and stochastic processes. The quality of exposition for such highly mathematical material, in which results turn on delicate distinctions, is also exemplary."