Maxim Hurwicz's speech when Prof. Leo Hurwicz received the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics

Maxim Hurwicz's speech
on the occasion of Professor Leonid Hurwicz
receiving the 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics

December 10, 2007

MP3 audio of the speech
(for a higher quality RealPlayer version, go here and click on
"Audio - Maxim Hurwicz' remarks about his father, Leonid Hurwicz"

Some people say that theoretical economists, such as Leo, live in imaginary worlds that have no connection with the real world.

Maybe they're right. But imagination is where new ideas come from.

New ideas are gifts of uncertain value, unknown perhaps even to the giver, as there may be nothing to compare them with. They are beautiful to behold, but awkward to work into the existing scheme of things.

When Leo first started talking about mechanism design theory, it wasn't simply accepted.
There was no immediate, concrete application for his theories.

But these days we don't have to look far
to see what Leo was imagining and trying to explain
a half a century ago
has become a real framework
for real applications
in the real world.

It has just taken a few decades
for the world to catch up with him.

But the world hasn't caught up with him.
They have caught up with the Leo Hurwicz of 1960 or 1970 or 1980.

When Leo recently delivered a lecture for the Nobel ceremonies, it wasn't on the topic he won the award for.
It was on a new idea he came up with.
A concept that is new to economics.

Once he explained it to me, it seemed obvious, which may reflect how true it feels to me.
Of course, as Sherlock Holmes reflected, everything is obvious...once it is explained to you.

It's hard to describe what someone else has spent a lifetime pursuing, but I will stumble ahead anyway.

Ever since I was a child Leo has always told me he is lucky, because he has a job he would do even if they didn't pay him for it. He said he gets to imagine ideal games for people to play. For an economist like Leo, things like elections or auctions or taxes are all games we play. Like a game of Monopoly where everyone is playing together, but against each other.

But that brings up a question:
Ultimately, are all people only motivated by their own self-interest?
Do we have to be influenced with threats and rewards to follow the rules?
That's a pretty depressing, pessimistic way to look at the world.
Like it's all just a rat race.
So Leo wondered: are there people who behave in an ethical way simply because it is in them to do so?

Leo, being an optimist, thinks there are such people.
And he calls them intervenors.
Such a person intervenes to try to right a situation simply because their ethical standards rule out corrupt behavior.
For instance, truthfulness is an intrinsic part of their lives.
It requires optimism to be able to see intervenors, and intervenors are a reason for optimism.

Such people are sometimes regarded as being holy like Mahatma Gandhi or Pope John Paul or the Dalai Lama, but that makes being an intervenor seem too unreachable for us common folk.
In Leo's eyes, intervenors can be whistle-blowers or judges or teachers or students or anyone.
Being an intervenor is a moment to moment choice.
Intervenors can rise up in a mass when voters recognize corruption and toss out a corrupt politician
or when they insist on rights for those who cannot defend themselves.

Being an intervenor has the spiritual quality
of sensing one's own integrity...and not compromising with it.

It surprised me to realize that there isn't a general term for such people already, but apparently there isn't. Growing up in our family we always had a name for somebody who was painfully truthful.

We just called him Dad.

I remember when my mother, Evelyn said, "I have lived with a man almost my entire adult life who knows nothing but honesty. I don't know how to react to someone who is deceitful."

Many of you already know Leo as a person.
You know you won't get a false compliment out of him, but any compliment you do get will be sincere.
For instance, if you get the wrong answer, he will say it is "a good start".
If you give him something to eat and he doesn't like it, he will say it is "interesting".
He is diplomatic, but he is not a politician he tries not to offend anyone, but he is driven to bring out the truth, even if it is unpopular.
For Leo, truthfulness is a quality that defines who he is.

That may be the reason that he takes so darned long to write a paper.
Because anything that doesn't feel true to him cannot be released on an unsuspecting world.

He did not invent intervenors, because intervenors are real people.
But as an economist he has discovered them and given them a name.
He has created a space for them in economics.
A little bright spot in a normally gray landscape.

This will be something for him to continue to tinker with and for others to build on.

Leo does his part to tease out bits of truth.
And to share that process and those discoveries with as many people as possible.
One could believe that this Nobel Prize honors his work in laying the foundations of mechanism design theory.
But I personally hope that all it marks is that seeing, living in and speaking the truth is worthy of admiration.
Hopefully this will honor something in each of you;
in you seeing the value of truth in your own life.
In honoring Leo we honor that which we value in our hearts.
Great men represent the greatness in ourselves.

Thank you, Dad, for the good you do, and the good you bring out in others.