By convincing the FCC to auction spectrum rather than give it away, Milgrom and Roberts made billions of dollars for governments, at the expense of wealthy corporations. And made sure spectrum went where it could be used best to promote economic growth in the coming digital age. https://twitter.com/brankomilan/status/1315841888075866112

In full disclosure, my primary advisor John McMillan (RIP) also played an important role in the spectrum auctions. His account in the Journal of Economic Perspectives is here: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.8.3.145

John started in auction theory, went on to applied policy with the spectrum auctions, then turned his interest in market institutions to empirical studies on China's economic reforms with @bnaughton and on entrepreneurship in developing countries with @baselinescene.

He concluded his (tragically short) career @StanfordGSB as a colleague of Bob Wilson, teaching MBA students about the roles they could play in alleviating global poverty.

His 2002 popular press book, "Reinventing the Bazaar," covers all these areas and more, providing a great introduction to the importance of microeconomic institutions for generating equitable prosperity. https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Bazaar-Natural-History-Markets/dp/0393323714

John's obituary: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/march21/mcmillan-032107.html

Clearly, I have a personal interest here, as I've tried in my own research to continue John's legacy of applying these same tools to understand market and political institutions that matter for billions of people...

p.s. Of course one can critique the auctions. Not market design is perfect. An invitation from @marykaltenberg and @LaureneTran12 to join the @ysi_commons exposed me to a highly critical perspective from Edward Nik-Khah. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137407000859

BTW @ysi_commons is a great group. Enjoyed the conference tremendously and even got to be on a panel with and meet @Undercoverhist. My only critique is that it sometimes seemed as smugly heterodox as the AEA can be smugly orthodox. More "mainstream" econs should go to mix it up.