Ilya R. Segal

Segal is a microeconomic theorist who made both abstract and applied contributions and is celebrated for work in contract theory and mechanism design. In contract theory, he analyzed the hold up problem, created a new, general framework for contracting with externalities, and developed applications of both to antitrust analysis. His 1999 article Complexity and Renegotiation was the first formal demonstration that optimal contracts may be intentionally incomplete. His 1999 Contracting with Externalities article unified the treatments of diverse contracting problems. His work on mechanism design includes both contributions to the foundational methods and problems of renegotiation, as well as work on the design of dynamic mechanisms. In Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets, he introduced new methods for analyzing mechanism design problems.