Robert B. Wilson

Recent winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences have been recognised for exactly this kind of practical, rigorous work.

In 2020 Paul Milgram and Robert Wilson won for their improvements to auction theory and their invention of new auction formats.

Research that has been directly applied in real-world spectrum auctions worth billions of dollars.

In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, using randomized controlled trials to test what actually works in education and healthcare rather than relying on theory alone.