"This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how auctions work. They have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies," the Academy explained in a press release.
Robert Wilson developed the theory for auctions of objects with a common value – a value which is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone,  while Paul Milgrom formulated a more general theory of auctions that not only allows common values, but also private values that vary from bidder to bidder, it explained.