Physics has led to technological inventions like rockets, television sets, motor cars etc. Medical science has led to the invention of numerous medicinal drugs. Computer science has led to the invention of modern computers, the internet etc. I know that the direction is not always clear: many of the inventions existed at least in primitive form before theories got developed, for instance, in the case of the electric motor. But it cannot be denied that modern versions of many inventions have used knowledge of these sciences extensively.
I was wondering, what are some important technologies that are born out of significant contributions from academic Economics, in the sense that Economic theory or other ideas from economics were or are used in their design. "Markets" as a whole preceded modern economic theories about them and I think central banks also precede the development of Economic theory about them.
I guess many welfare programmes must have been developed using Economics, although I am not sure how prevalent that is. As far as I have heard, such programmes are developed often by bureaucrats on the basis of a mixture of experience, common sense and other inputs, and the impact is evaluated using Econometric techniques only afterwards. Many a times, the common sense ideas used align with accepted findings in economics, but I am not sure such cases can be said to have "used" ideas from economics.
On the positive side, I know many auction formats have been developed using economic theory, including "the greatest auction in history", and are used widely. I am also aware of organ donation matching systems and resident matching systems. Here, Economic findings and models are used non-trivially, in the sense that it is not the case that the systems were developed using common sense and the ideas by chance match findings in Economics. I am also aware of the use of nudge theory in policy making and by commercial entities as well (some alleged uses, like pricing USD 99 instead of USD 100 appear common sensical to me, others don't, like changing default options, others may disagree).
So, my question is, apart from the ones I mentioned, what are some of the most influential inventions that extensively use findings from Economics non-trivially, in the sense that when developing them, findings from Economics (beyond common sense) were probably explicitly used? I know this is not a well-defined question, as what is "common sense" and what is not, and also what is a "substantial" use would prompt different answers from different people, and so I would tag it as a soft question, but I want to know people here think are important examples. I would also like to know how findings from Economics were used in the examples you give.
