Who Gets What — and Why

April 20, 2015
Roth, who shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2012, shines a light on the everyday world of matching markets in diverse areas such as organ donation, public school choice programs, college admissions, employment, and online dating. Unlike commodity markets such as stocks and bonds, where price alone determines who gets what, in a matching market you are not free to choose but must also be chosen. Roth is in the forefront of the “market design” school, which aims to solve problems plaguing matching markets that are not “thick” enough (lacking sufficient participants) or suffer from “congestion” (an overwhelming range of options). As an example, he points out that over 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for kidney transplants, yet only about 11,000 non-directed kidneys become available each year. Using market design principles, Roth helped design the New England Program for Kidney Exchange. As another example, he examines the college application process, a vicious cycle in which, as students apply to more colleges, acceptance rates go down. After reading Roth’s book, readers may or may not make better matches, but they will better understand how matching markets work. Agent: Jim Levine, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.

June 15, 2015

Roth (Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford Univ.) is all about making matches. It's what won him the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2012 (along with Lloyd S. Shapley) and what makes him an expert in game theory and matching markets. Here the author explains that economists of past eras looked primarily at commodity markets that were based almost solely upon pricing. The new trend is to examine matching markets in which pricing is only one factor involved in the transaction. While some matching markets, such as the conventional dating scene, occur naturally, others are designed--an online dating service, for instance. Real-life examples illustrate how we're all invested in matching markets in various ways: college applications, College Bowl game matches, job applications, marriage proposals, and something as simple as buying tickets on StubHub. The author further uses a number of his own projects, including matching kidney donors with recipients, public school students with schools, and doctors with hospitals, to show what makes these industries work and how they're connected. Since Roth's specialty is design-based, he also gets behind the scenes to explain about how markets are conceived, tweaked, and overhauled to make them more efficient. VERDICT This book's lessons are practical as well as theoretical. Understanding how matching markets operate can help readers navigate them more effectively. A solid match for readers in general economics and business collections.--Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater Libs.

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