Games and prizes in the economic (and geographical?) performance of markets: Nobel, Shapley, and Roth

摘要

In October 2012 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences-popularly referred to as the Nobel Prize in economics-to Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth for their independent work on, respectively, "the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." As the press release (RSAS, 2012) announcing the award explained, both the theory (of allocations) and the practice (of design) pertain to the central problem of matching: "For example, students have to be matched with schools, and donors of human organs with patients in need of a transplant.