Americans Win Nobel Economics Prize

Americans Win Nobel Economics Prize

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Two American economists won the Nobel Prize in economics for their research into how to match different actors in given markets, such as job seekers with employers and patients with donated kidneys. Alvin Roth of Harvard University and Lloyd Shapley of the University of California Los Angeles won the prize “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“This year’s Prize concerns a central economic problem: how to match different agents as well as possible,” the academy said in a statement. “For example, students have to be matched with schools, and donors of human organs with patients in need of a transplant. How can such matching be accomplished as efficiently as possible? What methods are beneficial to what groups? The prize rewards two scholars who have answered these questions on a journey from abstract theory on stable allocations to practical design of market institutions.”