Roth, Alvin Eliot (1951-…), an American economist, won the 2012 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. He shared the award with the American economist Lloyd S. Shapley. The men received the award for their work in matchmaking—that is, matching up students with schools or donated organs with ill patients. It usually is not possible for each person in such a pool (group) to get his or her best or first choice. The work of Roth and Shapley, however, allows for the best possible matches. Once the best possible matches are made, no match can be changed to make someone better off without another person being made worse off.
Roth’s work involves game theory—a method of studying decision-making situations in which the choices of two or more individuals or groups influence one another. Roth built upon the work of Shapley. Shapley sought a way to match people in a group such that no two paired partners could gain by swapping partners. When all of the people in the pool are paired in this manner, economists call this a stable match. Shapley and the American economist David Gale developed a mathematical formula that results in the most efficient match of people in a group. This formula is called the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Roth studied how this algorithm could be used in practical situations. Perhaps the most interesting real-world use of Roth’s work has been in the field of organ transplantation.
A person can donate one of his or her two kidneys to a relative or friend who needs a kidney transplant and remain healthy. However, often the donor and the patient are not compatible—that is, the patient’s body will reject the donor kidney. This rejection can lead to serious medical problems, and even death. Roth founded the New England Program for Kidney Exchange in 2005. This program organizes paired exchanges of kidneys. An incompatible donor for patient A gives a kidney to a stranger (patient B) with whom he or she is compatible. Meanwhile, the incompatible donor for patient B donates a kidney to patient A with whom he or she is compatible. This program has greatly increased the likelihood that a patient will receive a compatible kidney.
Roth was born in New York City on Dec. 18, 1951. He received his bachelor’s degree in a mathematical field known as operations research from Columbia University in 1971. He received his master’s degree and doctorate in the same field from Stanford University in 1973 and 1974, respectively. From 1974 to 1982, Roth taught in the departments of business administration and economics at the University of Illinois, becoming a full professor in 1979. He taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh from 1982 to 1998. In 1998, he became the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. Roth became professor emeritus at Harvard in 2012. In 2013, he became the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford. In Who Gets What—and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design (2015), Roth explains how matching markets work.
See also Game theory ; Nobel Prizes ; Shapley, Lloyd Stowell .
