The Nobels go to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley for their work on matching and/or market design; that is, markets without prices.
Professor Galambos was talking about Roth’s work in our community read this last week, and Alex Tabarrok has a lot more here. Here’s an accessible piece on matching kids to schools. Here’s the famous Gale-Shapley piece on college admissions and marriage.
In a related note, I often use Roth’s JEP excellent repugnance piece in my public policy classes.
Here’s Al Roth’s excellent blog.
A complement, not a substitute, we hope.
Well, no winners in our guess the Nobel contest, so the prizes will be rolled over into next year’s contest.