(October 15, 2012) Professor Alvin Roth of the Harvard Economics Department has been named, along with Professor Lloyd Shapley '44 of UCLA, as a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Professors Roth and Shapley were named as recipients of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Economics for their work in market design and matching theory in markets without prices. Professor Roth sought practical uses for the matching theories developed by Professor Shapley to design resource allocation systems based upon matching algorithms that seek a stable match. The result of this work is now successfully used to pair organ donors with transplant recipients, students with schools, and doctors with hospitals.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences which awards the Nobel Prizes notes, “This year’s prize rewards a flourishing field of research, where theory, evidence, and design are used interactively. Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth have worked independently of each other, but the success of their research is due to the combination of Shapley’s theoretical results with Roth’s insights into their practical value. The field continues to grow and holds great promise for the future.”
Professor Roth is presently visiting professor at Stanford University.
He will become professor emeritus at Harvard in January when he joins the Stanford Faculty.
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2012: Information for the Public Nobelprize.org
"Roth shares economics Nobel," Harvard Gazette, October 15, 2012
“2 From U.S. Win Nobel in Economics,” The New York Times, October 15, 2012