Professor Alvin Roth won the Nobel Prize for economics partly for his work helping match willing donors with those who need kidney transplants.
He has spent his career looking at markets of all kinds and how ‘buyer’ and ‘seller’ come together. In his new book, Who Gets What and Why, he argues we are surrounded by matching markets. From applying for a job, to asking someone out on a date, matching plays a crucial but invisible role in our lives.
Professor Roth says matching is why apps like uber and airbnb are so successful, but while he is an advocate of market forces, as he tells Kathryn Ryan, there must also be rules.
Photo: Steve Castillo
