Who Gets What - and Why - Books.Infosec.Exchange

English language

Published Nov. 10, 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-00-752078-7

"A Nobel laureate reveals the often surprising rules that govern a vast array of activities -- both mundane and life-changing -- in which money may play little or no role. If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market. Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of "goods," like a spot in the Yale freshman class or a position at Google? This is the territory of matching markets, where "sellers" and "buyers" must choose each other, and price isn't the only factor determining who gets what. Alvin E. Roth is one of the world's leading experts on matching markets. He has even designed several …

"A Nobel laureate reveals the often surprising rules that govern a vast array of activities -- both mundane and life-changing -- in which money may play little or no role. If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market. Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of "goods," like a spot in the Yale freshman class or a position at Google? This is the territory of matching markets, where "sellers" and "buyers" must choose each other, and price isn't the only factor determining who gets what. Alvin E. Roth is one of the world's leading experts on matching markets. He has even designed several of them, including the exchange that places medical students in residencies and the system that increases the number of kidney transplants by better matching donors to patients. In Who Gets What -- And Why, Roth reveals the matching markets hidden around us and shows how to recognize a good match and make smarter, more confident decisions"--

2 editions

Ben Waber reviewed Who Gets What - and Why by Alvin E. Roth

A Gentle Introduction to Market Design

4 stars

Roth provides an accessible introduction to matchmaking and markets more broadly, reviewing different match market classes, the problems that can occur with different approaches for making matches, and the real-world success of algorithms in this area. If you're already familiar with the literature in this area there's not much new here, although the case studies will definitely be useful as references to use in the future. Roth doesn't spend much time on the limits of markets and the implications of different value functions, which while understandable is a decent gap here. However, overall this is still an insightful book on an important area of economics and society more broadly. Highly recommend

Ben Waber

rated it

November 23

Subjects

Economics, sociological aspects

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