Alvin Roth

Alvin Roth
Born	Alvin Eliot Roth 18 12, 1951
Birthplace	New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Economist, academic
Title	Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics
Employer	Stanford University
Known for	Market design, matching theory, kidney exchange
Education	Ph.D. in Operations Research, Stanford University
Awards	Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2012)
Website	[https://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/ Official site]

Alvin Eliot Roth (born December 18, 1951) is an American economist and professor at Stanford University, where he holds the title of Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics. He is recognized for his foundational contributions to the fields of market design and matching theory, work that has had far-reaching practical applications in areas ranging from medical residency assignments to public school enrollment systems and organ donation. In 2012, Roth was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which he shared with mathematician Lloyd Shapley, for "the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." While Shapley's contributions were primarily theoretical, Roth distinguished himself by bridging abstract mathematical models with real-world institutional reforms, demonstrating how economic theory could be engineered into systems that tangibly improve how people are matched to opportunities, resources, and one another. He is also the author of the popular book Who Gets What—And Why, which explains the principles of market design to a general audience, and a co-founder of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.

Early Life

Alvin Eliot Roth was born on December 18, 1951, in New York City. He grew up in the borough of Queens. As a young student, Roth attended public schools in New York City. He was drawn to mathematics and science from an early age, interests that would shape the trajectory of his academic career. Roth has identified his Jewish heritage as part of his background.

Roth's early intellectual development was marked by a restless curiosity and an impatience with traditional educational structures. He left Andrew Jackson High School before graduating and did not complete a conventional high school diploma. Instead, he enrolled at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science as a member of the Columbia Engineering class. At Columbia, Roth was exposed to a rigorous curriculum in engineering and the mathematical sciences, which provided him with the quantitative foundation he would later apply to economic theory. He earned his undergraduate degree in operations research from Columbia University.

Roth's unconventional path through education — entering college without a standard high school diploma — foreshadowed the unconventional thinking he would later bring to economics, applying engineering principles and computational methods to problems that had traditionally been approached from a purely theoretical standpoint.

Education

After completing his undergraduate studies at Columbia University, Roth continued his education at Stanford University, where he pursued graduate work in operations research. He earned both his master's degree and his Ph.D. from Stanford. His doctoral dissertation explored game theory and cooperative games, subjects that would form the intellectual backbone of his subsequent research in matching theory and market design. The training Roth received at Stanford in operations research — a discipline concerned with using analytical methods to make better decisions — proved instrumental in shaping his approach to economics. Rather than viewing markets purely as theoretical constructs, Roth came to see them as systems that could be designed, tested, and improved, much like an engineer designs a bridge or a circuit. This perspective would distinguish his career and ultimately contribute to the creation of the field now known as market design.

Career

Early Academic Career

Following the completion of his doctorate, Roth began his academic career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he joined the faculty and began his research into game theory and experimental economics. His early work focused on cooperative game theory, bargaining, and the Shapley value, a concept developed by Lloyd Shapley that assigns a fair distribution of gains among participants in a cooperative game.

During this period, Roth became increasingly interested in the practical applications of matching theory. He studied the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), the system used to assign medical school graduates to hospital residency positions in the United States. The NRMP had been established in the 1950s, and Roth's analysis revealed that the algorithm at its core was, in fact, a version of the deferred acceptance algorithm described by David Gale and Lloyd Shapley in their seminal 1962 paper. This discovery was a landmark in the history of economics — it demonstrated that a real-world institution had independently arrived at a solution closely related to the one proposed by theoreticians, and it connected abstract mathematical theory with practical institutional design.

Roth subsequently moved to the University of Pittsburgh, where he continued to develop his research on matching markets. At Pittsburgh, he undertook extensive experimental work, using laboratory experiments to test predictions from game theory and to understand how people actually behave in strategic situations. His experimental research helped establish that the stability of a matching — the property that no pair of participants would prefer to be matched with each other rather than with their current partners — was a key determinant of a matching system's success in practice.

Harvard University

Roth joined the faculty of Harvard University, where he held positions at both the Department of Economics and Harvard Business School. He eventually became the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard. His tenure at Harvard proved to be one of the most productive periods of his career, during which he expanded his research into new domains and began applying market design principles to solve pressing social problems.

At Harvard, Roth worked on redesigning the NRMP algorithm. By the mid-1990s, the existing matching system for medical residents had come under criticism for various shortcomings, including its treatment of couples who wished to be matched to residency programs in the same geographic area. Roth and his collaborators developed a new algorithm that addressed these problems while maintaining the crucial property of stability. The redesigned system was adopted by the NRMP in 1998 and continues to be used to match tens of thousands of medical graduates to residency positions each year.

Roth also applied market design principles to public school choice systems. He worked with school districts, including those in New York City and Boston, to design better mechanisms for assigning students to schools. In New York City, the existing system had been chaotic and inefficient: students submitted ranked lists of preferred schools, but the process involved multiple rounds and strategic manipulation, with many students ending up unmatched or assigned to schools they had not chosen. Roth and his colleagues designed a centralized matching system based on the deferred acceptance algorithm, which was implemented for the 2003–2004 school year. The new system dramatically reduced the number of students who were left unassigned and made it safe for families to report their true preferences, rather than engaging in strategic gaming.

Kidney Exchange

One of Roth's most consequential contributions has been the development of kidney exchange programs. The shortage of kidneys available for transplantation is a major public health challenge. Many patients who need a kidney transplant have a willing living donor — often a family member or friend — who is medically incompatible with them. Before kidney exchange, these willing but incompatible donor-recipient pairs had no recourse other than to wait on the deceased donor waiting list.

Roth, working with colleagues Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver, developed the theoretical framework for kidney exchange: a system in which incompatible donor-recipient pairs are matched with other incompatible pairs so that each donor gives a kidney to a compatible recipient from another pair. In a simple two-way exchange, the donor from Pair A gives a kidney to the recipient in Pair B, and vice versa. Roth and his collaborators also developed algorithms for longer chains of exchanges and for incorporating altruistic (non-directed) donors, who can initiate chains of transplants that benefit multiple recipients.

Roth co-founded the New England Program for Kidney Exchange (NEPKE), one of the first kidney exchange clearinghouses in the United States. The program brought together transplant centers across New England to coordinate exchanges among incompatible pairs. The concept has since expanded, with national and regional kidney exchange programs now operating in the United States and other countries. Thousands of kidney transplants have been facilitated through exchange programs that draw on the theoretical and algorithmic framework developed by Roth and his collaborators.

The kidney exchange work exemplifies Roth's approach to economics. He identified a "market failure" — the inability of incompatible donor-recipient pairs to benefit from willing donors — and designed a system to overcome it. Importantly, kidney exchange operates without monetary transactions; it is what Roth calls a "matching market," in which prices do not play the allocative role they do in commodity markets. This insight — that many of the most important allocations in life occur in markets where prices are not used or are not allowed — is central to Roth's broader research program.

Stanford University

In 2012, Roth was in the process of transitioning from Harvard to Stanford University when the Nobel Prize announcement was made. At the time of the award, the Stanford Report described him as a "visiting professor" who was transitioning to a permanent position at the university. He subsequently joined Stanford full-time as the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, a position he continues to hold.

At Stanford, Roth has continued his research on market design, matching theory, and the practical applications of these fields. He has expanded his work into new areas, including the study of how markets can be designed to function more effectively in the age of high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence. In a 2025 discussion, Roth addressed the ways in which high-frequency trading and AI are reshaping markets, exploring the question of how markets can operate beyond simple price competition.

Market Design as a Field

Roth is one of the principal architects of market design as a recognized subfield of economics. Market design, as Roth has defined it, is an offshoot of game theory that applies economic engineering to the practical problems of designing and maintaining markets and other allocation mechanisms. Unlike traditional economic theory, which often focuses on how existing markets reach equilibrium, market design asks how markets can be built or reformed to achieve desired outcomes such as efficiency, stability, and fairness.

Roth has identified several key principles of market design. First, a well-designed market must provide "thickness" — it must attract enough participants to create a robust set of potential matches. Second, a market must manage "congestion" — when many participants are trying to make transactions simultaneously, the market needs mechanisms to prevent gridlock. Third, a market must be "safe" for participants to reveal their true preferences, meaning that strategic manipulation should not be rewarded. Fourth, a market must be perceived as legitimate and fair by its participants, or people will refuse to use it.

These principles have been applied not only to medical residency matching, school choice, and kidney exchange but also to a wide range of other contexts, including entry-level labor markets, course allocation at universities, and the assignment of cadets to branches of the military.

Who Gets What—And Why

In 2015, Roth published his book Who Gets What—And Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design, aimed at a general audience. The book explains the principles of market design through accessible examples and case studies, drawing on Roth's decades of research and practical experience. Edward L. Glaeser of Harvard University reviewed the book in the Journal of Economic Literature in 2017, providing an extensive assessment of Roth's contributions and the book's place in the broader economic literature. The book covers topics including the NRMP, kidney exchange, school choice, and the design of markets for everything from entry-level labor to online dating.

Personal Life

Roth has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since joining Stanford University. He holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, reflecting his long tenure at that institution before his move to California. He has spoken publicly about his Jewish heritage and its role in his identity. Roth maintains an active blog and website where he discusses topics related to market design, economics, and public policy. He is known among colleagues for his collaborative approach to research and for his commitment to translating economic theory into practical policy interventions.

Recognition

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

On October 15, 2012, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Roth and Lloyd Shapley had been awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." The Academy noted that while Shapley had developed the foundational theory of stable allocations in the early 1960s, working with David Gale, Roth had "recognized that Shapley's theoretical results could clarify the functioning of important markets in practice" and had used these insights to redesign existing institutions and create new ones.

The Nobel announcement specifically highlighted Roth's work on the medical residency match, his redesign of the NRMP algorithm, his contributions to school choice mechanisms in New York City and Boston, and his development of kidney exchange programs. The Prize committee described the combined contributions of Shapley and Roth as an "outstanding example of economic engineering," in which theory and practice were brought together to solve real-world problems.

At the time of the announcement, Roth was in the process of moving from Harvard to Stanford. The Stanford Report noted that he was a "visiting professor" transitioning to a permanent appointment.

Other Honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Roth has received numerous other awards and distinctions throughout his career. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has served as president of several professional organizations and has been invited to deliver keynote lectures at major economics conferences worldwide.

Roth's work has been the subject of extensive coverage in both academic and popular media. His kidney exchange work, in particular, has been highlighted as an example of how economic theory can save lives. The Forbes article published on the day of the Nobel announcement described how "a set of dismaying facts" about the shortage of transplantable kidneys "led Roth to design a system for matching incompatible kidney donor pairs and lone altruistic donors with other donors and recipients."

Legacy

Roth's contributions have had a lasting impact on both the academic discipline of economics and on the design of real-world institutions. His work helped establish market design as a recognized subfield of economics, one that has attracted a growing number of researchers and has been applied to an expanding range of problems. The NRMP algorithm he redesigned continues to match medical graduates to residency positions. The school choice mechanisms he helped design continue to be used in major American cities. Kidney exchange programs inspired by his work operate across the United States and internationally, and thousands of patients have received transplants that would not have been possible without these systems.

Roth's approach — combining rigorous theory with careful empirical observation and practical institutional reform — has influenced a generation of economists. His insistence that economics should be not only a theoretical science but also an engineering discipline, capable of building and improving real-world institutions, has expanded the boundaries of what economists consider to be within their professional domain.

As of 2025, Roth continues to be active in research and public engagement, exploring new frontiers in market design including the implications of artificial intelligence and high-frequency trading for the functioning of markets. His career illustrates how theoretical insights, when combined with practical engagement, can reshape institutions and improve outcomes for large numbers of people.