American economists awarded Nobel Prize

Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapely, both American academics, have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. They were granted these awards based on their work in “theory of stable allocations and practice of market design,” according the the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is responsible for selecting Prize recipients. In simpler terms, they research the best possible way allocate resources in all aspects of society such as medicine and education. The selection committee called their work a form of “economic engineering,” a practice designing markets where traditional economic principals based on prices are not as efficient or not even applicable. The two scholars work on opposite ends of the country, Roth being a professor at Harvard and Shapely teaching at the University of California Los Angeles, but the Swedish Academy has said that they compliment each other’s research very well, stating that “Shapely’s basic theory and Roth’s empirical investigations, experiments and practical design has generated a flourishing field of research and improved the performance of many markets.” In a press conference Roth called market design a “newish area” in the field of economics and said it was “a good thing” that the award would bring more attention and interest to it.