Alvin Roth, Distinguished fellow 2018

Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George Gund Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard. He shared the 2012 Nobel memorial prize in Economics. His research interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and market design. He directed the redesign of the National Resident Matching Program, through which approximately twenty-five thousand doctors a year find their first employment as residents at American hospitals. He has also helped in the reorganization of the market for more senior physicians, as they pursue subspecialty training, and in other labor markets. He helped design the high school matching system used in New York City to match approximately eighty thousand students to high schools each year. He also helped redesign the matching system used in Boston Public Schools, for students of all ages. More recently, he has helped design school choice systems in several other large American cities. He is one of the organizers and designers of kidney exchange in the United States, which helps incompatible patient-donor pairs find life-saving compatible kidneys for transplantation.