Who Gets What-And Why

A Nobel laureate reveals the often surprising rules that govern a vast array of activitiesboth mundane and life-changingin which money may play little or no role.If youve 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, youve 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 isnt the only factor determining who gets what.Alvin E. Roth is one of the worlds 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 WhatAnd Why, Roth reveals the matching markets hidden around us and shows how to recognize a good match and make smarter, more confident decisions.