Alvin E. Roth
There are 13 articles for this faculty member.
It's Alive!: Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research
| Published: | December 5, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.
Individual Rationality and Participation in Large Scale, Multi-Hospital Kidney Exchanges
| Authors: | Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | March 24, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
As kidney exchange moves from local networks to a national level, a new set of problems arises. One central issue, for example, is how individual hospitals can be motivated to participate. This paper by Itai Ashlagi (Sloan School of Management, MIT) and Alvin E. Roth (Harvard Business School) provides a theoretical framework to study and overcome the kinds of problems that can be anticipated.
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
| Author: | Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | March 17, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Certain markets face the problem of "unraveling," in which competition for good talent leads a firm to make job offers earlier and earlier, without sufficient knowledge about any given applicant—and in which applicants are forced to decide whether to accept a job before they really know much about working for that firm. Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth discusses how this issue affects the labor markets for new lawyers and gastroenterology fellows, as well as the market for postseason college football bowls.
Published in 2010
How to Fix a Broken Marketplace
| Published: | November 8, 2010 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 5 Comments posted |
A pioneer in the field of market design, Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth has helped to repair flawed market systems in fields ranging from kidney donation to high-school student placement.
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
| Authors: | Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver |
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| Published: | May 26, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In many professional labor markets, most entry-level hires begin work at around the same time: for example, soon after graduating from college or graduate or professional school. Despite a common start time, offers can be made and contracts can be signed at any time prior to the start of employment, sometimes well over a year before employment will begin. "Unraveling" happens in markets in which competition for the elite firms and workers is fierce, but the quality of workers may not be reliably revealed until after a good deal of hiring has already been completed. Thus unraveling is sometimes a cause of market failure, particularly when contracts come to be determined before critical information is available. In this paper Muriel Niederle of Stanford, Alvin E. Roth of HBS, and M. Utku Ünver of Boston College consider conditions related to supply and demand that tend to facilitate or mitigate unraveling.
The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective
| Authors: | Peter A. Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried |
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| Published: | May 19, 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How should the most appropriate employers and job candidates find each other? Newly minted economists typically send applications to an average of 80 potential employers, and as a result, many employers receive hundreds of applications. It is extremely time-consuming to sort through all the applications, and as the process unfolds, there is a risk of coordination failure, in which employers and candidates who would be well-suited do not manage to create a match. In this paper, HBS professors Peter A. Coles and Alvin E. Roth and colleagues provide an overview of the market for new PhD economists and describe new mechanisms to improve the matching process. They conclude by discussing the emergence of platforms for transmitting job market information, and other design issues that may arise in the market for new economists.
Published in 2008
How Economics May Lead to Better Football Games
| Q&A with: | Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | September 29, 2008 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
When economists watch football games they see more than flying pigskin and stadiums overflowing with fans. In the case of U.S. college football, Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth along with Guillaume R. Fréchette and M. Utku Ünver studied the timing of team selection for championship bowls. What they found: Good teams are much better matched up than they used to be, and there are implications beyond sports. Q&A with Al Roth.
Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-Season College Football Bowls
| Authors: | Guillaume R. Fréchette, Alvin E. Roth, and M. Utku Ünver |
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| Published: | August 29, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Many market institutions have evolved to coordinate the timing of transactions and to prevent them from taking place too early or at uncoordinated times. In the case of post-season college football games, called "bowls," during the early 1990s the determination of which teams would play in which bowls was often made with several games still remaining to be played in the regular season. Practically speaking, this meant that the teams with the best end-of-season records might not play one another, because at the time the matchings were determined it wasn't yet known which teams these would be. Over the last decade, however, this market has undergone a number of reorganizations that have delayed this matching decision until the end of the regular season. For this working paper, the authors used Nielsen rating data on television viewership and the AP sportswriters' poll of team rankings to show that, by matching later, the chance of matching the best teams has increased, and the result is an increase in television viewership.
Published in 2007
Repugnant Markets and How They Get That Way
| Q&A with: | Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | July 30, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Repugnance is different in different places and at different times, says Harvard economist Alvin E. Roth in this Q&A. As someone who designs and builds new markets, he marvels at how society decides whether a transaction is "good" or "bad"—even when such transactions are very much alike.
Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets
| Author: | Alvin Roth |
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| Published: | May 24, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
While some kinds of transactions are repugnant at certain times and places, they are considered perfectly acceptable in other situations. This essay examines a wide range of examples, including the buying and selling of kidneys for transplantation. Repugnance has important consequences for the transactions and markets we see.
Strategy-Proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match
| Authors: | Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | May 22, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
One of the goals of school matching systems is to limit the extent to which students and parents feel it necessary to "game the system" to be accepted at a favored school. Several years ago, the authors of this paper assisted the New York City Department of Education in redesigning the way it matched over 90,000 students entering public high schools each year. The situation in New York City is a hybrid: Some schools actively rank potential students, others have no preferences, and still others fall in between. This paper concentrates on the welfare considerations and incentives that arise in school choice due to the fact that many students are regarded by schools as equivalent. The research develops and expands on economic theory demanded by the design of school choice mechanisms.
Published in 2006
When Rights of First Refusal Are a Bad Deal
| Q&A with: | Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | February 27, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Contracts that include a right of first refusal usually benefit the holder of that right. But not always. New research by professor Alvin E. Roth and colleague Brit Grosskopf explains when it's wise to say no.
Published in 2005
Amazon, eBay and the Bidding Wars
| Q&A with: | Alvin E. Roth |
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| Published: | February 28, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
"Sniping" is a popular way of winning a bid in the world of online auctions. But how far can it change the playing field? HBS professor Alvin Roth takes a look at how bidding rules change the way the game is played.
