Nobel 2012: economics. Distribution of schoolchildren and bodies

The winners of the Alfred Nobel Prize in Economics for 2012 were American scientists - Harvard and Cambridge professor Alvin Roth and University of California professor Lloyd Shapley.

The prize was awarded for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design, according to the prize’s website . Roth and Shapley worked on the issue of resource distribution among consumers, the explanatory note says .

The scientists worked independently of each other: Shapley worked on the theory, and Roth on the practical side of the issue.

Experts tell PublicPost what America's Nobel laureates are all about and how their work will help the world.

Yaroslav Kabakov, rector of the ANO Training Center FINAM:

“The award was given for practical solutions to the issue of resource distribution.

If we speak in layman's terms, we can recall this film - "A Beautiful Mind". There was just a question about how different subjects of economic relations find each other. In practice, when allocating scarce resources, economic methods often do not work. Scientists have worked on efficient allocation—so that resources are consistently distributed among market participants. Moreover, the area of ​​decision in the case of these laureates is the distribution of schoolchildren among universities and the distribution of donor organs among hospitals.

Given the crisis occurring in the United States, this award is unlikely to help the world economy or the United States. It seems to me that the Nobel committee simply distanced itself and was afraid to take one point of view or another, and the choice turned out to be opportunistic. And they chose an area where economists are closer and more understandable."

Konstantin Sonin, professor at the Russian School of Economics (NES):

“This time the prize was awarded for the classics of economic thought, because Shapley was at the foundation of theoretical economics, he worked with John Nash. And Alvin Roth is a supporter of the engineering approach.

It’s amazing: what was once pure theory has today turned into a practice that saves people’s lives. We are talking about kidney and other organ transplants and at the same time the distribution of applicants to universities.

It's not easy to explain what the point is. It looks something like this: there are many children in the country who want to study at university, while there are many universities in the country who want to enroll a certain number of children. How can such a mechanism be arranged so that they are arranged effectively? So that it doesn’t turn out that weak children end up in a strong university, but a strong child is afraid to go there. Shapley solves precisely this problem. Roth brought this to life and now the method works in many schools and in many American cities. We do not yet have such an algorithm for the Unified State Exam - it is simply ineffective and a great damage to the country.

In short, this theory saves lives and makes people happier."

Vladimir Busygin, Associate Professor, Department of Microeconomic Analysis, State University - Higher School of Economics:

"This prize was awarded for a serious contribution to the substantiation of those models of economic theory that were used without sufficient justification. This is Shapley. In addition, he made a great contribution to the theory of cooperative games. By the way, there was an interesting story. Shapley proved a certain theorem, and a little This theorem was previously proven by Olga Bondareva, a researcher from St. Petersburg, who wrote it in Russian in 1952. And no one read it in 1965. Everyone thought that it was his merit. first, but now this result is called the Shapley-Bondareva Theorem.

In addition, Shapley made a great contribution to the theory of equilibrium, the premises were used a priori, and he justified it very seriously.

Roth is more associated with experimental economics. He found out whether theories corresponded to the behavior of real people. If they do, then under what circumstances, and if they don’t, what would be reasonable to change. That is, practically this is a contribution to economic theory."

It is interesting that Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley were not included in the list of the main contenders for the Nobel Prize in the authoritative forecast of Thompson Reuters . However, the Economics Prize is most often awarded to American scientists. Only once, in 1999, the Canadian Robert Mundell became a laureate.