Who Gets What -- And Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

If you want to understand markets and matching, this is your foundational resource. Brilliantly written!!!

No doubt worthy content, but paper quality should be high as price

Who gets what and why gives the reader an idea about how careful structuring of a market place can lead to great improvements in efficiency. The field that the author received the nobel prize in has been growing in importance over the last few decades and there is no doubt that design of market places is something policy makers from the macroeconomic down to the microeconomic sphere should care about. In this book, Alvin Roth goes through examples throughout his career where improving market design has led to better systems for people to live in. It is clear and interesting. The book is split into 4 parts, the first is titled Markets are everywhere. The author starts by describing markets and goes through commodity ideas and how standardizing of products leads to markets that are thick. He discusses how commodity exchanges were set up in the US in Chicago for example and how wheat trades enormous volumes in a standardized fashion. He discusses the coffee market as well which is a nice little insight. The author then moves on to discussing the market for kidneys; an exchange he helped to create. Here is where the reader starts to really get a feel for the work the author has done. The complexity in coordinating kidney transfers is real and the construction of chains of donors who could trade kidneys amongst them in a mutually dependent way turned out to be able to save many lives. The author discusses how the kidney exchanges evolved and how improving the mechanisms for exchange was in everyone's interest. The second section is titled Thwarted Desires in which he describes some market failures. The author starts by discussing how in situations in which there is a first mover advantage, market places can fail as participants try to beat each other in order even though by taking such an action they reduce the amount of information needed to make a decision. Such coordination failures lead to suboptimal selections by both parties. The author discusses some of the subject matter of Flash Boys and by that I mean high frequency finance. He describes why the spending of billions on infrastructure for speed of trading which has no real economic benefits are where markets can also fail. Speed of markets should not in and of itself be the desire for market design. The author finally touches upon making markets safe to transact in such that the rules of the market place are adhered to so that people can trust the mechanism of trade. The author moves into the real market designs that are being used by medical and school systems in part 3. He first discusses how the placement of medical schools was flawed and people were being placed far too early but such an outcome was the inevitable consequence of the issues of part 2 where first mover advantage ruined coordination. The author discusses surgeons as well as urologists and how the culture of the medical field can impact the required solutions to the failures of a market place. The author then discusses the school systems in NY and Boston where he had a direct impact on improving. He discusses the preference list that were being asked of students each year and how the back and forth between students being selected and the city system led to congestion that was inefficient for everyone. The author also discussed Boston which had different problems. But in this section the reader gets a sense of how clever design of markets can lead to better outcomes for everyone. The author then gets into some ethical issues like repugnant markets and brings up horsemeat in California as banned due to its repugnancy by the population in California. The boundaries of what should be eligible for trade are contextual to time and place and things like organs for sale and surrogacy can lead to questions about what broad set of values does the population have and given that what should be allowed to be traded and under what conditions. Once we know what goods and services we want to be transactable having the best market designs to facilitate will lead to better outcomes for those involved. The author convinces the leader through the book that market design can be instrumental in efficiency gains. Who gets what and why is very readable and interesting. Rarely do people talk about market design so its a nice change of pace for a popular economics book. I think anyone who reads this will have a better idea about some of what economists look at as well as how market design can make a world of difference to the outcomes of the marketplace and free market can mean many different things as markets are not all alike.

We sometimes have some prejudice with the word market, and sometimes people can't assess its real importance. Much of such bad preconceptions turns to be related to badly designed markets, as this book clearly explains. They are an essential part of everyone's life, and a cornerstone of civilization. The author is very experienced in market designs, and he discusses the many distortions and problems bad designs can produce. It becomes clear how we have no chance of living without markets, how efficient and helpful they can be when well designed, and how complicated it is to desgin good markets sometimes.

Je recommande

Good story and convincing arguments.

Éste libro es un básico, me pareció excelente lo que plática el autor y como puede cambiar la percepción sobre mercados, pues el planteamiento es que los mercados se diseñan. Cómo lograr balance para que tú mercado o market place Sean exitosos no suele ser tan evidente, pero con un poco de atención al detalle logras entender por qué algunos son más exitosos que otros.