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Portrait of Alvin E. Roth
Photo: Bengt Nyman, Flickr: IMG_4793 · CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences · 2012

Alvin E. Roth

He turned matching theory into working systems that place doctors in residencies, students in schools and kidneys in patients.

The Nobel citation: “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”
Born
December 18, 1951, New York, NY, USA
Shared with
Lloyd S. Shapley
Affiliation at the time
Harvard University, USA; Harvard Business School, USA

Economics prize

2012

Shared with 1 other laureate.

Age that year

61years

Born in 1951.

Headline credited impact

45–114lives saved

US deaths averted by kidney-exchange transplants, 2000-2025. How it was built

Sources cited

26

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • He entered Columbia University's engineering school in 1968, at 16, without a high school diploma, after taking Saturday science classes there.
  • Around 1980 the editor George Stigler turned down his paper on the doctors' match, saying that apart from its title it was not about economics.
  • The algorithm he built with Elliott Peranson has run the US residency Match since 1998; in 2025 that Match drew a record 52,498 registered applicants.
  • In the first year of New York City's new school match, students left for officials to place by hand fell from about 26,000 to about 7,100.
  • After his Nobel, the Japan Karate Association made him an honorary 7th-degree black belt; he had trained in Shotokan karate as a Columbia student.

The breakthrough

Turning matching theory into working marketplaces for doctors, students and kidneys

Some markets cannot run on prices alone. A hospital cannot simply hire the doctor it likes best, because the doctor must choose the hospital too. A family cannot buy a seat at a popular public school, and selling a kidney is illegal almost everywhere. In 1962 David Gale and Lloyd Shapley described a simple procedure, called deferred acceptance, that always produces a stable match: one where no doctor and hospital would both rather be with each other than with the partners they got. In 1984 Roth showed that the US clearinghouse for new doctors, set up in the early 1950s, was essentially running this procedure, and he argued that stability was why it had lasted. Studying British medical markets and running laboratory experiments, he found that stable clearinghouses survived while unstable ones tended to break down. He also proved that when applicants do the proposing, ranking your true preferences is always your safest strategy. Then he became a designer. Think of an engineer who takes a bridge design from a textbook and adapts it to real ground, wind and traffic. With colleagues he rebuilt the doctors' match so married couples could apply together, built school-choice systems for New York and Boston, and, with Tayfun Sönmez and Utku Ünver, designed ways for patients with willing but incompatible donors to swap kidneys with other pairs.[1],[2],[3],[4]

“The idea of tikkun olam (repairing the world) is something that fits well with market design because they're both there to repair the world.”
Alvin E. Roth, Asked by JNS.org in 2012 whether his Jewish upbringing affected his economic research.[6]

What it meant for humanity

Roth's designs work in the background of decisions that shape lives: where a young doctor trains, which high school a teenager attends, whether a patient on dialysis gets a transplant. Since March 1998 the Roth-Peranson algorithm has run the US Main Residency Match. In 2025 that Match drew a record 52,498 registered applicants for 43,237 positions. Because applicants do the proposing, doctors can rank programs honestly, and couples can apply together. In New York City, the old high school system mailed offers back and forth in rounds, and more students ended up placed by officials than through the first round of offers. After the 2003 redesign, the number placed by hand fell from 26,098 to 7,143 in the first year, and to 5.4% of students in the second. A later study found that the students most likely to have been placed by hand under the old system gained the most, including in later achievement. Boston adopted a similar system in 2005, and other cities followed. The largest human stakes are in kidney transplants. A patient whose willing donor is a poor match can now swap donors with another pair, or join a chain started by a donor who gives to a stranger. Roth and colleagues designed the matching methods and helped launch the New England Program for Kidney Exchange in 2004, and his work with the surgeon Michael Rees helped make long, non-simultaneous chains standard in the United States. In 2024, 23.4% of US living-donor kidney transplants came through donor exchanges. We estimate that exchanges enabled roughly 13,000 to 16,000 US transplants from 2000 to 2025.

  • In the 2025 Main Residency Match, which still runs on the applicant-proposing algorithm Roth designed with Elliott Peranson, 37,667 of 47,208 active applicants matched to first-year positions.[1],[14],[15],[16]
  • In the first year of New York City's redesigned high school match, students placed in the administrative round fell from 26,098 (37%) to 7,143 (11%); in the second year the share was 5.4%.[13]
  • Donor exchanges accounted for 23.4% of US living-donor kidney transplants in 2024. Paired donations rose from about 600 a year in 2013 to about 1,500.[10]
  • The New England exchange, limited to simultaneous two- and three-way swaps, achieved 83 transplants in seven years. After the first non-simultaneous chain was reported in 2009, all major US exchanges adopted such chains.[4],[9]
  • The Roth-Peranson algorithm was later adopted by clearinghouses for more senior medical positions and other health-care labor markets, including the market for clinical psychologists.[1]

Impact in numbers

Roth's main legacy is a way of working: treat markets as things that can be engineered, test designs with theory, computation and laboratory experiments, then repair them in the field. That approach, which he and Paul Milgrom first taught as a course in 2000, helped turn market design into a recognized part of economics. Its benefits are spread across millions of individual decisions, and most resist honest counting. When the residency Match switched algorithms, relatively few actual assignments changed, but the redesign answered a crisis of confidence and let couples apply together. School-choice systems made it safe for families to list their true preferences. We quantify only two outcomes with published inputs: US kidney-exchange transplants and New York students spared placement by hand. We do not count other cities' school systems, kidney exchanges abroad, the dialysis costs that transplants save, or the other clearinghouses that use his algorithm.

HealthEducationEconomy

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

  • Medium confidenceDirectModeledHealth

    US patients who received a kidney transplant through kidney exchange (paired donation), 2000-2025

    1,300–1,600

    people benefited, credited share

    That is 10% of 13,000–16,000 people benefited since 2000.

    How this number was built

    US only (UK, Canada, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, India, Korea excluded). SRTR's chart of paired living donors reads ~608, 574, 598, 655, 699, 946, 1,139, 848, 1,125, 1,132, 1,284, 1,493 for 2013-24 = ~11,100 (text checks: 19.1% of 5,798 in 2022; 20.6% of 6,226 in 2023; 23.4% of 6,419 in 2024); +/-3% reading error gives 10,800-11,400. 2025: NKR's 1,815 = 28% implies ~6,500 living-donor transplants x 21-24% = 1,350-1,600. 2000-12 (first US swap 2000; NEPKE 83 in 7 years): assumed 1,000-3,000. Total ~13,000-16,000. Share 0.1: Rapaport proposed exchange in 1986 and Korea began in 1991; Sönmez, Ünver and Ashlagi co-designed; Delmonico, Rees, Hil, UNOS and others built the programs; many swaps happen inside single hospitals. Overlaps Elion's organ-transplantation outcome for under 1% of it.[1],[9],[10],[11],[12],[21],[22]

    Sources: Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA); Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA); Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA); National Kidney Registry; Stanford University (author copy); Wikipedia; NobelPrize.org (from Les Prix Nobel 2012)

  • Low confidenceDirectModeledEducation

    New York City students matched to a high school through the main rounds instead of being placed by officials, 2004-2025

    54,000–82,500

    people benefited, credited share

    That is 15% of 360,000–550,000 people benefited since 2004.

    How this number was built

    Abdulkadiroglu, Agarwal and Pathak: under the old system 26,098 of 70,358 applicants (37.1%) were placed in the administrative round; in the first year of the coordinated deferred-acceptance match, 7,143 of 66,921 (10.7%), and 5.4% in year two. Gain: 26-32 points. Low: 70,000 applicants x 26% = ~18,000 a year x 20 cohorts = 360,000. High: ~78,000 applicants (Roth cites almost 90,000 entering high school) x 32% = ~25,000 x 22 cohorts (entry 2004-2025) = 550,000. Assumes the gain persisted; we found no later-year data. Share 0.15: Roth designed the match with Abdulkadiroglu and Pathak; NYC officials such as Jeremy Lack and Neil Dorosin started and ran the reform; the core algorithm is Gale and Shapley's; the study credits most of the gain to coordinating offers.[1],[4],[13]

    Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research; NobelPrize.org; NobelPrize.org (from Les Prix Nobel 2012)

  • Low confidenceDirectModeledHealth

    US deaths averted by kidney-exchange transplants, 2000-2025

    45–114

    lives saved, credited share

    That is 10% of 450–1,140 lives saved since 2000.

    How this number was built

    Counterfactual: the patient waits on dialysis for a deceased-donor kidney. SRTR (s10): 28% of 2019-21 listings still waiting at 3 years; waitlist deaths 4.7 per 100 patient-years in 2024, 6.2 in 2021. Wolfe (NEJM 1999, s26): 6.3 on the list vs 3.8 after transplant; long-term risk 48-82% lower. Excess deaths avoided: low 4.7 x 48% = 2.3, high 6.3 x 56% = 3.5 per 100 patient-years. Time spared on the list: low 2 years, high 2.4 (the mean wait if 28% still wait at 3 years). Applied by year to the existing claim's 13,000-16,000 US recipients, capped at end-2025: 23,500-34,100 patient-years x 0.023-0.035 = 530-1,200; less 5-15% who could have had a desensitized transplant from their own donor: ~450-1,140. Later benefit after a counterfactual deceased-donor transplant is ignored. Share 0.1, as on his transplant-count claim.[9],[10],[12],[26]

    Sources: Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA); New England Journal of Medicine (PubMed record); Stanford University (author copy); Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA)

The double edge

Roth's work is not linked to any mass harm, but it has limits and critics. Kidney exchange depends on healthy people giving up a kidney. Their added risk is small in absolute terms, but a large US study found living donors' lifetime risk of kidney failure was higher than that of similar healthy people who did not donate. Global Kidney Exchange, which Roth and the surgeon Michael Rees proposed so that savings from American transplants could pay for pairs from poorer countries, divided the transplant world. Frank Delmonico, whom Roth had helped launch the New England exchange, co-wrote a 2017 letter opposing it, and critics called it exploitation of the poor, while three philosophers defended it in the Lancet. Roth has also argued that economists should study, not dismiss, the widespread distaste for paying organ donors, a debate many find uncomfortable. The residency Match he redesigned was sued in 2002 by residents who claimed it helped hold down their pay; Congress granted it antitrust immunity in 2004 and the case was dismissed. Better matching also has trade-offs: New York's new system placed students farther from home on average, and a match can only share out the seats that exist.

  • Moderate

    Global Kidney Exchange split the transplant community

    Global Kidney Exchange, proposed by Roth and Michael Rees, uses US dialysis savings to fund transplants for pairs from poorer countries; the first was in 2015. In 2017 Frank Delmonico and Nancy Ascher wrote to oppose it, and critics called it exploitation of poor donors. Three philosophers defended it in the Lancet in 2019; a 2020 European ethics review found some concerns justified and urged safeguards.[8],[17],[19],[24],[25]

  • Minor

    Living donors accept a small but real risk

    Every exchange transplant needs a healthy donor to have surgery. In a JAMA study of 96,217 US living kidney donors, the estimated lifetime risk of kidney failure was 90 per 10,000 donors, against 14 per 10,000 for matched healthy people who did not donate (and 326 for the general population). The authors judged the absolute increase small.[18]

  • Minor

    The Match he redesigned faced an antitrust suit

    In 2002 lawyers for three residents filed a class action claiming the National Resident Matching Program colluded with medical organizations and hospitals to depress resident wages. After lobbying by medical and hospital groups, Congress granted the Match specific antitrust immunity in 2004, and a federal court dismissed the case.[16]

  • Minor

    School matching involves trade-offs

    Under New York's new system, students were assigned to schools 4.05 miles from home on average, against 3.36 miles before, and students still left to the administrative round had the highest rates of leaving the city's public schools. A study of the reform found that coordinating offers mattered far more than further changes to the algorithm.[13]

Against the odds

No source records Roth facing antisemitism, and his path shows how far American doors had opened by the time he was born in Queens in 1951. A generation earlier, the same institutions were far less welcoming. In the 1920s and 1930s many elite universities limited Jewish admissions, and Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, openly defended such quotas. Faculty jobs were harder still: in the mid-1920s probably fewer than 100 Jews taught on American liberal arts and science faculties, and around 1940 the chairman of Harvard's economics department was known to dislike Jews. Roth entered Columbia's engineering school in 1968, at 16, and in 1998 joined Harvard's economics department and business school. His real obstacles were ordinary academic ones. He failed one of his PhD qualifying exams at Stanford and credits his adviser, Robert Wilson, with rescuing his career. Around 1980 George Stigler, editor of the Journal of Political Economy, declined his matching paper, saying that apart from its title it was not about economics, because to him a clearinghouse that did not adjust prices was not a market. Roth published it elsewhere and helped build the field the Nobel committee honored three decades later.

  • —

    Quota

    Context rather than a barrier he met: in the 1920s and 1930s many elite universities capped Jewish admissions, and Columbia's president Nicholas Murray Butler openly defended such quotas. Roth entered Columbia's engineering school in 1968.[1],[20]

  • —

    Discrimination

    Context: before the Second World War few Jews held American faculty posts, and around 1940 the chairman of Harvard's economics department was known to dislike Jews. Roth joined Harvard's economics department and business school in 1998.[1],[20]

  • —

    Other

    At Stanford he failed one of his PhD qualifying exams; he credits his adviser Robert Wilson with rescuing what looked set to be a very short academic career.[1]

  • 1980

    Other

    Around 1980 George Stigler, editor of the Journal of Political Economy, declined his paper on matching, saying that apart from its title it was not about economics. It appeared in Mathematics of Operations Research in 1982.[1]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishCulturally Jewish

Roth was born in Queens to Ernest and Lillian Roth, public high school teachers. Wikipedia describes both parents as Jewish, though the source it cites confirms only that Roth himself is Jewish. Asked by JNS in 2012 about his Jewish upbringing, he said his family attended a Conservative synagogue, and he linked market design to tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world. He likes to cite a Talmudic story in which God, after creating the world, keeps busy making matches. He learned game theory from Michael Maschler of the Hebrew University and has been a visiting professor at the Technion and the Hebrew University.[1],[6],[7],[8],[23]

Key dates

  1. December 18, 1951

    Born in the New York City borough of Queens to Ernest and Lillian Roth, both public high school teachers.[1],[5]

  2. 1968

    Enters Columbia's engineering school at 16 without a high school diploma, after Saturday classes in Columbia's Science Honors Program.[1]

  3. 1971

    Graduates from Columbia in operations research and starts a PhD at Stanford, where a class with Michael Maschler draws him to game theory.[1],[8]

  4. 1974

    Earns his Stanford PhD and joins the University of Illinois, where he begins running economics experiments with psychologist Keith Murnighan.[1],[2]

  5. 1982

    Proves that an applicant-proposing match makes honest ranking safe for applicants, and moves to the University of Pittsburgh.[1]

  6. 1984

    Shows that the US clearinghouse for new doctors runs an algorithm essentially equivalent to Gale and Shapley's, and links its success to stability.[1],[3]

  7. 1995

    The National Resident Matching Program asks him to redesign its algorithm; the design he builds with Elliott Peranson is adopted in 1997.[1],[3],[14],[16]

  8. March 1998

    The Roth-Peranson algorithm runs its first Match. The same year Roth moves to Harvard.[1],[16]

  9. 2003

    Helps redesign New York City's high school admissions as a single-offer, deferred-acceptance clearinghouse.[1],[13]

  10. 2004

    Publishes a kidney exchange design with Tayfun Sönmez and Utku Ünver and helps launch the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.[1],[9]

  11. 2009

    Co-authors the report on the first non-simultaneous kidney chain, led by surgeon Michael Rees; such chains became standard in US kidney exchange.[4],[9]

  12. October 15, 2012

    Named, with Lloyd Shapley, winner of the 2012 Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The same year he moves to Stanford.[1],[2],[5],[7]

  13. 2015

    Publishes Who Gets What and Why, a book for general readers on market design.[8]

  14. 2017

    Serves as president of the American Economic Association.[8]

Sources

  1. 1.Alvin E. Roth - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Les Prix Nobel 2012), 2013
  2. 2.Press release: The Prize in Economic Sciences 2012 · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2012
  3. 3.Popular information: Stable matching: Theory, evidence, and practical design · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2012
  4. 4.The Theory and Practice of Market Design (Nobel Prize lecture, Alvin E. Roth) · NobelPrize.org, 2012
  5. 5.Alvin E. Roth - Facts · NobelPrize.org
  6. 6.Making a Shidduch: Nobel Prize-Winning Jewish Economist Alvin Roth Discusses Matching (Alina Dain Sharon, JNS.org) · The Algemeiner, 2012
  7. 7.Jewish-American Economist Is Among Two Americans To Win Nobel Prize · Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2012
  8. 8.Alvin E. Roth · Wikipedia
  9. 9.Kidney Exchange: An Operations Perspective (Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth), Management Science 67(9) · Stanford University (author copy), 2021
  10. 10.OPTN/SRTR 2024 Annual Data Report: Kidney · Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA)
  11. 11.OPTN/SRTR 2023 Annual Data Report: Kidney · Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA), 2025
  12. 12.OPTN/SRTR 2022 Annual Data Report: Kidney · Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (HRSA)
  13. 13.The Welfare Effects of Coordinated Assignment: Evidence from the NYC HS Match (Abdulkadiroglu, Agarwal and Pathak), NBER Working Paper 21046 · National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015
  14. 14.The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design (Roth and Peranson), American Economic Review 89(4) · American Economic Association, 1999
  15. 15.NRMP Releases 2025 Main Residency Match Results and Data Report · National Resident Matching Program, 2025
  16. 16.National Resident Matching Program · Wikipedia
  17. 17.Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets (Alvin E. Roth), Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(3) · American Economic Association, 2007
  18. 18.Risk of end-stage renal disease following live kidney donation (Muzaale et al.), JAMA 311(6) · PubMed, 2014
  19. 19.Opposition to irresponsible global kidney exchange (Delmonico and Ascher), American Journal of Transplantation 17(10) · American Journal of Transplantation (Wiley), 2017
  20. 20.MIT's Openness to Jewish Economists (E. Roy Weintraub), CHOPE Working Paper 2013-05 · Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, 2013
  21. 21.Quarterly Report Q4 2025 · National Kidney Registry, 2026
  22. 22.Kidney paired donation · Wikipedia
  23. 23.Four Questions with Alvin Roth, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist (Molly Parr) · JewishBoston, 2015
  24. 24.The ethics of the Global Kidney Exchange programme (Minerva, Savulescu and Singer), The Lancet 394(10210) · PubMed, 2019
  25. 25.Global Kidney Exchange: opportunity or exploitation? An ELPAT/ESOT appraisal (Ambagtsheer et al.), Transplant International 33(9) · PubMed, 2020
  26. 26.Comparison of mortality in all patients on dialysis, patients on dialysis awaiting transplantation, and recipients of a first cadaveric transplant (Wolfe et al.), NEJM 341(23):1725-30 · New England Journal of Medicine (PubMed record), 1999

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 6 corrections made. How we check

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