First Principles Ep. 4 with Alvin Roth
Long before crypto made coordination programmable, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth was designing markets where coordination could save lives, matching doctors to hospitals, students to schools, and kidney donors to the patients who need them.
Roth explains why markets are not just natural forces, but engineered systems; why the details of timing, congestion, incentives, and trust can make or break a marketplace; and why some of the most important markets are the ones where simply exchanging money can’t do the work.
Hosted by
@Tim_Roughgarden with
@skominers.
00:00 Intro: Why market design matters
04:18 The economist as engineer
08:09 When theory meets the real world
07:02 Fixing the medical residency match
15:32 Why markets unravel
18:22 Redesigning NYC high school admissions
28:05 The hidden problem of congestion
34:47 How kidney exchange saves lives
45:26 How the internet changed market design
48:25 Airbnb, Uber and smarter marketplaces
51:28 Repugnant transactions and moral economics
53:32 When markets need social support
54:32 The unexpected effects of criminalizing surrogacy
01:04:58 Preference signals and the job market
01:18:53 A broken market: resettling refugees and other migrants