Alvin E. Roth - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School
Alvin E. Roth

Alvin E. Roth

George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration, Emeritus

George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration, Emeritus

+1 (617) 495-5447
 
Alvin E. Roth
Contact Information
(617) 495-5447
Publications Research Summary Awards & Honors

Books
Books

Journal Articles
Journal Articles

Book Chapters
Book Chapters

  • Roth, Alvin E. "In 100 Years." Chap. 7 in In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future, edited by Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 109–119. MIT Press, 2013. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Is Experimental Economics Living Up to Its Promise?" Chap. 1 in Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology, edited by Guillaume R. Frechette and Andrew Schotter, 13–42. Oxford University Press, 2015. View Details
  • Hanto, Ruthanne L., Alvin E. Roth, M. Utku Ünver, and Francis L. Delmonico. "New Sources in Living Kidney Donation." Chap. 8 in Kidney Transplantation: A Guide to the Care of Transplant Recipients, edited by D. McKay and S. Steinberg, pp. 103–17. Springer Science + Business Media, 2010. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Deferred Acceptance Algorithms: History, Theory, Practice." In Better Living through Economics, edited by John J. Siegfried, 206–222. Harvard University Press, 2010. View Details
  • Niederle, Muriel, and Alvin E. Roth. "The Effects of a Central Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices." In Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, edited by David H. Autor, 273–306. University of Chicago Press, 2009. View Details
  • Niederle, Muriel, Alvin E. Roth, and Tayfun Sonmez. "Matching and Market Design." In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. 2nd ed. Edited by Steven Derlauf and Larry Blume. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. View Details
  • Murnighan, J. Keith, and Alvin E. Roth. "Ancient History of Experimental Economics and Social Psychology: Reminiscences and Analysis of a Fruitful Collaboration." In Social Psychology and Economics, edited by David de Cremer, J. Keith Murnighan, and Marcel Zeelenberg, 321–333. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Matching and Allocation in Medicine and Health Care." In Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership, edited by P. Reid, W. Compton, J. Grossman, and G. Fanjiang, 237–239. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Game Theory as a Tool for Market Design." In Game Practice: Contributions from Applied Game Theory, edited by Fioravante Patrone, Ignacio Garcia-Jurado, and Stef Tijs, 7–18. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. View Details
  • Erev, Ido, and A. E. Roth. "On the Role of Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games: The Cognitive Game Theory Approach." In Games and Human Behavior: Essays in Honor of Amnon Rapoport, edited by D. Budescu, I. Erev, and R. Zwick, 53–77. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Adaptive Behavior and Strategic Rationality: Evidence from the Laboratory and the Field." In The Rational Foundations of Economic Behavior: Proceedings of the IEA Conference, edited by K. Arrow, E. Colombatto, M. Perlman, and C. Schmidt, 255–273. Macmillan Publishers, 1996. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Introduction to Experimental Economics." In Handbook of Experimental Economics, edited by John Kagel and Alvin E. Roth, 3–109. Princeton University Press, 1995. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Bargaining Experiments." In Handbook of Experimental Economics, edited by John Kagel and Alvin E. Roth, 253–348. Princeton University Press, 1995. View Details
  • Roth, A. E., and M. Sotomayor. "Two Sided Matching." In Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edited by Robert Aumann and Sergiu Hart, 485–541. Elsevier/North-Holland, 1992. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "An Economic Approach to the Study of Bargaining." In Handbook of Negotiation Research. Vol. 3, edited by M. H. Bazerman, R. J. Lewicki, and B. H. Sheppard, 35–67. Research on Negotiation in Organizations. JAI Press, 1991. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Two-Sided Matching Markets: An Overview of Some Theory and Empirical Evidence." In Game Theory and Applications, edited by T. Ichiishi, A. Neyman, and Y. Tauman, 232–251. San Diego: Academic Press, 1990. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "The Expected Utility of Playing a Game." In The Shapley Value: Essays in Honor of Lloyd S. Shapley, edited by A. E. Roth, 51–70. Cambridge University Press, 1988. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Bargaining Phenomena and Bargaining Theory." In Laboratory Experiments in Economics: Six Points of View, edited by A. E. Roth, 14–41. Cambridge University Press, 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Laboratory Experimentation in Economics." In Advances in Economic Theory, Fifth World Congress, edited by Truman Bewley, 269–299. Cambridge University Press, 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Laboratory Experimentation in Economics, and Its Relation to Economic Theory." In Scientific Inquiry in Philosophical Perspective, edited by Nicholas Rescher, 147–167. Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Toward a Focal-Point Theory of Bargaining." In Game-Theoretic Models of Bargaining, edited by A. E. Roth, 259–268. Cambridge University Press, 1985. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Stable Coalition Formation: Aspects of a Dynamic Theory." In Coalitions and Collective Action, edited by M. Holler, 228–234. Wuerzberg: Physica-Verlag, 1984. View Details
  • Roth, A. E., and J. K. Murnighan. "Information and Aspirations in Two Person Bargaining." In Aspiration Levels in Bargaining and Economic Decision Making: Proceedings, Winzenhohl, FRG, edited by R. Tietz. Springer-Verlag, 1983. View Details
  • Kihlstrom, R., A. E. Roth, and D. Schmeidler. "Risk Aversion and Solutions to Nash's Bargaining Problem." In Game Theory and Mathematical Economics, edited by O. Moeschlin and D. Pallaschke, 65–71. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1981. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "The Nash Solution as a Model of Rational Bargaining." In Extremal Methods and Systems Analysis, edited by A. V. Fiacco and K.O. Kortanek, 306–311. Springer-Verlag, 1980. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Power and Position: The Utility of Playing a Simple Game." In Game Theory and Political Science, edited by P. C. Ordeshook. New York: New York University Press, 1978. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "A Fixed Point Approach to Stability in Cooperative Games." In Fixed Points: Algorithms and Applications, edited by S. Karamardian, 165–180. Academic Press, 1977. View Details

Working Papers
Working Papers

Other Publications and Materials
Other Publications and Materials

  • Roth, A. E., and Ido Erev. "Modeling Repeated Play of the Prisoners' Dilemma with Reinforcement Learning over an Enriched Strategy Set." 2006. (Presented at the Dahlem Workshop on Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox.) View Details
All Publications

Al Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School. His research, teaching, and consulting interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and market design. The best known of the markets he has designed (or, in this case, redesigned) is the National Resident Matching Program, through which approximately twenty thousand doctors a year find their first employment as residents at American hospitals. He has recently been involved in the reorganization of the market for Gastroenterology fellows, which started using a clearinghouse in 2006 for positions beginning in 2007. He helped design the high school matching system used in New York City to match approximately ninety thousand students to high schools each year, starting with students entering high school in the Fall of 2004. He helped redesign the matching system used in Boston Public Schools, adopted for students starting school in September 2006. He is one of the founders and designers of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, for incompatible patient-donor pairs. He is the chair of the American Economic Association's Ad Hoc Committee on the Job Market, which has designed a number of recent changes in the market for new Ph.D. economists. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has been a Guggenheim and Sloan fellow. He received his Ph.D at Stanford University, and came to Harvard from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the Andrew Mellon Professor of Economics. 

For further information, please go to Al Roth's Game Theory, Experimental Economics, and Market Design Page.

Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • Roth, Alvin E. "In 100 Years." Chap. 7 in In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future, edited by Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 109–119. MIT Press, 2013. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Is Experimental Economics Living Up to Its Promise?" Chap. 1 in Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology, edited by Guillaume R. Frechette and Andrew Schotter, 13–42. Oxford University Press, 2015. View Details
  • Hanto, Ruthanne L., Alvin E. Roth, M. Utku Ünver, and Francis L. Delmonico. "New Sources in Living Kidney Donation." Chap. 8 in Kidney Transplantation: A Guide to the Care of Transplant Recipients, edited by D. McKay and S. Steinberg, pp. 103–17. Springer Science + Business Media, 2010. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Deferred Acceptance Algorithms: History, Theory, Practice." In Better Living through Economics, edited by John J. Siegfried, 206–222. Harvard University Press, 2010. View Details
  • Niederle, Muriel, and Alvin E. Roth. "The Effects of a Central Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices." In Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, edited by David H. Autor, 273–306. University of Chicago Press, 2009. View Details
  • Niederle, Muriel, Alvin E. Roth, and Tayfun Sonmez. "Matching and Market Design." In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. 2nd ed. Edited by Steven Derlauf and Larry Blume. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. View Details
  • Murnighan, J. Keith, and Alvin E. Roth. "Ancient History of Experimental Economics and Social Psychology: Reminiscences and Analysis of a Fruitful Collaboration." In Social Psychology and Economics, edited by David de Cremer, J. Keith Murnighan, and Marcel Zeelenberg, 321–333. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. View Details
  • Roth, Alvin E. "Matching and Allocation in Medicine and Health Care." In Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership, edited by P. Reid, W. Compton, J. Grossman, and G. Fanjiang, 237–239. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Game Theory as a Tool for Market Design." In Game Practice: Contributions from Applied Game Theory, edited by Fioravante Patrone, Ignacio Garcia-Jurado, and Stef Tijs, 7–18. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. View Details
  • Erev, Ido, and A. E. Roth. "On the Role of Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games: The Cognitive Game Theory Approach." In Games and Human Behavior: Essays in Honor of Amnon Rapoport, edited by D. Budescu, I. Erev, and R. Zwick, 53–77. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Adaptive Behavior and Strategic Rationality: Evidence from the Laboratory and the Field." In The Rational Foundations of Economic Behavior: Proceedings of the IEA Conference, edited by K. Arrow, E. Colombatto, M. Perlman, and C. Schmidt, 255–273. Macmillan Publishers, 1996. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Introduction to Experimental Economics." In Handbook of Experimental Economics, edited by John Kagel and Alvin E. Roth, 3–109. Princeton University Press, 1995. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Bargaining Experiments." In Handbook of Experimental Economics, edited by John Kagel and Alvin E. Roth, 253–348. Princeton University Press, 1995. View Details
  • Roth, A. E., and M. Sotomayor. "Two Sided Matching." In Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edited by Robert Aumann and Sergiu Hart, 485–541. Elsevier/North-Holland, 1992. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "An Economic Approach to the Study of Bargaining." In Handbook of Negotiation Research. Vol. 3, edited by M. H. Bazerman, R. J. Lewicki, and B. H. Sheppard, 35–67. Research on Negotiation in Organizations. JAI Press, 1991. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Two-Sided Matching Markets: An Overview of Some Theory and Empirical Evidence." In Game Theory and Applications, edited by T. Ichiishi, A. Neyman, and Y. Tauman, 232–251. San Diego: Academic Press, 1990. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "The Expected Utility of Playing a Game." In The Shapley Value: Essays in Honor of Lloyd S. Shapley, edited by A. E. Roth, 51–70. Cambridge University Press, 1988. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Bargaining Phenomena and Bargaining Theory." In Laboratory Experiments in Economics: Six Points of View, edited by A. E. Roth, 14–41. Cambridge University Press, 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Laboratory Experimentation in Economics." In Advances in Economic Theory, Fifth World Congress, edited by Truman Bewley, 269–299. Cambridge University Press, 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Laboratory Experimentation in Economics, and Its Relation to Economic Theory." In Scientific Inquiry in Philosophical Perspective, edited by Nicholas Rescher, 147–167. Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 1987. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Toward a Focal-Point Theory of Bargaining." In Game-Theoretic Models of Bargaining, edited by A. E. Roth, 259–268. Cambridge University Press, 1985. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Stable Coalition Formation: Aspects of a Dynamic Theory." In Coalitions and Collective Action, edited by M. Holler, 228–234. Wuerzberg: Physica-Verlag, 1984. View Details
  • Roth, A. E., and J. K. Murnighan. "Information and Aspirations in Two Person Bargaining." In Aspiration Levels in Bargaining and Economic Decision Making: Proceedings, Winzenhohl, FRG, edited by R. Tietz. Springer-Verlag, 1983. View Details
  • Kihlstrom, R., A. E. Roth, and D. Schmeidler. "Risk Aversion and Solutions to Nash's Bargaining Problem." In Game Theory and Mathematical Economics, edited by O. Moeschlin and D. Pallaschke, 65–71. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1981. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "The Nash Solution as a Model of Rational Bargaining." In Extremal Methods and Systems Analysis, edited by A. V. Fiacco and K.O. Kortanek, 306–311. Springer-Verlag, 1980. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "Power and Position: The Utility of Playing a Simple Game." In Game Theory and Political Science, edited by P. C. Ordeshook. New York: New York University Press, 1978. View Details
  • Roth, A. E. "A Fixed Point Approach to Stability in Cooperative Games." In Fixed Points: Algorithms and Applications, edited by S. Karamardian, 165–180. Academic Press, 1977. View Details
Working Papers
Other Publications and Materials
  • Roth, A. E., and Ido Erev. "Modeling Repeated Play of the Prisoners' Dilemma with Reinforcement Learning over an Enriched Strategy Set." 2006. (Presented at the Dahlem Workshop on Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox.) View Details
Research Summary
Awards & Honors
Awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics with Lloyd Shapley for their research on market design and matching theory.
Winner of the 1990 Lanchester Prize for Two-Sided Matching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis (with M. Sotomayor, Cambridge University Press - both the paperback edition in 1992 and the 1990 edition).
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