📚 Book Review: Who Gets What and Why? 🤔

by Alvin E. Roth

This book is a well-written and fascinating look into market design, recommended to me by John Howe. Markets are well designed when they are:

• thick (lots of options for buyers and sellers )
• not congested (quick),
• safe (a participant can disclose their true choices)
• and easy to use.

Well-designed markets should naturally nudge participants into honest behaviors (no side deals or gray markets).

When we speak about a free market, we shouldn’t be thinking of a free-for-all, but rather a market with well-designed rules that make it work well. A market that can operate freely is like a wheel that can turn freely: it needs an axle and well-oiled bearings. How to provide that axle and keep those bearings well oiled is what market design is about.

The author is an economist by trade who won a noble prize for his market design and game theory work. He tells the story of creating markets as diverse as organ (kidney) matches among living human donors (as opposed to cadavers) and recipients, matching football teams to bowl games, and doctors to residency programs.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to any entrepreneurs involved in the sharing economy. How…