TY  - JOUR
AU  - Roth, Alvin E
TI  - What Have We Learned From Market Design?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13530
PY  - 2007
Y2  - October 2007
DO  - 10.3386/w13530
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13530
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13530.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alvin E. Roth
Department of Economics
Stanford University
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/725-9147
E-Mail: alroth@stanford.edu
M1  - published as Alvin E. Roth. "What Have We Learned from Market Design?," in Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, editors, "Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 9" University of Chicago Press (2008)

AB  - This essay discusses some things we have learned about markets, in the process of designing marketplaces to fix market failures. To work well, marketplaces have to provide thickness, i.e. they need to attract a large enough proportion of the potential participants in the market; they have to overcome the congestion that thickness can bring, by making it possible to consider enough alternative transactions to arrive at good ones; and they need to make it safe and sufficiently simple to participate in the market, as opposed to transacting outside of the market, or having to engage in costly and risky strategic behavior. I'll draw on recent examples of market design ranging from labor markets for doctors and new economists, to kidney exchange, and school choice in New York City and Boston.
ER  -