2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 15 October 2012.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Alvin E. Roth was born in 1951 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Harvard University, Cambridge and Harvard Business School, Boston. Lloyd S. Shapley was born in 1923 in Cambridge, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles.

Why it matters

Their work on matching explains how to pair students with schools, doctors with hospitals and kidney donors with patients. Shapley developed the theory and Roth put it into practice.

The prize

The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895. Strictly, this award is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was established by the Swedish central bank in 1968, but is presented alongside the Nobel Prizes.