Economist Alvin E. Roth will deliver this year’s McKenzie Lecture on using market design to relieve the shortage of kidneys for transplant at 4 p.m. Monday, March 29, in room 318/418 of Gleason Hall on the University of Rochester’s River Campus.
Roth, who is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University, has applied his research, teaching, and consulting interests in game theory, experimental economics, and market design to business strategies. He is well known for his redesign of the National Resident Matching Program, which pairs approximately 20,000 doctors a year with their first employment as residents at U.S. hospitals.
In a forthcoming paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Roth and his co-authors consider another medical topic: how to “alleviate this [kidney] shortage, and improve patient welfare, within the constraints of the current social and legal environment.” His McKenzie Lecture will detail that research with Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver of Koç University in Turkey. Sönmez earned his doctorate from the Department of Economics at Rochester in 1995.
Roth, the author of more than 100 papers, books, and monographs, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Illinois and the University of Pittsburgh before joining Harvard’s Department of Economics and the Harvard Business School in 1998. He received his bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in operations research from Stanford University.
Each year, graduate students at Rochester in the Department of Economics select an outstanding scholar to deliver this lecture in honor of Lionel McKenzie, Wilson Professor Emeritus of Economics. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact the Department of Economics at (585) 275-7221.