Who Gets What ― and Why

Alvin E. Roth, who shared the 2012 Nobel economics prize for work on market design, explains matching markets, where price alone does not settle who gets what and both sides must choose each other. A seat in the Yale freshman class, a job at Google, a place in a good kindergarten and even a date are all allocated this way. Roth has designed several such markets himself, including the exchange that assigns medical students to residency posts and a system that increases kidney transplants by pairing donors with patients more effectively. He shows where these hidden markets operate and how to recognize a good match.

Lucas Morales, founder and chief executive of Zeall.us, put it on a list of contrarian reads in a piece about his first shot at entrepreneurship.