Here's the sentence I liked best:
"Leaning over a cup of Turkish coffee at a cafe across the Charles River from his messy journal-strewn corner office, he bends over backward to give credit to his younger protégés, students and coauthors. "Market design is a team sport," he insists."
If you want to see me bend over backwards while leaning over a cup of coffee, we'll have to have a cup of coffee:) But seriously, Ms. Adams got that part very right--lots of people have to do lots of things before a new marketplace is designed, adopted, and implemented. I'm very lucky in my colleagues.
The article title might suggest I have some sort of quarrel with Freakonomics, but that's not the case, although my work is very different. I recall reading Freakonomics and being full of admiration for the way it brought Steve Levitt's work to a general audience. I wouldn't mind doing that someday with market design, and maybe Ms. Adam's generous article will be a step towards making market design known to a wider public.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCjD9ql_z-vj-hW61RZ14XtWjlqwO71_ty9iyEV3Vl1un-HVfy9_YgL2rLzfK4Y5KDT6mEfJmtxYbUuRZ3Cl5XR_N6byoKdJqIB6hF912YJz__OrSqgN2NpNWu0bkMVOSfLj0pYuNV1Po/s320/Al.ForbesMagazine.August2010_398x330.jpg)
Update: the story also drew a nice line from Alex Tabarrok at MR, that would make a good blurb for a book, in a post titled Al Roth: Entrepreneurial Economist. Now I just have to write a book...
Further updates: Freakonomics chipped in too, with a post called A Real-World Economist, and Faculty Lounge with a post called Market Designer. Other posts are further out: check out the photoshopped picture of me atop Paul Simon's body at Economists Do It With Models, and some good wishes in Spanish.
1 comment:
Hey, can you assign Ph.D.s in the humanities? I'm pretty sure I could be better placed than I am -- working night audit at a hotel. :-)
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