Interview by the Nobel foundation

Here's a 25 minute interview, which starts a bit slowly, but in which I get to talk about matching: Video interview with Alvin E. Roth

Around minute 19 I'm asked about free markets and I talk about how free markets have rules that let them operate freely. I suggest the metaphor of a wheel that can rotate freely, because it has well oiled bearings: "wheels don't occur naturally, they're human creations. And so are markets."

Nobel lectures in Uppsala

Nobel lectures in Uppsala: many of the science lectures are heard again at Uppsala University on Dec 13.

Saint Lucia Day in Stockholm tomorrow.

It is St. Lucia day in Sweden tomorrow. What should I expect?

Here are some clues:  Early in the morning,
It has become tradition to surprise the Nobel Prize winners early in the morning when they are still in bed at their hotel, with a singing Lucia procession. One year though, a winner got really angry and upset, so since then they all get to know about it in advance... 

Late at night there's a dinner and a ball at Stockholm University, and, apparently, induction into the Order of the Frog

Perhaps there will be dancing at the Ball: Here's a story from an English language Swedish newspaper, interviewing one of the many student volunteers who are taking excellent care of us this week.

"When asked which of the recipients she would like to dance with, she smiles and answers “Alvin E. Roth.”
"He is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
"“He seems really laidback. Today, at the rehearsal, he showed up in torn jeans and a knitted cardigan. So, of the winners, I would actually like to dance with him the most.”
"If Dalman doesn’t get to dance with him tonight, she will get a second chance on Thursday.
"It may mark the end of her Nobel duties, but once she is done organizing the unofficial end of the Nobel Week, the Lucia Ball, she might end up taking a twirl with her favourite laureate.
"One winner always attends the event, and this year it's a Alvin E. Roth who will attend.
"So, that’s lucky."

Nobel Economics Prize Lectures by Lloyd Shapley and Al Roth

The Nobel lectures for the Economics Prize were given on Saturday December 8, and are now available online.  Lloyd lectured first, and I followed. We were both introduced by Tomas Sjostrom.

Lloyd Shapley's lecture: Play

My lecture (Al Roth) Play

Here's my banquet speech (although I deviated a little from the prepared text). and here are

Alvin E. Roth's Diploma 
Lloyd S. Shapley's Diploma 

Where do Nobel laureates come from, and other statistics...

Some nonpartisan stats, and some more partisan ones...

http://visualizing.org/visualizations/how-much-did-you-know-about-nobel-prizes-and-nobel-laureates

http://www.thejournal.ie/chocolate-nobel-prizes-infographic-632579-Oct2012/

holykaw.alltop.com/nobel-prizes-by-country-infographic


New York Jews won’t stop winning Nobel Prizes
"On Monday in Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Sciences will present the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Bronx-reared Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, and the Nobel in economics to Queens-raised Alvin Roth. Lefkowitz, a graduate of the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, and Roth, soon to depart the faculty of Harvard for Stanford, are the 39th and 40th graduates of New York City public high schools to win a Nobel Prize."

The Nobel Prize award ceremony: tomorrow, Monday

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 2012

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, on 10 December every year – the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. At the ceremony, the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and the Prize in Economic Sciences are awarded to the Nobel Laureates.

Live Webcast from Stockholm!

atch the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, 10 December 2012, 4:20 p.m. (CET) – 6:00 p.m. (CET).

That's 10:20am for you East Coast Americans, and 7:20am for you Californians...probably here: http://www.nobelprize.org/ 

AEA signaling, and coffee, viewed from Stockholm

At a dinner hosted by the Economics Prize Committee in Stockholm, conversation turned to the signals just transmitted by the American Economic Association, from new Ph.D. economists to potential employers. Each of the Swedish universities represented by those sitting nearest to me, including the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala, had received signals, and had decided to interview at least one candidate based on having received a signal.

Incidentally, 1,285 candidates sent their two signals to 666 employers this year, and these signals were sent out on Dec 3, and confirmation emails were sent to candidates on Dec 4. If you were one of those candidates, good luck, and please fill out the attached survey.

 Dinner was held in the "Ghost Castle" of the University of Stockholm, which houses two impressive art collections, of paintings, and of glassware.  Here's a picture I like, showing that coffee has long played a role in serious discussions.

Some light hearted Swedish TV fare during Nobel week

Check out two of the videos that have played this week on Swedish tv, to see me try on a suit, or how Swedish tv interpreted my work at Stanford.


Not to mention this and some other pics at Den ekonomiske ingenjören Alvin Roth

Nobel lectures in Economics tomorrow (Dec 8): early in the U.S.

Prize Lectures in Economic Sciences

LIVE WEBCASTSaturday 8 December, 1:00-2:15 p.m. CET

Information about Alvin E. Roth's Prize Lecture
Information about Lloyd S. Shapley's Prize Lecture
More information about the prize



 Note that 1:00PM Central European Time is 7:00am on the East Coast of the United States and 4:00am on the West Coast. But I think the lectures will be available on the Nobelprize.org website for more leisurely viewing later.

Miscellaneous Nobel related links

We've arrived in Stockholm so my blog posting may be erratic (and postings may be brief, or from blog inventory).  I'll try to have some posts related to the ceremonies in the coming days of activities.  In the meantime, here's a selection of post-announcement pre-Stockholm interviews and news stories that I bookmarked.

Joshua Gans: A Nobel Prize for Market Design, Oct. 15 on Digitopoly.

Life-saving economics 20 Oct 2012 (BBC)

Mon, 22 Oct 12

Duration:
10 mins

Professor Al Roth tells Tim Harford about the work for which he has just been awarded the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Download 5MB (right click & "save target as / link as")

From the publishing house John Wiley: Below is a selection of papers by Alan E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley, available on Wiley Online Library - all freely available online!* (and more here)

Virginia Postrel on An Economics Nobel For Saving Lives, Oct 16 on Bloomberg.

BBC's Richard Knight on Al Roth: An economist who saves lives, Oct. 20

The NY Times sensibly seeks some remarks from Parag Pathak: 2 From U.S. Win Nobel in Economics, Oct. 15

Financial Times: Practical approach secures Nobel award. Oct. 15 (gated, requires free registration, but they approve of my work:)

INFORMS, the Opeations Research/Management Science site, has a nice post by Michael Trick, with which I largely agree: An Operations Research Nobel?, Oct. 15.

Daily Beast: The Nobel Winner’s Guide to Love, Oct. 16.

Stanford news quotes me as pointing out that "Coffee is a big part of science," Oct. 15.

Jewish news service (Nov 4) quotes me as saying "One of the very nice things of this Nobel Prize for me is that I’ve gotten it for work that I am still doing right now. There are still valuable things to do, so it’s quite a thrill for me to have work recognized that is what I will go back to as soon as I stop being awarded for it."

Here's a link to a 14 November podcast of me being interviewed on the Malaysian program The Breakfast Grille

Here's a podcast of an interview on Israeli radio, which aired on November 25 on the program Goldstein on Gelt (15 minutes).

And, just to keep a busy period busier: Alvin Roth, 1 of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, has a book deal

Update: here's a nice radio interview I missed, with John Hockenberry, on the NPR show The Takeaway (he says that my metaphor about a freely rotating wheel is a good takeaway:)

The market for photographs (or, me in a tie...)

At Getty Images, you can scroll through some photos of this morning's Nobel Symposium at the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/157157122 , or http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alvin-roth-nobel-laureate-for-economic-sciences-chats-with-news-photo/157158868 or
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alvin-roth-nobel-laureate-for-economic-sciences-listens-to-news-photo/157157125
(this one even seems to be tagged as a photo of Washington DC: http://topic.worlds-luxury-guide.com/photo/0ek7dcw86J75k?q=Washington%2C+D.C.)

(From there we went to the White House and met President Obama...)
Update: here's a picture of the President greeting Lloyd Shapley...

Further update: no White House photo of me yet, but here's one from the Swedish embassy...

Symposium at the Swedish Embassy in Washington (5 American Nobel Laureates in 2012)

Embassy of Sweden Cordially Invites You To

A Symposium with 2012 American Nobel Laureates

Thursday, November 29^th

08:30 am – 10:00 am

Coffee and registration from 08:00 am

Dr. David J. Wineland, Physics

Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz, Chemistry

Dr. Brian K. Kobilka, Chemistry

Dr. Alvin E. Roth, Economic Sciences

Dr. Lloyd S. Shapley, Economic Sciences

Moderator:  Dr. Alan I. Leshner, Chief Executive Officer,

American Association for the Advancement of Science and

Executive Publisher, Science

Embassy of Sweden

2900 K Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20007

Israel Radio: Douglas Goldstein interviews Bob Aumann about 2012 Economics Nobel

Bob Aumann is interviewed on Israel Radio, and talks about the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.

"What is pairwise matching, and how does it affect our decisions in life, such as who we marry or where we study? Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann explains the meaning of pairwise matching, which was the subject that brought the current winners, Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley, their prize."

Junior high school photo

One benefit of getting 1500 emails with the subject heading "Congratulations" is that I've reconnected with old friends. One sent me this photo from 1966, and another classmate reassured me that I haven't changed a bit...

An old interview about market design

I've been giving a lot of interviews lately, so it was interesting to receive an email reminding me of an interview I did over a year ago with Julia Shew and Anagha Vaidhyanathan. Here's the first paragraph--I generally can't recall clearly what I've said in interviews, and I hope I'm answering current ones as well.

Anagha: What inspired you to leave the academic nest and begin manipulating markets in the real world?

Roth: I haven’t left the classroom! We’re trying to create market design as an academic field in Economics and make it a way for Economists to earn their living. Market design is useful for a couple of reasons. First, to see if we know what we’re talking about. Second, to learn more – of course we don’t know what we’re talking about until we go out and see why things don’t work the way we think they should work. And third, to do some good in the world. Once we think we know something about how things might work better, we try to help out.

Market design news, in Hebrew

Tali Heruti-Sover (טלי חרותי-סובר) interviews me (in English) and writes in Hebrew here.

חתן פרס נובל לכלכלה, פרופ' אלווין רות', על המתכון לחיים טובים

The Nobel sport of football at Stanford

The Nobel committee recognized two Stanford faculty members this year. And it's the football season.
So here I am, waving to the crowd from the field, with Brian Kobilka, who shared this year's Nobel prize in Chemistry. (The bottom pic is how we looked to my wife from the skydeck of Stanford's football stadium...)

Ed Glaeser on Boston school choice

Ed Glaeser writes in the Boston Globe: Boston school-assignments: Listen to the Nobel committee

One sentence struck me as a little odd:
 "The current system owes much to Roth, a professor at UCLA, and Shapley, a Harvard colleague of mine (who, sadly, is leaving for Stanford)."

An inadvertent ad for Starbucks

5AM at our house yesterday, between phone calls...

and later that morning...

more photos here (by Linda Cicero for Stanford).

Unusual day yesterday...

Well, I had an unusual day yesterday. But I'm not much further along digesting it. So I think I'll go back to usual (non Nobel) blogging about market design.  I'm still working on answering emails, 'tho I'm sure to miss some, or give up before I get to the earliest ones. But I appreciate all the well wishes...