Southern People Weekly just published an interview about the new edition of the Chinese translation of my 2015 book Who Gets What and Why. After talking about the book, they also asked questions about scientific work and Nobel prizes, and I'll include some of that below. (The English translation mostly renders "Roth" as "Ross," but in at least one place I am "Irwin Rothu.")
Here's the link (in Chinese and in translation):
正文
为什么“天上撒钱”不一定是好事？
南方人物周刊 2026-02-04 14:10
Why isn't "money falling from the sky" necessarily a good thing?
Southern People Weekly 2026-02-04 14:10
Southern People Weekly: Although Nobel Prize-winning research often stems from studies conducted many years ago to see if it can withstand the test of time, in the long run, both the nationality distribution of laureates and the evolution of research topics reflect, to some extent, changes in the global economic power structure and intellectual trends. How do you view this interaction between "academics and the times"?
Ross: That's certainly true, both in the long and short term. After World War II, the United States' scientific research and university strength rose rapidly, leading the world and producing a large number of Nobel laureates. Among them were scholars who grew up in the United States, as well as scientists who were forced to migrate from Europe due to war and political circumstances.
Today, I have some concerns that the United States may be actively relinquishing this long-accumulated advantage—when outstanding scholars from around the world no longer feel comfortable and secure in American universities, they may choose to pursue their careers in China or Europe. Another noteworthy change is that, in the past, most economics professors at Peking University and Tsinghua University held doctorates from top American universities such as Princeton, MIT, or Harvard; now, an increasing number of professors are completing their doctoral education at Chinese universities. Overall, this is a good thing; more people dedicating themselves to scientific research benefits the world. I only hope that top American universities will continue to welcome scholars from all over the world.
Southern People Weekly: Every year when the Nobel Prize winners are announced, similar discussions erupt in China—despite its stellar economic performance, China still boasts a sparse number of Nobel laureates. A Chinese-American Nobel Prize judge, when discussing this phenomenon, stated that China's current evaluation system, centered on the number of papers and impact factors, objectively pushes research efforts towards already highly crowded and popular fields. The key to a breakthrough lies in identifying important research gaps and sustaining long-term, continuous investment. What advice do you have for young Chinese researchers?
Ross: There isn't just one way to do scientific research. Some people choose to tackle well-known, unsolved problems; they're running a "sprint." If you're not confident that you're smart enough to solve these well-known problems faster than others, then becoming famous through a sprint isn't for you.
Another path is to choose a job that requires long-term accumulation. I'm not referring to a marathon, which is still a race where speed is paramount, but rather to becoming a musician, which requires long-term creation and continuous exploration of new musical styles or genres to gain recognition.
Southern People Weekly: Your career path is the second one.
Ross: Yes, I've never considered myself smarter than anyone else. There wasn't much interest in matching theory early on, but I was very interested in it. My first paper on matching theory was initially submitted to an economics journal, titled "Matching Economics: Stability and Incentives." The journal's editor at the time was George Stigler, who was also the Nobel laureate in economics that year (1982).
He replied with a very polite letter, saying he had read the paper and found it "very interesting," but the only part of the entire article that could be considered economics was the word "economics" in the title. The paper discussed how to achieve stable matching through institutional arrangements in the absence of price adjustments and analyzed the incentives of participants. Stigler is one of the core economists of the Chicago School, known for his in-depth research on price theory. In his view, my paper did not constitute economic research.
So I published the paper in a mathematical operations research journal. Thirty years later, I won the Nobel Prize. During this time, matching theory gradually became part of economics, attracting more and more economists' attention. How could it not be (economics)? How people go to school, find jobs, and allocate kidney transplant resources are essentially matching problems. That (rejected) paper later became one of the papers cited in the Nobel Prize review.
Regardless of which path you choose, you should not make the Nobel Prize your research goal, because winning the prize itself is highly accidental.
Southern People Weekly: So, chasing a certain direction just because it seems important or popular may not necessarily bring you the success you want; similarly, you shouldn't give up your passion just because it's not popular or hasn't been recognized yet.
Ross: I often tell my graduate and doctoral students that you have to find a research area that is attractive enough to you. Because most days, you may not make any progress, but at the end of the day, you can still say to yourself, "Well, today was pretty interesting too." It is this enjoyment that draws you back to the work time and time again. ... you can't make something you dislike into something great.
...
Southern People Weekly: Some media outlets have summarized the Trump administration's trade strategy as using high-pressure threats, setting tight deadlines, and structured negotiation frameworks to leverage uncertainty and bargaining power to force concessions from the other side. From a game theory perspective, how do you evaluate this strategy?
Ross: I have some concerns that the current U.S. administration may not yet fully grasp the importance of being a reliable partner. Any long-term partnership, like a marriage, cannot involve daily discussions about "who does the dishes." True long-term cooperation means investing in the future at every moment, not just focusing on immediate gains. I fear we have overlooked this.
...
Southern People Weekly: Your academic journey also had its share of ups and downs—you dropped out of high school due to a lack of motivation, but successfully applied to university by taking weekend engineering courses at Columbia University; you failed your doctoral qualifying exam, but gained the appreciation of Bob Wilson (the American economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2020), thus avoiding an unexpected interruption to your academic career. Do these life experiences influence your views on "matching mechanisms"?
Ross: Absolutely. There's something "magical" about the PhD program: when we admit students, we base our decisions on their undergraduate performance—the only information we have when making admissions decisions. But when we "sell" them and help them find jobs, we base our decisions on the research they've done during their PhD studies.
In other words, we admit students based on their ability to learn existing knowledge and complete coursework, but evaluate and recommend them based on their ability to discover the unknown and create new knowledge. These two abilities are not entirely the same. Unfortunately, we don't have a good way to accurately predict how outstanding a person will become as a researcher based solely on their undergraduate performance.
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Earlier interview:
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Interview about the new edition of the Chinese translation of Who Gets What and Why
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