Besley likes Sandel's book (while recognizing its flaws): Here's the opening sentence of his review in the Journal of Economic Literature(2013, 51(2), 478–495):
"Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy (WMCB hereafter) is a great book and I recommend every economist to read it even though we are not really his target audience."
I've written a bunch of blog posts about Sandel's views on markets, and others on repugnant transactions and markets, so I won't go into the details again here.
Let me instead give Besley the last word. Here are two paragraphs from his Final Remarks:
"The timing of WMCB may seem ironic in a year in which the Nobel Prize was awarded to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley for their important work on market design that underpins a large expansion of exchange and matching into domains such as school choice, labor markets, and kidney exchange.
As Roth (2008) explains, the approach that he has taken is sensitive to issues of social constraints on market allocations. For example, he acknowledges that having a role for prices in kidney exchanges offends societal values. So the market design that has been proposed in this setting looks for exchanges that are feasible without prices. Thus, the concerns in WMCB are already taken on board by those who are actively promoting more socially sensitive forms of exchange.
...
"At the outset, WMCB identifies two obstacles to rethinking the role and reach of markets. One is the power and prestige of market thinking. The other is the rancor and emptiness of public discourse. Most economists will regard the first as well earned and many would gladly take a bow. But it seems hard to dispute that the need to participate in and engage with debates about markets (and governments) is a central obligation of the economics profession. WMCB is to be applauded for supplying both provocation and insight on a wide range of important topics. And it suggests
a range of challenges to which the discipline of economics can respond."
HT: Parag Pathak
Manlove, D. (2013) Algorithmics Of Matching Under Preferences. Series: Theoretical Computer Science . World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 9789814425247
Publisher's URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814425254_fmatter
Abstract
A new book by Dr David Manlove of the School of Computing Science has recently been published by World Scientific as part of their Series on Theoretical Computer Science. This book, called “Algorithmics of Matching Under Preferences”, deals with algorithms and complexity issues surrounding the matching of agents to one another when preferences are involved. For example, in several countries, centralised matching schemes handle the annual allocation of intending junior doctors to hospitals based on their preferences over one another. Efficient algorithms required to solve the underlying theoretical matching problems. Similar examples arise in the allocation of pupils to schools, students to projects, kidney patients to donors, and so on. The book surveys algorithmic results for a range of matching problems involving preferences, with practical applications areas including those mentioned above. It covers the classical Stable Marriage, Hospitals/Residents and Stable Roommates problems, where so-called stable matchings are sought, thereby providing an update to “The Stable Marriage problem, Structure and Algorithms”, by Dan Gusfield and Rob Irving, published by MIT Press in 1989. It also extends the coverage to the House Allocation problem, where stability is no longer the key requirement for a matching, and other definitions of optimality hold. This book builds on the author’s prior research in this area, and also his practical experience of developing, with colleagues including Rob Irving and Gregg O’Malley, algorithms for matching kidney patients to donors in the UK (collaborating with NHS Blood and Transplant), for assigning medical students to hospitals in Scotland (in collaboration with NHS Education for Scotland), and for allocating students to elective courses and projects (within the Schools of Medicine and Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, respectively). The book is also timely, as the research area recently came to the forefront in 2012 following the award of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley, two leading contributors to the field of matching theory and its application in practical settings, whose work is described in detail throughout the book. A Foreword is contributed by Kurt Mehlhorn of Max-Planck Institut fur Informatik, Saarbrucken, who wrote: “This book covers the research area in its full breadth and beauty. Written by one of the foremost experts in the area, it is a timely update to “The Stable Marriage Problem: Structure and Algorithms” (D. Gusfield and R.W. Irving, 1989). This book will be required reading for anybody working on the subject; it has a good chance of becoming a classic.”