Winning material:
Collection
of Papers: “Unbalanced random matching markets: The stark effect of
competition” and “Clearing matching markets efficiently: informative
signals and match recommendations”
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Here's the prize citation (sent to me by Sasa Pekec, the chair of the prize committee):
"The 2024 Lanchester Prize is awarded to Itai Ashlagi, Mark Braverman, Yash Kanoria, Jacob Leshno, and Peng Shi for their papers “Unbalanced random matching markets: The stark effect of competition” and “Clearing matching markets efficiently: Informative signals and match recommendations”.
These papers have advanced the field of market design by providing fundamental insights into the performance of two-sided matching markets. By introducing a novel theoretical approach, they resolve a long-standing empirical puzzle: why the set of stable matchings is small in many practically important matching markets. Moreover, by creatively integrating match recommendations and signaling strategies, they demonstrate how to reduce congestion in these markets. These contributions have profoundly impacted both methodological work and practical applications focused on the conduct and organization of centralized and decentralized markets."
The other members of the prize committee were Francis de Véricourt, Wedad Elmaghraby, Fatma Kilinç-Karzan, Azarakhsh Malekian, and Mengdi Wang
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Itai shared with me his brief remarks upon accepting the award on behalf of the team at the recent Seattle meeting:
"This is a real honor and it is very special to share the prize with my wonderful coauthors Mark Braverman, Yash Kanoria, Jacob Leshno and Peng Shi who could not attend this event today. It is a great honor and humbling to share this award with Anatoli Juditsky and Arkadi Nemirovski as well as the distinguished past recipients of the prize. 34 years ago, Alvin Roth and Marilda Sotomayor were awarded the prize for their remarkable and beautiful book on two-sided matching. The last two decades, matching in two-sided markets has been and still is a very active area in Operations Research and economics, with many successful applications and a rich theory. We are grateful to be able to contribute to this area. Thanks to Sasa and the committee. It is a real honor being part of this community."