Podcast appearances and mentions of al roth

Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss what we miss when we separate economics from human emotion. Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. His latest book is Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss the impact of moral disgust on solving economic problems, whether we should allow financial payments for organ donation, and what the rise of OnlyFans tells us about changing attitudes towards the self and economic transactions. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google X: @Yascha_Mounk & @JoinPersuasion YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Content note: this episode discusses assisted dying, end-of-life choices, and suicide. Some listeners may find the content distressing.In April 2024, Daniel Kahneman — one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century — emailed his close friends to say goodbye. He was 90 years old, his kidneys were failing, his mental lapses were increasing, and he had decided it was time to go. He flew to Switzerland to end his life at an assisted dying clinic there, because New York, where he lived, did not permit it. Thirteen American states currently allow medical assistance in dying; most require a terminal diagnosis with death expected within six months. Canada, Belgium, and Switzerland allow it on broader terms. The UK introduced a bill to parliament, but it failed to pass. The debate on whether we have the right to end our own lives has not been resolved. This week Tim Phillips talks to Al Roth of Stanford University about how economics can contribute to the debate on medical aid in dying (MAID). Roth, a Nobel Prize laureate, has written a new book that argues this, and similar debates, often miss the key insight: the binary choice of “allow” versus “ban” rarely reflects reality. For example, in the United States, he explains that physicians in jurisdictions where assisted dying is illegal are familiar with the practice of administering doses of drugs that will relieve pain, but also end life. Roth's argument is not that assisted dying is always right. It is that a moral position that ignores the costs of a ban is not more ethical — it is less honest. Economists, he says, bring one specific thing to this debate: the insistence that trade-offs be made explicit.The book discussed in this episode:Roth, Alvin E. 2026. Moral Economics: What Controversial Transactions Reveal about How Markets Work. Basic Books. Published 21 May 2026.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Alvin Roth. 2026. “The right to choose to die." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestAlvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012, shared with Lloyd Shapley, for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design. He is one of the architects of modern matching market design, having redesigned the systems used in the United States to match medical residents to hospitals and students to schools. A previous book, Who Gets What — and Why, was published in 2014. Research cited in this episodeRepugnant transactions is Alvin Roth's term for a class of transactions that are controversial not because no one wants to engage in them — that would be disgust — but because some people do want to engage in them and others believe they should not be allowed to, typically on moral or religious grounds. The key feature is that the objectors suffer no direct externality from the transaction; their objection is to the thing happening at all, regardless of whether it affects them. Roth's examples across the book include medical aid in dying, kidney sales, paid blood plasma donation, surrogacy, and access to certain drugs. The policy implication is that repugnant transactions, unlike ordinary market failures, cannot be resolved by standard economic tools; they require explicit engagement with the moral contest and careful mechanism design to decide what is permitted, to whom, under what conditions.Oregon's Death with Dignity Act (1997) was the first US state law permitting physician-assisted dying. It requires a terminal diagnosis with death expected within six months, confirmation from two physicians, a waiting period, and self-administration of the medication by the patient. According to the 2024 report of the Oregon Health Authority, assisted dying accounts for roughly 0.9% of all deaths in Oregon; many patients who obtain a prescription never use it. Oregon's 27 years of data make it the most-studied model for the policy, and its take-up rates and population demographics have informed both advocates and critics in other jurisdictions.Ezekiel Emanuel and vulnerable populations: A 2016 paper by physician and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and co-authors examined the demographics of patients who access assisted dying in jurisdictions where it is legal and found no evidence that vulnerable populations — defined by disability, age, mental illness, or socioeconomic status — accessed it at higher rates than the broader population of dying patients. Roth cites this as evidence against the argument that legalisation creates pressure on the vulnerable to choose death, while noting that this population-level finding does not rule out individual cases of pressure.The Hippocratic Oath is the earliest recorded professional commitment by physicians not to participate in assisted dying. Roth notes that Hippocrates formulated the oath in the fifth century CE, and that the very inclusion of a prohibition on helping patients die implies the practice was already occurring — physicians were being asked to do it. The religious objection — that decisions about life and death belong to God — and the medical objection — that a physician's role is to save life, not end it — have both been consistent features of opposition to assisted dying across more than two millennia.The Canadian Supreme Court decision (Carter v. Canada, 2015) struck down Canada's criminal prohibition on physician-assisted dying on the grounds that it infringed Canadians' constitutional rights to life and to security of the person. The court's reasoning included the counterintuitive argument that denying access to assisted dying could cause people to end their lives earlier and less safely — while still capable of doing so — out of fear of being unable to later. The Canadian framework that followed is more permissive than US state laws: it does not require a terminal diagnosis but instead an irremediable condition causing intolerable suffering. Canada has since debated, and repeatedly delayed, extending the framework to mental illness as a sole underlying condition.Mechanism design is the field of economics concerned with designing rules, institutions, and processes to achieve desired outcomes, particularly in settings where participants have private information or conflicting interests. Roth is one of its leading practitioners. In the context of assisted dying, mechanism design asks: who can apply, through what process, verified by whom, with what waiting periods, and with what safeguards against coercion or mistaken diagnosis? The differences between Oregon's model (terminal diagnosis, self-administration, annual reporting), Canada's model (irremediable suffering, physician or nurse practitioner administration permitted), and Switzerland's model (available to non-residents) are, in Roth's framing, different mechanism designs with measurably different outcomes.More VoxTalks Economics episodesIn February, Tim spoke to Martin Ellison and Julian Ashwin about what decisions seniors will take about their later years and whether policy can accommodate both their abilities and their needs. Listen to The Economic Consequences of Living Longer. 

Welcome to the Mixtape with Scott! Sometimes the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line, but other times the shortest distance is a winding path. This week's guest, Mohammad Akbarpour from Stanford University, is perhaps an example of the latter. Mohammad is a micro theorist at Stanford who specializes in networks, mechanism and design and two sided matching. Mohammad is an emerging young theorist at Stanford, student of such luminaries as Matt Jackson and Al Roth, whose background in engineering, mathematics and computer science has given him a fresh approach to topics that I associate with Stanford's theory people as a whole — policy oriented, applied work, mechanism design, networks and matching. He got into economics “the long way” — growing up in Iran, majoring in engineering, and then moving into Stanford's operations research PhD program. In this interview, he generously shares a snippet of the arc of his life, and it's a remarkable story, and one I really enjoyed hearing. I think you will too. Scott's Mixtape Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

It's not oil or water or plutonium — it's human hours. We've got an idea for putting them to use, and for building a more human-centered economy. But we need your help. SOURCES:Nathan Dietz, research director at the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland.Al Roth, professor of economics at Stanford University.Krista Wyatt, C.E.O. of Timebanks.org.Andrew Yang, co-chair of the Forward Party and former U.S. presidential candidate. RESOURCES:"Where Are America's Volunteers," by Nathan Dietz and Robert T. Grimm Jr. (Do Good Institute, 2018)."Believe in People," talk by Edgar Cahn at TEDxAshokaU (2010).The Pencil, by Allan Ahlberg (2008).No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative, by Edgar S. Cahn (2000).Time Dollars: The New Currency That Enables Americans to Turn Their Hidden Resource-Time-Into Personal Security and Community Renewal, by Edgar S. Cahn and Jonathan Rowe (1992). EXTRAS:"Why Don't We Have Better Candidates for President?" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).“Andrew Yang Is Not Giving Up on Politics — or the U.S. — Yet,” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).“The Future of New York City Is in Question. Could Andrew Yang Be the Answer?” by Freakonomics Radio (2021).“Why Is This Man Running for President? (Update),” by Freakonomics Radio (2019)."Make Me a Match," by Freakonomics Radio (2015).

Sure, markets work well in general. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can't solve the problem. That's when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth. Plus: We hear from a listener who, inspired by this episode, made a remarkable decision.

Economists are no longer simply describing and understanding markets, but are often playing the role of “economic engineer”, improving existing markets and sometimes, designing market mechanisms from scratch. Al Roth is a professor of economics at Stanford University and the author of “Who Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design.” And although this book came out about seven years ago, it is still so, so fresh. He and Greg talk about the growing field of market design, liquidity in modern day markets, game theory and stable matching.Episode Quotes:How speed & technology have changed trading & markets:So right now a lot of trading engines are co-located with exchange servers in the same buildings, because the speed of light is bound on how fast you can find these trades. Majority of trades these days are algorithmic trades and they make very little money on each trade, but they make many, many trades.And it's not clear that that's helping price discovery or efficiency, because people who are making markets or offering bids and asks, have to take wider spreads in order to defend themselves against having traded on a stale bid or ask when someone who's a little faster than they gets new information from one of the markets.The growth of game theory & economics: I think a little bit that's the way economics developed. For a long time we took markets as things that happened and our job was to study them. But one of the things you can study and particularly with the advent of game theory in the 20th century, one of the things you can study is the details of how markets work. What is their design? And once you start studying their design, you can start talking about maybe helping to alter it and fix it.How Al got his start:It turned out the future of game theory was in economics. And so my claim when I speak to [Operations Research] audiences these days is that I didn't change my field, I stood my ground and the disciplinary boundaries moved around me. So I'm an economist because game theory is about economics. But increasingly it's coming back to operations research because market design is about the operations of certain kinds of companies that run markets.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityFaculty Profile at Harvard Business SchoolProfessional Profile at The Nobel Prize's WebsiteAl Roth at Talks at GoogleHis Work:Al Roth on Google ScholarWho Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market DesignWho Gets What - And Why

Al Roth and I discuss hitmen, drugs, kidneys, paid sex, and other repugnances. We're joined by co-hosts Madison White and Alex Leseney (both UVA 3Ls), with appearances from UVA 3Ls Thalia Stanberry, Caitlyn Stollings, Jackson Bailey, and Autumn Adams-jack. A good time was had by all!Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He works in the areas of game theory, experimental economics, and market design, and shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.Readings referenced in this episode:Roth, Alvin E. Who gets what--and why: the new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.Roth, Alvin E. "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets." Journal of Economic perspectives 21.3 (2007): 37-58.Roth, Alvin E. "Marketplaces, markets, and market design." American Economic Review 108.7 (2018): 1609-58.Chenlin Gu, Alvin Roth, Qingyun Wu (2022) Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets. Mathematics of Operations Research  Published online in Articles in Advance 28 Jan 2022  . https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2021.1236  

“Markets are human artefacts. They are tools that people create in order to serve their needs ... and we can change what they do if they are not doing what we think they should be doing.” Gäst i veckans podd är Al Roth, professor i ekonomi vid Stanford University, vars bok “Vem får vad – och varför” nyligen utkommit i svensk översättning. Innan spelteorin vann gehör inom akademin tänkte ekonomer mest på människor som passiva köpare på en självreglerande marknad. Men spelteoretiker som Al Roth framhävde istället hur människor såsom aktiva deltagare faktiskt också formar ekonomin genom sitt deltagande.  Istället för självreglerande är därmed marknader snarare att betrakta som artificiella byggen, styrda av detaljerade regler som konstruerats av människor. Men hur och i vilken utsträckning påverkar spelreglerna utfallen på marknaden? Och i vilken mån kan marknaden egentligen sägas vara fri? I samtalet deltar också Tommy Andersson, professor i ekonomi vid Lunds universitet. Al Roths bok Vem får vad – och varför finns att köpa här: https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/vem-far-vad---och-varfor-9789198045321

Nico and Mario discuss their research on blood donation and attitudes toward taboo trades. I fail at zoom. Mario Macis is a Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research interests include pro-social behavior, morally controversial transactions, global health, experimental economics, development economics, and labor economics. Nico Lacetera is a Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His research concerns the ethical constraints and social support to markets, the motivations for altruistic behavior, and various topics in industrial and innovation economics.Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Will there be blood? Incentives and displacement effects in pro-social behavior." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4.1 (2012): 186-223.Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Economic rewards to motivate blood donations." Science 340.6135 (2013): 927-928.Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Rewarding volunteers: A field experiment." Management Science 60.5 (2014): 1107-1129.Elías, Julio J., Nicola Lacetera, and Mario Macis. "Paying for kidneys? a randomized survey and choice experiment." American Economic Review 109.8 (2019): 2855-88.Elias, Julio J., Nicola Lacetera, and Mario Macis. "Sacred values? The effect of information on attitudes toward payments for human organs." American Economic Review105.5 (2015): 361-65.Compliance Policy Guide CPG Sec. 230.150: Blood Donor Classification Statement, Paid or Volunteer Donor, Guidance for FDA StaffDhingra, Neelam. "In defense of WHO's blood donation policy." Science 342.6159 (2013): 691-692.

On this episode of AD4, I'm joined by Roger Dooley, Forbes Brainy Marketing CMO Council, author, marketing pro and international keynote speaker who's used Neuromarketing principles to create content that's built huge website audiences. His personal record is 3 million unique visitors/month.  He's also the author of the 2 books Friction and Brainfluence, the host of the Brainfluence podcast which has featured Ryan Holiday, Guy Kawasaki, and nobel prize winner Al Roth. If that wasn't enough to convince you to hear him out he's also got decades of experience leading digital marketing organizations and currently runs his own Neuromarketing Consultancy. 

Thank You so much for listening! Follow the gym on instagram @teamgpt. For more information about the gym and for online coaching go to Gleasonperformance.com.

You own your body. So should you be able to sell parts of it? This week, we explore the concept of "repugnant transactions" with the man who coined the term, Nobel Prize- winning economist Al Roth. He says repugnant transactions can range from selling organs to poorly-planned gift exchanges — and what's repugnant in one place and time is often not repugnant in another.

Should a kidney be sold to the highest bidder? Luigi and Kate debate Nobel-winning economist Al Roth whose algorithm for kidney transplants has saved more than 6000 lives. Roth says matching markets could be used for everything from online dating to the global refugee crisis.

More at https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/repugnant-markets. We might ban buying or selling horse meat in the US not for the protection of horses, but because we find it morally repugnant. Yet this moral repugnance is clearly not universal, and on some level may even be arbitrary, given France's attitude toward horse meat. What role, if any, should moral repugnance play in determining the rules of our marketplaces? Even if we want to eliminate the influence of moral repugnance, can we? Debra and Ken hold their noses with Al Roth from Stanford University, author of "Who Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design."

Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can't solve the problem. That's when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth.

Al Roth on Matching Markets   The system that runs the ride-sharing company Uber doesn’t just link up passengers and drivers based on price. It also has to connect the two based largely on where they are geographically. It is, says Nobel laureate Stanford economist Alvin E. “Al” Al Roth, a matching market. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Roth explains to interview David Edmonds some of the ins and outs of market matching, starting with a quick and surprisingly simple definition. “A matching market is a market in which prices don’t so all the work,” Roth details, “So matching markets are markets in which you can’t just choose what you want even if you can afford it – you also have to be chosen.” But while the definition is simple, creating a model for these markets is a tad more complex, as Roth shows in offering a few more examples and contrasting them with commodity markets. “Labor markets are matching markets. You can’t just decide to work for Google – you have to be hired. And Google can’t just decide that you’ll work for them – they have to make you an offer.” And like say university admission, matching markets require something to intervene, whether it be institutions or technology, to make this exchange succeed. In turn Roth himself helped engineer some high profile matches in areas where the term ‘market might not traditionally have been used: kidney donors with the sick, doctors with their first jobs, or students and teachers with schools. Or even the classic idea of ‘matchmaking’ – marriage. Roth turned to game theory to help explain and understand these markets, and his work won he and Lloyd Shapley the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. As the Nobel Committee outlined: "Lloyd Shapley studied different matching methods theoretically and, beginning in the 1980s, Alvin Roth used Lloyd Shapley's theoretical results to explain how markets function in practice. Through empirical studies and lab experiments, Alvin Roth demonstrated that stability was critical to successful matching methods." Roth is currently president of the American Economics Association, and sits as the Craig and Susan McCaw professor of economics at Stanford University. He is also the Gund professor of economics and business administration emeritus at Harvard University  

Today we have a great panel discussion between Simon Rothman, Partner at Greylock VC, Andrei Hagiu of the Harvard Business School, and Al Roth Nobel prize winning economist.  Simon is a partner at Reid Hoffmans Greylock Venture Capital firm where he oversees their marketplace investments in companies like lyft and sprig. before greyloc simon built eBay motors from the ground up into a 14 billion a year global business.  Andrei Hagiu is a professor in the strategy group at the Harvard Business School and prinicipal at Market Platform Dynamics. Andrei received a PHD in economics from Princeton University.  Al Roth is the George Gund professor of economics and business administration at Harvard university. In 2012 he won the Nobel prize in economics for his work in matching doctors to hospitals, kidneys to patients and kids to high schools.  Lets listen into Andrei, Simon and Al at Startup Grind’s Global Conference.  Toptal is an amazing company. They've got over 2,500 developers and designers in their network.  They've screened them extensively so that you get to work with the top 3% of developers and designers. So basically what happens is that you let Toptal know what type of developer or designer you're looking for, they understand your business and technical requirements and they search for the right person for you. You don't have to do all the screening and interviews that you normally would and they make it really easy for you. You can even do part time hires that are a few hours a week or full time hires as well.  If you want to get connected to them, send me a note at  laura@startupgrind.com and I can personally introduce you to my friend Nelson. He's a VP at Toptal who will make sure you get an amazing experience. 

Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions -- like school admissions and organ transplants -- money alone can't solve the problem. That's when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth.

Want a job at Google, a gorgeous hideaway on Airbnb, a spot on the Stanford faculty, a romantic partner or even a kidney?Good news, bad news. You have a say, but so do they.It's all part of a phenomenon called "matching markets."Markets are what make businesses possible. But not all markets operate on the exchange of cash for goods. In fact, some of the most important markets go so far as to outlaw cash. In other markets, like romance, many societies just find cash morally repugnant. And, no matter how much you may want something, there's another person who'll have a say in whether you get it.When you understand these often complex and hidden markets, the nuanced rules and games that get played, you end up in a better place to both get what you need from them and give more effectively to those you seek to serve.That's what we're talking about in this week's conversation with Nobel Prize-winning economist, Stanford professor and author of the fascinating new book, Who Gets What - and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design, Al Roth.This discussion pulls back the curtain on why we are willing to do so much, for one thing, person or opportunity and yet so little for another and how that is redefining our options, how they are presented, and how much control we really have over any of it.

Tim tells the story of Al Roth, who worked out how to create a clearing-house for kidneys.

In February 2012 The New York Times featured an article on a 60-person chain of kidney transplants that resulted in 30 individuals receiving donated kidneys. The article highlighted the growing demand for donated kidneys and the unique challenges of kidney transplantation. This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs. Dr. Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School, and is one of the founders and designers of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.

In February 2012 The New York Times featured an article on a 60-person chain of kidney transplants that resulted in 30 individuals receiving donated kidneys. The article highlighted the growing demand for donated kidneys and the unique challenges of kidney transplantation. This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs. Dr. Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School, and is one of the founders and designers of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.