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Showing posts from October, 2012

Matching

The Nobel prize in economics was awarded this week to two economists, Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd Shapley, who specialized in matching. Their work was about finding ways to get a student matched with the best college and a single adult matched with the best spouse.When you look at the breadth of their work you can see that in many respects it is what the core of economics is all about . Economics is chiefly about decision-making . And how much of that decision-making is trying to get what it is out there matched up with who you are, what you're about, what you like and love and sing about. I'll never forget that gal who on an assignment I gave my students in which they were to write down anything and everything they wanted -- I was teaching about scarcity -- wrote "I want to know what I want." How exquisitely and profoundly and splendidly sublime is that. That we'd get matched up with what we want, but then, the challenge ... How does that happen best? Rea