"In matching markets, where 'sellers' and 'buyers' must choose each other, some surprising rules govern a vast array of our activities -- both mundane and life-changing -- where money has little or no role in who gets what. From applying for a job to asking someone out on a date, or getting your child into the best school or university, matching plays a crucial and invisible part. It accounts for some of the biggest technological successes of the decade, like Uber and Airbnb, and can even be the gatekeeper of life itself, guiding how desperately ill patients receive scarce organs for transplants. Nobel Prize-winner Al Roth is one of the world's leading experts on matching markets. He even designed several of them, including the system that increases the number of kidney transplants by better matching donors to patients. In Who Gets What and Why, his life's work provides an x-ray of the market designs you don't see. It shows how to recognize a good match and make smarter, more confident decisions"--Jacket

In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people - facing the same economic circumstances - would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration - and of Identity Economics. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions - at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures - and much, much more. "Identity Economics" bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity - their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be - may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being.