Alvin E. Roth (on moral economics)

Episode overview

Alvin E. Roth (Moral Economics) is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Stanford professor, and author. Alvin joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in Queens with two schoolteacher parents, skipping a traditional high school path to attend college at 16, and how early academic exposure shaped his curiosity about markets and human behavior. Alvin and Dax talk about pioneering kidney exchange programs that have saved thousands of lives, the surprising ways incentives influence behavior in everyday systems, and how market design applies to everything from matching students to schools to allocating scarce resources. Alvin explains the difference between repugnance and disgust in economics, why some markets are morally contested yet necessary, and why solving complex social issues requires designing better systems rather than relying on good intentions alone.

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Short transcript highlights

These brief excerpts are navigation aids selected from different points in the transcript.

1. 0:09He is a Nobel Prize winning economist and a Stanford professor.
2. 57:02Probably most of your podcasts don't end with that kind of request for information.
3. 2:15:32No, you need to have, or at least they told me, you need to have an inordinately high sperm count.