Bilkent Economics Former Students’ Work Cited by Nobel Committee
The prize committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences extensively cited work by three former students of the Department of Economics, Atila Abdülkadiroğlu, Utku Ünver and Tayfun Sönmez, when awarding this year’s Nobel Prize in economic science to Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth. All three were students at Bilkent Economics before receiving their PhD degress in the US. Abdülkadiroğlu is now a professor at Duke University, Ünver and Sönmez are both professors at Boston College.The theoretical investigation on designing algorithms that lead to stable outcomes where agents have different (and potentially conflicting) preferences over possible allocations was done by Shapley. Later Al Roth substantiated the theory by lab experiments, empirical work, and practice of market design while addressing problems such as matching kidney donors to recipients, students with schools, intern doctors with hospitals. The Nobel Committee cited 17 papers by Abdülkadiroğlu, Ünver and Sönmez, many with Al Roth, as key contributions to the field. Way to go, Bilkenters.