諾貝爾獎壓軸戲,博弈論再摘經濟學獎

TWO Americans were awarded the Nobel economics prize yesterday for studies on the matchmaking taking place when doctors are coupled up with hospitals, students with schools and human organs with transplant recipients.

兩名美國人因研究醫生與醫院、學生與學校和人體器官與被移植者之間的有效匹配，昨天被授予諾貝爾經濟學獎。

The work of Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley has sparked a "flourishing field of research" and helped improve the performance of many markets, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

阿爾文・羅思和勞埃德・沙普利的工作鼓舞了“蓬勃發展的研究領域”，並幫助改善了許多市場上的表現，瑞典皇家科學院說。

Roth, 60, is a professor at Harvard University in Boston. Shapley, 89, is a professor emeritus at University of California Los Angeles.

現年60歲的羅斯是位於波士頓的哈佛大學的教授，而89歲的沙普利是美國加州大學洛杉磯分校的教授。

"This year's prize concerns a central economic problem: how to match different agents as well as possible," the academy said.

科學院說：“今年的諾獎關注的是經濟學的一箇中心問題：如何儘可能適當地匹配不同市場主體。”

Shapley made early theoretical inroads into the subject, using game theory to analyze different matching methods in the 1950s and 1960s. Together with US economist David Gale, he developed a mathematical formula for how 10 men and 10 women could be coupled in a way so that no one would benefit from trading partners. While that may have had little impact on marriages and divorces, the algorithm they developed has been used to better understand many different markets.

夏普利對這一主題提出了早期的理論，在20世紀50年代和60年代利用博弈論來分析不同的匹配方式。與美國經濟學家大衛•蓋爾一起，他開發了一個數學公式10個男人和10個女人如何配對才能保證沒有人會受益於配對夥伴。雖然這可能有一點影響到結婚和離婚，他們開發的算法已經被用於更好地理解許多不同的市場。

In the 1990s, Roth applied it to the market for allocating US student doctors to hospitals. He developed a new algorithm that was adopted by the National Resident Matching Program, which helps match resident doctors with the right hospitals.

在20世紀90年代，羅斯把它應用到如何把美國醫學生分配到醫院。他開發了一種新的算法被全國駐地醫師匹配程序所採用，這有助於把駐院醫師分配到合適的醫院。

"Even though these two researchers worked independently of one another, the combination of Shapley's basic theory and Roth's empirical investigations, experiments and practical design has generated a flourishing field of research and improved the performance of many markets," the academy said.

“儘管這兩位研究人員彼此獨立工作，但夏普利的基本理論和羅斯的實證調查、實驗和實用的設計相結合，產生了一個蓬勃發展的研究領域，並改善了很多市場的功能，”皇家研究院說。

The official prize citation said the two were awarded for "the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design."

兩人的正式獲獎詞說的是表彰其“穩定匹配理論和市場設計實踐”。