US economists prove a perfect match for Nobel prize

Pairing up employers with job seekers – for instance doctors and lawyers taking up their first appointments –are other examples of how Mr Roth, 60, and Mr Shapley, 89, have separately applied game theory to daily life.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the $1.2m prize, called their work an outstanding example of economic engineering.

Economists who study market design are essentially exploring how matching procedures can be improved to produce better results for all concerned.

“This is very much what economics is about,” said Tore Ellingsen, a Nobel committee member. “How to allocate scarce resources as well as possible, to economise.”

The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

It was not part of the original group of awards, for sciences and promoting peace, that was set out in dynamite tycoon Nobel’s 1895 will.

Since 1969, 44 prizes have been awarded to 71 laureates; Ragnar Frisch from Norway and Dutchman Jan Tinbergen were the first.