We live in a world where many of our most critical transactions don’t involve a price tag. Money cannot buy you admission to a top university, place a doctor in a residency program, or secure a lifesaving organ transplant. In these environments, success isn’t about who bids the highest—it’s about matching.

Based on his groundbreaking book Who Gets What—and Why, Nobel Prize–winning economist Alvin Roth pulls back the curtain on how "matching markets" operate and why traditional economic supply-and-demand models often fail. In this captivating keynote, Dr. Roth demonstrates how designing effective, trustworthy, and efficient markets can solve some of society's and business's most complex allocation problems.

Some of the most intractable controversies in our divided society are, at bottom, about what actions and transactions should be banned. Should women and couples be able to purchase contraception, access in vitro fertilization, and end pregnancy by obtaining an abortion? Should people be able to buy marijuana? What about fentanyl? Can someone be paid to donate blood plasma, or a kidney?

Disagreements are fierce because arguments on both sides are often made in uncompromising moral or religious terms. But in this talk, based on Nobel Prize–winning economist Alvin E. Roth's 2026 book, he asserts that we can make progress on these and other difficult topics if we view them as markets—tools to help decide who gets what—and understand how those markets can be fine-tuned to be more functional. Markets don’t have to allow everything or ban everything. Prudent market design can find a balance between preserving people’s rights to pursue their own interests and protecting the most vulnerable from harm.

Combining Roth’s unparalleled expertise as market design pioneer with his incisive, witty accounts of complicated issues, audiences will discover a powerful and innovative new framework for resolving today’s hardest controversies.