Episode

Why markets fail — and how to fix them (ft. Nobel economist Alvin Roth)

Podcast: a16z crypto show
Published: Jul 14, 2026
Duration seconds: 5125
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Summary

Long before crypto made coordination programmable, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth was designing markets where coordination could save lives. In this episode of First Principles, Roth tells the story of how he helped build systems for some of the hardest matching problems in the world, from where doctors train and where students go to school to how kidney donors can reach the patients who need them.