Source: School of Business
Written by: School of Business
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Co-hosted by the School of Business, Sun Yat-sen University and the Time Weekly, the “Innovation Pushing Forward Comprehensive Reform” Forum featured by the 4th Nobel Economics Prize Laureate Visiting Guangzhou, China was held at the School of Business on July 1. The highlighted speakers in attendance were Professor Alvin E. Roth, the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2012, and Professor Tang Min, Counselor of the State Council, Vice-Chairman of YouChange China Social Entrepreneur Foundation, and Chief Economist of Asian Development Bank in China. More than 500 college students, academic scholars, and business representatives participated in the Forum.
Professor Roth has made significant contributions in the fields of bargaining theory, game theory, market design, and experimental economics. He has been dedicating himself into his unique research during the past 20 years and has opened the new branch of economics. Notably, his well-known design of a National Resident Matching Program facilitates the placement of about 20,000 medical school graduates in their assignments as residents in American hospitals each year. His “Market Design” theory is used to find out solutions to basic yet sophisticated problems such as decentralized markets and market failures, thereby enabling more suitable market conditions leading to efficient outcomes.

At the Forum, Professor Roth demonstrated his insightful points of view in accordance with the “market design” theory and the status quo of Chinese economy. He considered “market design” as an ideal approach to be applied at social problems and medical cases such as unemployment and organ transplantation with his experiment references in the U.S.

Professor Tang agreed with Professor Roth and pointed out that the heated problem of most Chinese graduates getting stuck in job-hunting whilst most corporations struggling to find qualified candidates is a sign of inappropriate matching between education system and labor market demands.

In the roundtable discussion, Professor Roth and Professor Tang led an enthusiastic brainstorming on the topic of transformation and market design with other noted guests, Professor Pu Yongjian, Associate Dean of the School of Economics and Business Administration at Chongqing University; Professor Stephen Chiu, Associate Professor of the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Hong Kong, Advisor of World Bank Group, and Visiting Research Fellow of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority; and Mr. Ling Fangcai, Chairman of Guangdong Textile Import and Export Co. Ltd.