I am a Professor of Economics at Boston College and a microeconomic theorist with research interests in market design, mechanism design, and game theory, emphasizing the theory and practice of matching markets and allocation/exchange of discrete resources.
Recent research areas and papers:
My complete list of publications is available chronologically here, with area summaries, and classified according to the scientific discipline journals in my CV. For all my working papers, see here.
- Recent Survey Chapters on Matching Theory and Applications: [SÜ-2024] [SÜ-2024]
- The theory, design, analysis, and implementation of the new organ and blood allocation and exchange mechanisms:
- Recent Market-Degin Impact: The first (and only) 7-way, two 6-way, three-5-way, and six 4-way liver exchanges worldwide and a new exchange program. Recent Medical Market-Design Paper: [YSÜIASI-2024]
- Recent Working Paper: [HKÜ-2024]
- Recent Perspectives Paper: [SÜ-2023]
- The theory of two-sided matching mechanisms with initial property rights and their applications to tuition exchange in college admissions, teacher (re)assignment, student exchange, and student-athlete transfer; and their implications on labor markets, education, etc.
- Recent Working Papers: [DHÜ-2024] [CDTTÜ-2022]
- The theory and applications of reserve systems:
- Recent Market-Design Impact: The design and implementation of three allocation systems for scarce COVID-19 medicine and vaccine allocation reserve systems recommended by NASEM.
- Recent Working Paper on Affirmative Action based on the Indian Constitution [SÜ-2024]
- Improving recommendation and matching systems used in adopting children, search and matching theory.
- Recent Working Papers: [DSÜ-2024] [DOSSÜ-2024]
- Axiomatic theory and design of resource allocation or matching mechanisms.
- Recent Working Paper: [PÜ-2023]
- Recent Working Paper: [PÜ-2023]
About me:
- Nine citations and name mention in the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics in the scientific background document.
- President of the Society for Economic Design (2008-2015)
- Member of Science Academy Turkey (elected in 2014)
- Special Award of the Turkish Scientific and Research Council (TUBITAK) (2013) for scientific contributions to kidney-paired exchange.
- Honorary Ph.D., Inonu University, Turkey (2024) for my contributions to liver-paired exchange.
- PI or co-PI to 5 NSF grants on unraveling in matching markets, kidney-paired exchange, and liver-paired exchange and an awardee of GEBIP-TUBA Turkey grant (2005).
- Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (2023-), associate editor of the Journal of Economic Theory (2016-), advisory editor of Games and Economic Behavior (2018-), associate editor of Theoretical Economics (2012-2024) and other economic journals.
Policy Impact through Economic Design:
- Co-founded the New England Program for Kidney Exchange (2005), the world’s first optimized kidney-paired exchange program. Co-designed the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation (2006) matching algorithm, for which I was elected as an INFORMS Edelman Laureate (2014). At-large representative of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) (2009-2010) on the design of the UNOS national kidney paired exchange program [More on this].
- Co-founded the Banu Bedestenci Sonmez Liver-Paired Exchange System at Inonu University, Turkey (2022), the world’s first optimized liver-paired exchange program. [More on this].
- Co-designed or helped design and implement several scarce COVID therapeutic and vaccine allocation schemes (2020-2022). [More on this].
- Co-designed a recommendation system for finding adoptive families for children in Pennsylvania (2015). [More on this].