Feeding America – allocating food to food banks with innovative market mechanisms | with Canice Prendergast

In this episode, we discuss with Canice Prendergast how market design mechanisms can be applied in social services. Canice shares how he collaborated with Feeding America on optimally allocating about 300 million pounds of food per year to hundreds of food banks across the United States. They were developing a market-based allocation mechanism introducing an internal currency to bid for available food on a daily basis. Canice shares the process itself as well as many anecdotes on its development and introduction. 

Canice Prendergast is W. Allen Wallis Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is an economist specialising in economic theory, labour economics, and organizational behaviour.