Magazine House Shinsho Tensaitachi no Mirai-Yosokuzu (Geniuses Predicting the Future)

At first glance, a book entitled "Geniuses..." might invoke some skepticism, but I assure you that its contents are indeed decent.
 
This book is a collection of four interviews with researchers on a video channel, and my own interview is one of them. In my conversation, I discuss the concept of "matching theory" in the field of economics, a subject I specialize in, and implementations of the theory in real life. While I would defer the detail to the book itself, I would like to make a few comments from a broader perspective.
 
I have a question for our readers, who we assume that are in freshman or sophomore year of undergraduate; what would you do when you want to learn something new? Perhaps you enjoy delving into books or textbooks independently? Although it would be important to read books, I have come to realize that, particularly in terms of cutting-edge knowledge, there's often a scarcity of literature, let alone textbooks. This has been the case in my research field, matching theory; in fact, the standard treatise, or the “Bible,” in our field, was published more than 30 years ago.
 
The reason behind this absence is that research advances very rapidly day by day, and there is no distinct line which signals researchers to summarize their findings into a textbook. Additionally, researchers, particularly the most productive ones, often struggle to find the time to compile their and others’ work into a book. Truth be told, in my own case, I have been planning to write a textbook for over five years, and I have not finished yet.
 
When you are trying to learn something new in a scarcity of textbooks and books, you will end up reading fragmented explanatory articles and papers. At such times, I strongly recommend reading materials authored by the researchers who are actively engaged in research. This is because the realm of research, whether for better or for worse, is highly specialized and is not easily comprehensible from an external perspective. Thus, content authored by those from outside would not accurately represent the actual situation.
 
In my interviews that formed the basis of this book, I made a deliberate effort to accurately depict the atmosphere of the research environment. It is important to note that numerous stories had to be omitted in the interviews due to constraints. If you are interested, I invite you to attend my lectures or those of my colleagues. For those with limited time, I have uploaded a substantial collection of lecture slides on my personal website.
 

(Written by KOJIMA Fuhito, Professor, Graduate School of Economics / 2023)