This year the Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to two people who have worked on solutions to allocations of resources when prices don't work.
Market failure is common. Scarce resources are then not allocated efficiently and this reduces overall welfare.
Sometimes prices can be adjusted to compensate, perhaps by taxing or subsidising the good or service. When that can't be done other solutions may not be obvious except for some sort of rationing system.
Lloyd Shapely, a mathematician, helped develop early game theory and also produced a paper on matching demand and supply when there are ethical or legal complications. Alvin Roth developed a method to allocate resources from this work, such as organs for transplant.
These two men are unusual winners of the prize, but perhaps appropriately they are applying economics to the real world and it is helping save lives. Given the bad press Economics got thanks to the banks this is good exposure for the discipline.
The prize in Economics is still worth $1.2 million, and is shared by the two men. Shapely is 89 and could probably have done with the prize a little earlier!
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