It’s time to use a little economics in how refugees are settled in host countries, urges Tim Harford. Two Oxford academics are trying to move the debate a step ahead from how many refugees should a country host to asking “to which country should they go? Or within a country, to which area?” This is a classic matching problem, Harford notes, and he points to the matching algorithm created by Nobel laureate Al Roth, which was first used to match hospitals with trainee doctors and, more widely, donated kidneys to patients in need. “Simple systems exist, or could be developed, that should make the process more efficient, stable and dignified. One possibility is a mechanism called “top trading cycles”. This method invites each refugee family to point to their preferred local authority, while each local authority has its own waiting list based on refugee vulnerability. The trading cycles mechanism then looks for opportunities to allocate each family to their preferred location. The simplest case is that, for example, the family at the top of the Hackney waiting list wants to go to Hackney. But if the family at the top of Hackney’s list wants to go to Camden, the family at the top of Camden’s list wants to go to Edinburgh, and the family at the top of Edinburgh’s list wants to go to Hackney, all three families will get their wish.”