Author Judd Kessler (AB '04, PhD '11) will speak about his new book Lucky by Design at the La Jolla Riford Public Library on October 27 at 6:00pm. This event is free and open to the public.
About Judd Kessler
Judd B. Kessler is the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 2021, Kessler was awarded the prestigious Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize for his path breaking scholarship. For his work on the hidden market of organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. He is an award-winning teacher whose courses are popular among undergraduates, MBAs, PhD students, and executives, as well as a sought-after speaker. His research and writing have been featured in leading media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Politico, NPR, Hidden Brain, and Freakonomics, among others. He received a bachelor’s degree, MA, and PhD from Harvard University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. At Harvard, Kessler trained with Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth, one of the founders of market design, the area in which he has been conducting research for the past fifteen years.
About LUCKY BY DESIGN
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” Seneca, the ancient Roman philosopher, once said. For many of us, luck feels more like pure chance—the result of outcomes blindly doled out by the universe. Your coworker scores coveted tickets to the World Series, your friend finds the love of their life on Tinder, or your neighbor’s child gets admission to the best preschool in the area. You shrug and assume they just got lucky. But what if Seneca was right, and luck is more than just chance? What if you learned that there are hidden markets all around us—ones that we play in every day—that dictate who gets what? Is it possible to for us to navigate these hidden markets to sway the odds to be in our favor?
According to Wharton economist and market designer Judd Kessler, we do have the power to make our own luck and tip the scales in our favor. In LUCKY BY DESIGN: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want (Little, Brown Spark; October 14, 2025), Kessler reveals the secrets of how hidden markets work and how to successfully maneuver within them. In familiar markets—such as the stock market or your local farmer’s market—what we get depends on how much we’re willing to pay. Hidden markets don’t rely on prices; instead, they follow a different set of rules, and you can’t simply buy your way into a better position. As Kessler, who has spent a career studying and designing these very markets, explains, “Without understanding the rules of the game, you might assume that your outcomes are determined mostly by luck. People who end up unhappy about what they get conclude that they were unlucky or that the system was rigged against them. After enough of these experiences, they believe that’s just how the world works.”
But the world doesn’t have to work that way. Kessler pulls back the curtain on the hidden markets we routinely find ourselves in, helps us to understand the rules by which those markets operate, and guides us on how to make the right choices to achieve successful outcomes.
When: October 27, 2025
Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Where: The La Jolla Riford Library, 7555 Draper Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037
This event is free. People attending will have the opportunity to purchase Lucky by Design.