AEA Code of Conduct: (I can't answer "no" to all of the screening questions)

 When I was president of the American Economic Association, we began to think it would be prudent to have a formal code of conduct (see the link below for details).  But part of that effort resulted in a disclosure questionnaire required of all those who would serve on AEA committees. As I recall, I felt that one of the questions was too broadly posed. 

I've agreed to serve another term on the Committee on the Job Market, so I get to fill out the questionnaire, once again.  My responses are below. You should be able to guess the question I thought was phrased too broadly.

AEA Disclosure Questionnaire

Please review and respond to the disclosure questions below, with explanations as needed. It is important that you answer truthfully. Your answers to the questions will be reviewed by the President and Secretary-Treasurer and will be shared with other members of the Executive Committee only if necessary and on a need-to-know basis.

Affirmative answers to questions would not necessarily be disqualifying but will be considered during the review. To expedite this process, I ask that you please respond to these questions at your earliest convenience.

For more information, see the AEA Professional Code of Conduct and the policy on harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.

Here are the questions, and my answers. 

  

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 I would have had more reason(s) to answer "yes" if I had played on any  gender-segregated athletic teams.

Religion and gender turn out to be complicated (and therefore well worth studying). 

Copyright transfer clause: blacklisted countries

Here's something I hadn't encountered before, in the copyright transfer form of a prominent international transplant journal:

"6. TRADE COMPLIANCE: Each author warrants that if the author, any of the author’s coauthors or any other individual whose content is included in the Work resides in Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Crimea, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) or the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) regions of the Ukraine, the Work has been prepared in a personal, academic, or research capacity and not as an official representative or otherwise on behalf of the relevant government" 

The post-Nobel career of Adam Riess, and controversies in cosmology

The Atlantic has a story about a controversy in cosmology about the expansion of the universe, and whether its explanation requires the hypothesis of dark energy.  But what caught my eye is the author's apparent surprise that a Nobel laureate at the center of the controversy continued his research career, post-Nobel.

Here's the link, and the paragraphs that caught my eye: 

The Nobel Prize Winner Who Thinks We Have the Universe All Wrong  Cosmologists are fighting over everything.  By Ross Andersen 

  "Adam Riess was 27 years old when he began the work that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics, and just 41 when he received it.

...

"When he returned from Stockholm with his prize in 2011, he found that his academic life had changed. People around him started to behave oddly, he told me. Some clammed up. Others argued with him about trivial things, he said, perhaps so they could boast of having dunked on a Nobel laureate. Riess was besieged with invitations to sit on panels, give talks, and judge science fairs. He was asked to comment on political issues that he knew nothing about. He told me he was even recruited to run major scientific institutions. 

"Riess wondered about that path—being the big boss of a NASA mission or gliding around a leafy university as its chancellor. He could see the appeal, but he hated fundraising, and unlike other, older Nobel laureates, he said, Riess still felt that he had scientific contributions to make, not as an administrator, but as a frontline investigator of capital-n Nature. “Scientists sometimes tell themselves this myth: I’ll go lead this thing, and then I’ll come back and do research,” he told me. But then, by the time they’ve finished up with their administrative roles, they’ve lost touch with the data. They become clumsy with the latest software languages. “The science passes them by,” Riess said.

"Riess decided to stick with research. "

Offering deceased donor transplants out of sequence when there is a chance the organ will (otherwise) be unutilized (Ashlagi and Roth in AJOB)

 Itai Ashlagi and I weigh in on recent controversy about "out of sequence" offers of organs for transplant, with some ideas about how the current system might be redesigned and maintained so as to reduce organ discards while maintaining transparency about how and to whom organs are offered.

 Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth (2026). Out of Sequence Offers: Towards Efficient, Equitable Organ Allocation. The American Journal of Bioethics, 26(1), 5–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2026.2594937  

"Organs for transplant are very scarce compared to the need, and so the allocation of organs from deceased donors raises questions about both efficiency and fairness. Because offers of organs take time to consider, and because the viability of organs from deceased donors decreases over time, efficiency sometimes requires increasing the chance of reaching a patient who will accept the organ while it remains viable. So fairness and efficiency, concerning who gets to consider the next offer, and the probability that the organ on offer will be accepted in time for it to be transplanted, may sometimes be in conflict, or at least appear to be. And even the appearance of unfairness may undercut trust in the system of organ donation and transplantation. 

"This conflict between fairness and efficiency has resulted in controversy about offers made “out of sequence” (Covered in a lead article in the NYT article (Times 2025)) 

...

"Collecting data is essential for both efficiency and transparency. It is unfair to future patients not to have transparent allocation systems that can be studied with precision (with causal inference from experimentation), so that it can be improved over time. It is also unfair to future patients who will join increasingly congested waiting lists as a result of the failure to utilize a large number of transplantable organs.

Public data about transplant centers’ performance and patients’ waiting times would further allow patients to choose, based on their own preferences, a transplant center that fits their need. 

...

"Policies to expedite the placement of marginal quality organs that can be tested over time and studied with experiments include when to determine an organ is hard-to-place and when and how to adapt the priority list.

"In summary, it is sometimes desirable to expedite an organ that risks being unused, by offering it to a patient or transplant center that is likely to accept it if the offer is received in a timely way. But it is important to make sure that this flexibility does not promote unfairness to patients or transplant centers. Increasing the transparency and efficiency of the system for expediting organs can address both these issues."

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The same issue of the journal contains a number of articles discussing organ allocation out of sequence  

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Earlier:

Friday, May 23, 2025  Deceased organ allocation: deciding early when to move fast

Transplant problems and public support for organ donation

 The Kidney Transplant Collaborative is worried about the status of kidney transplants in the US.  Here's the statement they published this month, which expresses concern about a drop in deceased donations.

LOSING TRANSPLANTS FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS: A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE REDUCTION IN KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS IN RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF OPO FAILURES

"The kidney transplant waitlist has long exceeded the supply of available kidney organs. The waitlist today includes more than 94,000 Americans, with more than 28,000 deceased and living kidney transplants occurring in 2025. Even more troubling, recent events seem to have led to a decline in overall kidney transplants from 2024 to 2025, driven by a decline in deceased donor transplants. This represents the first time in the 21st century that we see an annual isolated decline in deceased donations and deceased donor kidney transplants, even while living donor kidney transplants increase and the kidney discard rate declines, the latter reflecting increased use of available deceased donor kidneys.

...

"What has caused this unprecedented and isolated decline in deceased kidney donations? While policymakers have been appropriately focused on maintaining the integrity of the
deceased donor process, an unanticipated effect of recent oversight efforts of the kidney transplant system and accompanying negative media reports has shaken the deceased donor
landscape and may have possibly caused the reduction in deceased donor rates. Given this emerging trend, the importance of increasing living donation has come into even sharper focus. Policymakers and all stakeholders in the kidney transplant process will need to focus on the impact of the recent oversight efforts and take clear measures to responsibly increase kidney transplant rates, most likely via a focus on living kidney donor supportive policy.

...

"Unreported until now, however, is the negative impact that this recent Congressional focus may be having on kidney transplant levels themselves. The impact is measurable – from 2024 to 2025, there were 116 fewer kidney transplants. This is due to 218 fewer deceased donor kidney transplants and an increase of 102 living donor kidney transplants for 2025 as compared to 2024 – the first time this century that there appears to be an isolated decline of deceased kidney donations driving the decrease in overall kidney transplants.

...

"Recent, highly publicized revelations involving OPOs have had a serious and harmful effect on public trust in organ donation. As a result, fewer individuals and families appear willing to consent to organ donation after death. Data from the OPTN Transplant Metrics National Dashboard shows that the number of kidneys recovered from deceased donors remained steady during the first half of 2025. However, beginning in June 2025, the number of deceased donors began to decline, and that decline has continued to accelerate. In 2025, a total of 15,274 deceased donors underwent kidney recovery, compared to 15,937 during 2024 for a net percentage change of negative 4.2%."

HT: Martha Gershun
 

 

Mike Luca reviews Judd Kessler's "Lucky by design" in the WSJ

 In the WSJ, Mike Luca has a good book review of Judd Kessler's "Lucky by Design".  

‘Lucky by Design’ Review: The Game of Getting More
Costly signals can help with college admissions and hiring. Visiting a campus or attending a meeting in person demonstrate commitment.  By Michael Luca 

"In “Lucky by Design,” Judd Kessler turns over the cards in often-hidden markets, offering advice on topics from standing out in a job hunt to getting a dinner reservation at an in-demand restaurant. Mr. Kessler, a professor of business economics and public policy at Wharton, notes that these systems frequently “allocate valuable, scarce resources without relying on prices” and that the criteria “are not always obvious or visible the way that prices are.”

Mr. Kessler’s premise is that we can make our own luck by understanding the rules of a system and navigating the process accordingly. Take sign-ups for popular children’s activities such as summer camps or after-school programs, which are often offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Mr. Kessler advises that the key in these situations is to “recognize that you are in a race” and “be there, ready to sprint, when the starting gun goes off.” He suggests reading between the lines: If an email offers a starting time for sign-ups, but no end time, it may be because organizers expect things to go quickly, suggesting it’s time to lace up. 

... 

"What’s good for individuals need not be good for the system overall. Mr. Kessler recounts how, when traveling by plane, he and his wife used to book the aisle and window seats in the same row, hoping the middle seat would remain empty but offering to trade for the aisle seat if someone showed up: a clever hack for one group, but one that would get complicated quickly if everyone did that.

"An overemphasis on winning risks rewarding the vigilant while exhausting everyone. Constant sprinting also risks crowding out time for quiet reflection. Mr. Kessler offers a helpful release valve he calls “settling for silver,” a strategy for stepping away from the fiercest competition. Sometimes the race is unavoidable, and it helps to know the quickest route. But the deeper question isn’t whether to sprint harder or settle sooner; it’s defining for ourselves what the prize is and what will actually bring us joy and fulfillment in life. After all, as Mr. Kessler writes, “the fact that we have different preferences is what makes markets—and life—more exciting.” 

The administration takes its eye off medical journals (TACOs can be good)

The war against science hasn't just focused on research universities, but also on scientific journals. (The concern with journals is that they privilege evidence, which is seen as discriminating against some viewpoints.)  And the war on science has a particular focus on medicine, and hence on medical journals. But policing journals takes patience, and (in this case, fortunately) the eye of Sauron doesn't have a lot of patience. (Sort of like pediatricians, who are always in a hurry because they have little patients...) 

Medpage Today has the story:

DOJ Sent Letters to Medical Journals. Then What Happened?
— Worrying probe into publications' partisanship may have lost steam  by Rachael Robertson, 

"A few months into the second Trump administration, major medical journals received letters from Edward R. Martin Jr., who was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia at the time. (He has since been replaced by Jeanine Pirro.) 

"The first letter to come to light was addressed to CHEST Editor-in-Chief Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, and dated April 14. Martin's letter contained five questions, including how the journal assessed its "responsibilities to protect the public from misinformation" and how it handled competing viewpoints. Martin requested a response by May 2.

"Other major journals received similar letters, including the New England Journal of Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as two other journals that did not want to be named.

"But since receiving those letters in April, the publications haven't heard a peep on the matter from DOJ, several of the journals confirmed to MedPage Today. Most of the journals also declined to comment on the details of their responses to DOJ's letter. "