Simulating kidney exchange policies in Germany

 Here are a set of simulations designed to help Germany establish a national (rather than a fragmented) kidney exchange system.

Itai Ashlagi, Ágnes Cseh, David Manlove, Axel Ockenfels & William Pettersson,  Designing a kidney exchange program in Germany: simulations and recommendations. Central European Journal of Operations Research  (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10100-024-00933-0

"Abstract: We examine some of the opportunities and challenges concerned with establishing a centralized national kidney exchange program in Germany. Despite the many advantages of a national program, without deliberate design and policy intervention, a fragmented kidney exchange program may emerge. We study a number of collaboration strategies, and resulting simulations suggest that transplant centers may find it advantageous not to fully participate, resulting in a net reduction in the number of transplants. These results also suggest that allowing more forms of kidney exchange, such as three-way exchanges and non-directed donations, can significantly increase the number of transplants while making participation in a national program more attractive and thus national coordination and cooperation more robust. We propose a multi-level policy approach that is easy to implement and would promote an efficient German kidney exchange program that benefits recipients, donors and hospitals."

...

The concluding sentence of the paper is:

"Germany should establish a robust, well-functioning national KEP that can be easily and straightforwardly integrated into an international KEP."

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Background:

Thursday, July 18, 2024

Kidney exchange in Germany: draft of a proposed law

Market design at Iowa State: course invites remote access

 Bertan Turhan writes to tell me about the market design course he is offering this semester, to which he invites remote participation (for access you can email him at bertan@iastate.edu ).

He writes:

"I wanted to inform you about a second-year PhD course I am teaching this semester with great guest lecturers. It is in person and taken by both Econ, OR, and CS students at ISU, but I also live broadcast it so that others can benefit. ... The course is mainly based on the Online and Matching-Based Market Design (Echenique, Immorlica, and Vazirani). "

Here is the syllabus and other readings.

Stanford celebrates Susan Athey

 This  from Stanford Report:

What motivates Susan Athey. The economist weighs in on incremental innovation, data-driven impact, and how economics is evolving to include a healthy dose of engineering. 

"Today, Athey, the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford GSB, is using her expertise to promote the public good. In 2019, she founded the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab, which uses digital technology and social science research to improve the effectiveness of social sector organizations.

...

"For more than a decade, Athey’s professional passions have been linked to their potential for impact. She chose to return to Stanford — after six years teaching at Harvard — because of the opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration. And she has helped make such collaboration possible. In 2019, she was a founding associate director of the Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute. She is also a leader of the Business and Beneficial Technology pillar within Stanford GSB’s newly launched Business, Government, & Society Initiative, which brings together academics, practitioners, and policymakers to address issues such as technology, free markets, and sustainability.

"Athey’s Golub Capital Social Impact Lab epitomizes interdisciplinary work, putting students from computer science, engineering, education, and economics backgrounds to work helping partner organizations leverage digital tools and expertise that are generally only available to — or affordable for — large technology companies.

“I like building things that demonstrate how a class of problems can be solved,” Athey says. “If there is a problem worth solving, and I can solve it myself in a particular case, I know there are other people like me who are going to encounter the same problem. Part of the motivation and theory of change of the lab is that we will solve particular problems for particular social-impact organizations but also create the research that will guide others in solving similar problems.”

...

"Athey says some parts of economics are evolving to include a healthy dose of engineering. In the Microsoft Research interview, she described stereotypical economics research as evaluating existing programs and often finding that “stuff doesn’t work.”

“There’s a lot of negativity,” she says. With help from data and machine learning techniques, “my prediction is that economists are going to become more [like] engineers. Instead of complaining that nothing works, we’re going to start building things that do work to achieve economic outcomes…. We’re going to realize that nothing works if it’s one size fits all, but that a lot of things work if they are actually personalized and appropriately delivered.”

Social Choice & Fair Division: Theory & Applications, at the University of Tehran this weekend

 Mehdi Feizi (مهدی فیضی) writes to alert me to the upcoming conference, at the University of Tehran, on Social Choice & Fair Division: Theory & Applications

"The Tehran Economic Policy-Making Think-Tank (TEPT) at the University of Tehran and the Ferdowsi Center for Market Design (FCMD) at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad invite applications for the 2024 Summer School on Social Choice and Fair Division (SCFD): Theory and Applications. The School will take place at the University of Tehran on September 6th and 7th and at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad on September 8th. The SCFD2024 Summer School is aimed at advanced graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty members. All courses are taught in English.

Topics and Speakers

The SCFD2024 Summer School will address the most important recent developments in social choice and fair division. It will be practice-orientated with a solid theoretical grounding, combining international policy relevance with a state-of-the-art high-level scientific program. At SCFD2024 Summer School, we have a collection of leading experts in their fields who strongly engage with policy-making institutions.

Keynote Speakers

Haris Aziz (University of New South Wales, Australia)

Fuhito Kojima (University of Tokyo, Japan)

François Maniquet (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium)

Marcus Pivato (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)

Arunava Sen (Indian Statistical Institute, India)

 

Lecturers

Inácio Bó (University of Macau, China)

Satya Chakravarty (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, India)

Sinan Ertemel (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey)

Flip Klijn (Institute for Economic Analysis, Spain)

Alexander Nesterov (HSE University, Russia)

Kemal Yildiz (Bilkent University, Turkey)

Incentives matter for getting participation in clinical trials by low income households

 Here's a study that casts some light (via a randomized experiment) on the importance of incentives to get representative participation in clinical trials.

Nonrepresentativeness in Population Health Research: Evidence from a COVID-19 Antibody Study By Deniz Dutz, Michael Greenstone, Ali Hortaçsu, Santiago Lacouture, Magne Mogstad, Azeem M. Shaikh, Alexander Torgovitsky, and Winnie van Dijk, AER: Insights 2024, 6(3): 313–323, https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20230195

Abstract: "We analyze representativeness in a COVID-19 serological study with randomized participation incentives. We find large participation gaps by race and income when incentives are lower. High incentives increase participation rates for all groups but increase them more among underrepresented groups. High incentives restore representativeness on race and income and also on health variables likely to be correlated with seropositivity, such as the uninsured rate, hospitalization rates, and an aggregate COVID-19 risk index."

"We analyze representativeness in a unique COVID-19 serological study. Unlike most studies, the Representative Community Survey Project (RECOVER)COVID-19 serological study experimentally varied financial incentives for participation. The study was conducted on households in Chicago (the target population). Randomly sampled households were sent a package that contained a self-administered blood sample collection kit and were asked to return the sample by mail to be tested for the presence of COVID-19 antibodies (“seropositivity”). Households in the sample were randomly assigned one of three levels of financial compensation for participating in the study: $0, $100, or $500.

"We find that households in neighborhoods with high shares of minority and poor households are grossly underrepresented at lower incentive levels. High incentives increase participation rates for all groups but increase them more among underrepresented groups. A $500 incentive restores representativeness in terms of neighborhood-level race and poverty status. Representativeness is also restored in health variables likely to be correlated with seropositivity, such as the uninsured rate, hospitalization rates, and an aggregate COVID-19 risk index. Since incentives were randomly assigned and only revealed after the household was contacted, the noncontact rates at $0 and $100 should be the same as at $500, implying that differential hesitancy to participate is responsible for much of the nonrepresentativeness that we find at lower incentives.

"We are not aware of studies that randomize financial incentives in population health studies. It is well appreciated that racial minorities and lower-income households participate in health research at lower rates.1  The impact of incentives on survey participation rates conditional on demographic characteristics has been studied in the survey methodology literature (see Groves et al. 2009; Singer and Ye 2013, and references therein). The incentives used in this literature are typically an order of magnitude smaller than the incentives in the RECOVER study."

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Some earlier related posts:

Monday, February 22, 2021

Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies in the American Journal of Bioethics

Monday, March 1, 2021

Compensating challenge vaccine trial participants: further discussion in the American Journal of Bioethics

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Paying participants in challenge trials of Covid-19 vaccines, by Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Roth

"we note that increasing hourly pay by a risk-compensation percentage as proposed in the target article provides compensation proportional to risk only if the risk increases proportionally with the number of hours worked. (Some risky tasks take little time; imagine challenge trials to test bulletproof vests.) "

Sunday, November 1, 2020

What do we know about the effects of payments to participants in challenge trials for vaccines, and other public spirited activities?

It's illegal to sell cicada infused liquor in Illinois

 Alcohol and insects don't mix in Illinois.  

The Chicago Sun Times has the story:

Suburban brewery fined for selling cicada-infused Malört shot. Noon Whistle Brewing garnered headlines for selling the creative drink during the rare overlap of two cicada broods. But it turns out the shot wasn’t just disgusting — it was also illegal.  By  David Struett 

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It's a good think the Illinois Liquor Control Commission wasn't running the IRB that approved Sandro Ambuehl's experiment that involved eating insects.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Does high pay equal "undue inducement"? An experiment by Sandro Ambuehl

Oregon ends decriminalization of drugs, continues to experiment

 Here's the story in the Washington Post

Hard drugs illegal again in Oregon as first-in-nation experiment ends

"Sunday marks the end of an experiment that drug-reform advocates called a pioneering and progressive measure to better help people. Oregon legislators reassessed Measure 110 this year and decided to again make it a misdemeanor to possess a minor amount of drugs — essentially anything besides marijuana. Selling and manufacturing illicit drugs was and is still illegal in Oregon.

...

"On Feb. 29, the Oregon House of Representatives voted 51-7 to recriminalize drugs, with bipartisan support. The Oregon Senate did the same by a vote of 21-8 the next day. Gov. Tina Kotek (D) signed recriminalization into law April 1.

"Data shows how the [decriminalization] law was used in practice. The Oregonian reported that circuit court data collected by the Oregon Judicial Department from when the law went into effect Feb. 1, 2021, to Aug. 26, 2024, showed that the state’s circuit courts imposed just under $900,000 in fines under the measure but collected only $78,000 of those fines.

"The conviction rate for the 7,227 people cited was 89 percent, with most of those because people didn’t show up to court, the Oregonian reported. Data showed that 85 people completed the substance abuse screening in lieu of a conviction.

"The most commonly cited drug was methamphetamine, accounting for 54 percent of citations. Fentanyl and other Schedule II drugs, the Oregonian reported, ranked second at 31 percent."

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And here's the Guardian's coverage:

Oregon: drug possession to be a crime again as decriminalization law expires. First-in-nation trial comes to an end, as new law gives those caught with hard drugs option of charges or treatment

"The new recriminalization law, HB4002, will give those caught with illicit drugs – including fentanyl, heroin and meth – the choice to either be charged with possession or treatment, which includes completing a behavioral health program and participating in a “deflection program” to avoid fines.

"Personal-use possession would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. It aims to make it easier for police to crack down on drug use in public and introduced harsher penalties for selling drugs near places such as parks.

"The recriminalization law encourages, but does not mandate, counties to create treatment alternatives to divert people from the criminal justice system and toward addiction and mental health services."