Unraveling in Belgian soccer: an under 2 year old signed to pro club's under 5 team

First, there is an "under 5 team." And that's the one that's unraveling.

20-MONTH-OLD BABY BECOMES WORLD’S YOUNGEST PRO FOOTBALLER
"Bryce Brites is only 20 months old and can’t even properly utter the words “ball” or “goal” but he just became the youngest professional football player on the planet.

This past week, Bryce signed with Belgian club FC Racing Boxberg, based near his home city of Genk, after impressing coaches with his “highly unusual” talent and “incredible” ball control. The precocious toddler was invited to train with the club’s Under-5 team and was signed and issued his very own Belgian FA membership card the very same day.

Amazingly, Bryce misses out on the all-time record for youngest-ever professional by two months. That record apparently belongs to Dutch footballer Baerke van der Meij, who signed a 10-year deal with VVV-Venlo when he was 18 months old."


HT: Juan Sebastián Pereyra Barreiro

Urban poverty: an opportunity for change in Richmond, VA

The city of Richmond, VA seems to be engaged in some innovative attempts to alleviate urban poverty, and in studying the sometimes counterproductive incentives and choices that face those who are trapped in it.

Jamison Manion, who is administering the city's workforce development program reached out to me and, in a series of discussions, convincingly made the case that Richmond is very open to partnering with academic researchers who would be interested in studying the obstacles to entry in the labor force, and crafting policies to overcome these. It sounds like they have data...so it could be an opportunity for some economist interested in poverty, cities, and labor force participation.

Here are two news stories and a presentation by Manion to the City Council.

NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/us/richmond-awaits-a-bold-antipoverty-plan.html?_r=0

Style Magazine:

http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/lifting-all-boats/Content?oid=1992584

(NOTE: The young man featured in this article was just offered a position as an Electrician’s Helper today)

Presentation to City Council: Feb 2013

http://vimeo.com/64572373

Interested researchers can contact Manion directly...

Jamison Manion
Programs Administrator for Workforce Development
Center for Workforce Innovation
City of Richmond, VA
jamison.manion@richmondgov.com

Behavioral economics in British government: NY Times

Britain’s Ministry of Nudges

013

Uploading letters of recommendation to grad schools and academic jobs

The time of year when I write letters for undergrad students applying to grad schools, and graduate students applying for jobs, is just ending. There are a bunch of services via which letter writers are asked to upload their letters. Some (further) consolidation would be efficient.  Below are some reflections on the process of uploading letters (I didn't send any through the U.S. Post Office this year.)

Uploading recommendations for graduate school
**************
ApplyYourself, Inc. has sold software to many schools.
"This online Recommendation service is provided by ApplyYourself, Inc. ("ApplyYourself"), a subsidiary of Hobsons, Inc.. ApplyYourself provides online Recommendation services for educational and other institutions."

It asks you to set a new password for each graduate program, and doesn't link to the accounts with the same password that I've already set up for other graduate programs at that university, not to mention for other schools. Multiple graduate programs in the same school need to have the same information added each time. It requires complicated passwords:
In order to begin your online Recommendation for xxx, you first need to create your password. After creating your password, you will be logged in automatically and will find further instructions on how to complete the Recommendation. Password must be between 8-30 characters, contain at least 1 uppercase letter (A-Z), 1 lowercase letter (a-z), 1 number (0-9), and 1 of the following special characters: !@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./ Spaces are not allowed."

When submitting multiple letters to the same school you sometimes get this:
"An error has occurred. You either have more than one connection to this website or you did not properly log out of your last session. Please close all browser windows, then open a new browser window to access this site.Also, please be sure to logout of all future sessions to prevent this situation. Once logged in, you can logout by clicking on the 'logout' link located in the upper right hand corner of the page."
*****************
CollegeNET Letters of Recommendation is a service used by several universities, and when I log on I can see multiple (in this case 2) letter requests.  I can't submit one letter, but have to submit it again for each application. But at least I didn't have to logout and log in again...  Some universities (Princeton is one) ask you lots of questions that have to be filled in on a web form before you can proceed to upload your letter. Here's the kind of error message you get for not filling in some essential detail about yourself, like your zip code.
The data you just supplied contains 1 omission or datatype mismatch.
This problem will have an explanation above it.
Both the explanation and the problem will be in a box.

Data Validation:

Some fields are required by the institution to have a value.
Other fields need the data to satisfy length limitations
or certain formatting constraints.
Once these corrections are made,
the form will be ready for submission

Once you succeed in submitting the letter, it signs off with this helpful suggestion
You should print or save this page for your records. The information below can be used to track your form should you have any questions.
*******************
Law Schools use a service provided by the Law Schools Admissions Council
LSAC Evaluations is now LSAC Applicant References
It requires you to open an account, complete with security questions such as "what is your favorite number?"  It took me many attempts before finding a username and password that it would accept.
When I tried to upload my letter, I got an error message saying that they didn't accept pdf files.  Fortunately it accepted a .docx file. But after it has been slowly uploaded, you have to proofread it and check a box certifying that you have before the very slow webpage digests it...

********************************************
********************************************
Uploading jobmarket letters for economists is by and large easier than uploading letters for admission to grad schools, and my impression is that it is somewhat easier than jobmarket letters for other disciplines. This is largely due to the large market share presently enjoyed by econjobmarket.org, which makes it easy to upload a generic letter that will be sent to each of the employers enrolled on econjobmarket.org to whom that student has applied.  (I recalled from previous years that with somewhat more effort you can upload different letters to be sent to different employers. This year I had trouble figuring out how to do that, but minutes after sending a query on the contact page got a reply that explained how to do it--the key is to find where to turn off autodelivery:)

Their competition comes from two directions. One is from similar services, some of which are discussed below. In economics, these command a much smaller part of the market, i.e. each letter uploaded to them goes to fewer employers. The main competition to econjobmarket.org is software companies that sell a platform to universities for all of that university's applications. That is, for many letters of recommendation, you go to the university web site to upload your letter. There must be only a few software suppliers, since many of these sites look the same.

Here are some notes, first on two upload platforms, then on two fairly typical university sites.

AcademicJobsOnline  didn't make it easy to see which jobs were being applied to, hence it encouraged a generic letter that could be sent to any academic position. This is the feedback you get after uploading a letter.

AcademicJobsOnline.org	Refs * Jobs * Employers * Help * Logout

Done Reference Letter Submission: Confirmation

Your letter has been successfully submitted. This is the final confirmation; no more confirmation or receipt will be sent by email.  

*********************
Interfolio also made it easy to submit a generic letter (one that would go with any application), and I didn't see an easy way to submit an application-specific letter.

********************
While many schools with their own websites seem to use common software,  I had trouble convincing the unique HBS site that I was a human being, since I failed to write the correct captcha the first time I tried. In between attempts I had to upload my letter again, i.e. it deleted the letter I had uploaded before failing to prove I was human.

***************
Columbia University's online Recruitment of Academic Personnel System (RAPS) site is annoying, since you  get requests for each position that a candidate applies for, and each requires (the same) letter, but after you have uploaded the letter for one position you have to close your browser before it will let you upload the letter for the next.
**********

NYU Stern's Faculty Management System site asks you to use Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox (but even when I do it often doesn't recognize the .pdf files I try to upload, and gives me an error message telling me to upload a pdf...) I've mostly had to email in the letters to Stern...

*************************
Update: some further guidance for the perplexed from EJM:

Hi Professor Roth,

You can upload letters for a candidate to only be delivered to a particular institution the candidate has applied to by clicking on the "show applications" button for a candidate. A list of all their currently active applications will appear as well as options to submit individual letters for each of them.

A more detailed description of how to do this (with pictures) can be found here: http://www.econjobmarketblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-to-guide-recommenders.html

EC14, now called Economics and Computation, at Stanford June 8-12 (submission deadline is Feb 11)

Here's the announcement and call for papers. The deadline is Feb 11 for paper submission.

Two related conferences will be coordinated at Stanford at the same time, the NBER market design conference, and the NSF Decentralization conference (see the announcement here).

You can also see how closely interwoven computer science and economics/market design have become by looking at the program committee, which includes both computer scientists and economists mixed up (or maybe mixed up computer scientists and economists):

General Chair: 
Moshe Babaioff, Microsoft Research
ec14-general-chair@acm.org

Program Chairs:
Vincent Conitzer, Duke University
ec14-pc-chairs@acm.org

David Easley, Cornell University
ec14-pc-chairs@acm.org

Workshop Chair:
Robert Kleinberg, Cornell University
ec14-workshops-chair@acm.org

Tutorial Chair:
Shuchi Chawla, University of Wisconsin - Madison
ec14-tutorial-chair@acm.org

Senior Program Committee (one per area):

Theory and Foundations SPC:

Larry Blume, Cornell University
Aaron Bodoh-Creed, UC Berkeley
Felix Brandt, TU Munich
Shuchi Chawla, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Edith Elkind, Oxford University
Joan Feigenbaum, Yale University
Michal Feldman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Drew Fudenberg, Harvard University
Nicole Immorlica, Northwestern University and Microsoft Research
Anna Karlin, University of Washington
David Kempe, University of Southern California
Scott Kominers, Harvard University
Ron Lavi, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Vahab Mirrokni, Google Research
Utku Unver, Boston College

Artificial Intelligence and Applied Game Theory SPC:

Itai Ashlagi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Yiling Chen, Harvard University
Arpita Ghosh, Cornell University
Kate Larson, University of Waterloo
Kevin Leyton-Brown, , University of British Columbia
David Pennock, Microsoft Research
Ariel Procaccia, Carnegie Mellon University
Tuomas Sandholm, Carnegie Mellon University

Experimental, Empirical, and Application SPC:

Eric Budish, University of Chicago
Yan Chen, University of Michigan
Ben Edelman, Harvard University
Ashish Goel, Stanford University
Muthu Muthukrishnan, Rutgers
Denis Nekipelov, UC Berkeley
Sid Suri, Microsoft Research
Steven Tadelis, UC Berkeley

Local Arrangements:
Yoav Shoham, Stanford University

Dmitry Taubinsky (job market candidate), on attention

Among the economists I'm engaged with on the job market this year is Dmitry Taubinsky. He studies attention as a scarce resource, so you shouldn't forget to think about hiring him.  His job market paper is

From Intentions to Actions: A Model and Experimental Evidence of Inattentive Choice

Abstract:  A growing body of evidence suggests that people's inattention may be a signi ficant friction in domains of behavior ranging from medical compliance, to financial decisions, to residential energy use. In this paper, I present a psychologically grounded model of inattentive choice and investigate its implications for dynamic decisions. The model explains seemingly puzzling patterns of consumer behavior, makes novel predictions that I con rm in two experiments, and generates a rich set of market implications. Applied to repeated actions, the model provides an attention-based foundation for the formation of "good" habits in domains such as exercise or energy use. The model explains the recent evidence on the intertemporal spillover effects of temporary incentives, and makes testable predictions about when attention-focusing cues, such as reminders, will dampen or amplify the effects of incentives. Consistent with these predictions, the first experiment reported in this paper shows that while temporary interruptions to daily routines decrease subsequent performance of the behavior, reminders have the largest impact after an interruption. Applied to tasks that must be completed by a deadline, the model identifies when longer deadlines will make people less likely to complete a task. But additionally, the model leads to new comparative statics, tested in the second experiment reported in this paper, about how reminders can eliminate the potentially perverse effect of longer deadlines. Finally, I apply the model to study market interactions between sophisticated firms and inattentive consumers: the model predicts how firms will take advantage of consumer's inattention through sales strategies such as rebates, and also leads to a dynamic theory of how firms use reminder advertisements to steer the behavior of inattentive consumers.

Dan Fragiadakis (job market candidate)

Among the economists I'm engaged with on the job market this year is Dan Fragiadakis. You should think about hiring him.  His job market paper is


Improving Welfare in Assignment Problems: an Experimental Investigation (pdf) (with Peter Troyan). 
Abstract:
"Many institutions face the task of allocating objects (such as university dormitories) to individuals (students) without the use of monetary transfers.  A common solution to this problem is the Random Serial Dictatorship (RSD): agents are ordered randomly, and one at a time, each is assigned her favorite good according to her submitted preferences.  While RSD provides each agent with a dominant strategy of ranking objects truthfully, it may produce socially undesirable outcomes whereby it is possible to make some agents substantially better off at only a small cost to others.  In this paper, we study the prospect of raising welfare in assignment problems by incentivizing agents to report goods they value similarly as indifferent.  Specifically, we modify RSD by ordering agents earlier who report more indifference, a method similar to that used by the Stanford Graduate School of Business to assign MBA students to educational trips abroad.  While theory predicts weak welfare gains in equilibrium, this requires agents to calculate nontrivial best response strategies that deviate from simple truth-telling. In practice, it is unknown whether agents will be able to find these equilibria and, if they cannot, what the welfare implications of using such mechanisms will be. Motivated by these observations, we run a lab experiment where we find  that many agents follow natural heuristics that entail reporting indifferences between objects that are similar in value. Average earnings increase significantly compared to RSD, but the way in which indifference is rewarded can alter the variance in earnings.  This suggests that institutions that use RSD can benefit by rewarding indifference, but should choose how to do so carefully."

I wrote about another of Dan's papers with Pete Troyan yesterday, which is Pete's job market paper.

Pete Troyan (job market candidate) on the rural hospital problem (among other things)

Among the economists I'm engaged with on the job market this year is Pete Troyan. You should think about hiring him.  His job market paper is

Market Design under Distributional Constraints: Diversity in School Choice and Other Applications (with Daniel Fragiadakis)

Abstract:

"Distributional constraints are important in many market design settings. Prominent examples include the minimum manning requirements at each branch in military cadet matching and diversity in school choice, whereby school districts impose constraints on the demographic distribution of students at each school. Standard assignment mechanisms implemented in practice are unable to accommodate all of these constraints. This leads policymakers to resort to ad-hoc solutions that eliminate blocks of seats ex-ante (before agents submit their preferences) to ensure that all constraints are satisfied ex-post. 

We show that these solutions ignore important information contained in the submitted preferences, resulting in avoidable inefficiency. We introduce a new class of dynamic quotas mechanisms that allow the institutional quotas to dynamically adjust to the submitted preferences of the agents. We show how a wide class of mechanisms commonly used in the field can be adapted to our dynamic quotas framework. Focusing in particular on a new dynamic quotas deferred acceptance (DQDA) mechanism, we show that DQDA Pareto dominates current solutions. While it may seem that allowing the quotas to depend on the submitted preferences would compromise the strategyproofness of deferred acceptance, we show that this is not the case: as long as the order in which the quotas are adjusted is determined exogenously to the preferences, DQDA remains strategyproof. Thus, policymakers can be confident that efficiency will be improved without introducing perverse incentives. Simulations with school choice data are used to quantify the potential efficiency gains."

I'll get a chance to blog about another of his papers when I post on Dan Fragiadakis, as they have another joint paper (an experiment) that is Dan's job market paper.