What crops compete with wine grapes? (Spoiler, it's houses.)

 As the wine business faces headwinds, both from climate change and from reduction in American alcohol consumption, vineyards are changing hands.  What is the new crop?  Houses...

The Mercury News has the story:

Housing plans in pricey Saratoga get lift from $100 million-plus deal
Homes are slated to be built on site of century-old vineyard By George Avalos

"The group bought the land in June 2025 for $30.6 million and embarked on a process to secure approval for a residential project on the property, which began operating as a vineyard around 1920.

Initially, the Wilson-led group proposed a 231-unit project known as Vineyard One at the corner of Chester Avenue and Allendale Avenue.

A series of negotiations with Saratoga planners and leaders eventually downsized the project to the current proposal that envisions a 64-unit housing development.

Of the 64 homes, 52 will be single-family residences for sale and 12 will be accessory dwelling units. Six of the ADUs will be rented to very low-income households, and six will be rented to moderate-income households, planning files show. 

...

"The purchase and development plans have materialized at a time when the median price of a home in Saratoga is around $3.9 million, far higher than the California median price of $930,260 and the Santa Clara County median home price of $1.6 million, according to Redfin. 

Origins and Consequences of the Trump Administration’s Humanitarian, Refugee, and Immigration Policies, by Kerwin, Carlson and Wheeler in J. Migration and Human Security

 Read it and weep:(

The Origins, Consequences, and Uncertain Legacy of the Trump Administration’s Humanitarian, Refugee, and Immigration Policies: A Comprehensive Analysis, Journal on Migration and Human Security, by 
Donald Kerwin, Elizabeth Carlson, and Charles Wheeler  

"Executive Summary: This paper documents and analyzes the origins, consequences, and uncertain legacy of the second Trump administration’s humanitarian assistance, refugee, and immigration policies. Its first section introduces the administration’s signature policies, which both build upon and sharply depart from those of recent administrations, Republican and Democratic. Its second section recounts how nativist language and tropes centered Donald Trump’s rise and return to power, and how they inform the administration’s refugee and immigration agenda. Its third section discusses the laws and jurisprudence that laid the groundwork for these policies. It outlines the growth in immigration enforcement spending and authorities over multiple presidencies. In addition, it highlights the first Trump administration’s refugee and immigration policies, and describes the sweeping executive orders (EOs) that inaugurated the second Trump administration. The fourth section examines the legal theories offered in support of the administration’s policies, how they have fared in U.S. courts, and the effects of these policies on targeted populations, U.S. families, businesses, and communities. The fifth section sets forth several themes that unify these policies:
•    A highly selective and instrumental view of the rule of law.
•    Cruelty as a guiding principle and strategy.
•    Hostility to programs and policies intended to benefit the poor and persecuted, regardless of their status.
•    The failure to address neuralgic problems in the U.S. immigration system or to pursue humanitarian, refugee, and legal immigration policies that serve the nation’s values, needs, and interests.
 

"The paper urges a return to fundamental American values and commitments. It concludes with detailed recommendations to guide the development of strengthened and integrated U.S. humanitarian, refugee, asylum, and immigration policies. "

 

And, from the introduction:

"President George Washington hoped the fledgling nation would become a “safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong” (Washington 1788). The Trump administration indefinitely suspended, dismantled, and brought to a virtual standstill the U.S. refugee resettlement program. This program revitalized U.S. communities, saved more than three million lives, offered hope to desperate persons throughout the world, and enhanced the nation’s standing (Kerwin and Nicholson 2021). The administration also vowed to review the cases of and re-interview refugees admitted under the Biden administration, and to suspend consideration of applications for lawful permanent resident (LPR) status by refugees and their family members who entered during this period (American Immigration Lawyers Association [AILA] 2025). Its subsequent Operation Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening (“Operation PARRIS”) entailed warrant-less entries, searches, apprehensions, detention in abusive conditions, and extreme vetting of already vetted and resettled refugees.¹

The second Trump administration also foreclosed legal access to the United States by asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, suspended adjudication of pending asylum applications, terminated the removal proceedings of asylum-seekers (placing them in expedited removal), and removed many to perilous conditions (Human Rights First and RAICES [HRF and RAICES] 2026, 3, 10, 17).

Past administrations supported time and place restrictions on access to the U.S. asylum system, particularly in response to large numbers of border crossers, but no administration (prior to the Trump administration) made “physical presence” in the United States “a prerequisite” to seeking asylum at a U.S. port-of-entry.² As an additional barrier to pursuing an asylum claim, the administration imposed multiple fees on asylum-seekers (a first) and increased fees for temporary status on humanitarian grounds,³ To address the high volume of pending asylum cases, the administration could have taken steps to remedy the conditions displacing so many people and it could have built the infrastructure to adjudicate asylum cases expeditiously and fairly. It did not take either of these steps.

The administration also stripped temporary protected status (TPS) and humanitarian parole from an estimated 1.5 to 1.6 million persons (Bustillo and Martinez-Beltrán 2025c; Figueroa 2025). In doing so, it subjected legally present residents to deportation and possible return to their own troubled nations or to third countries where they had no ties and faced multiple perils. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has targeted, among other groups, beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who arrived in the country as children (García 2026). It has detained persons who should never have been placed in removal proceedings, such as those with pending visa petitions and humanitarian parole (HRF and Raices 2026, 5). While properly credited with reducing illegal migration, by one estimate the administration has cut 2.5 times more legal than illegal entries (Bier 2026a). The former includes asylum seekers, refugees, immigrant (permanent) visa recipients, and temporary visa beneficiaries, such as the spouses and fiancés of U.S. citizens, international students, and workers (ibid.).

President Ronald Reagan (1989), channeling John Winthrop, called the United States a shining “city on the upon a hill . . . teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” a city with doors “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” On January 14, 2026, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced it would pause visa processing from seventy-five countries, bringing to ninety-three the number of nations (a large number of them African) facing full or partial bars to admission (DOS 2026a; Bier 2026b). DOS (2026c) justified these bars as necessary to ensure that immigrants would not become a public charge or unlawfully use benefits (DOS 2026b). For legally present non-citizens, the administration has constructed a “paper wall” of administrative requirements and barriers that seek to prevent mostly low-income immigrants from advancing to permanent residence and citizenship."

Canada re-thinks medical aid in dying for psychiatric diseases

 A column in the Washington Post conveys the story:

With 76,475 dead, Canada appears to find its line on euthanasia
A parliamentary committee recommends against expanding it to psychiatric patients. By Charles Lane

 "In the decade since Canada legalized euthanasia, known there as medical assistance in dying, or MAID, its physician-assisted death regime has developed into one of the most permissive in the world. Between 2016 and 2024, 76,475 Canadians received lethal doses from doctors or nurse practitioners. The 16,499 cases in 2024 accounted for 1 out of 20 deaths in Canada. In some regions of Quebec, the rate is 13 out of 100. 

"Now, however, Canada might finally be maxing out on MAID. On June 17, a special parliamentary committee recommended that the government “indefinitely exclude” patients whose only medical condition is a psychiatric one such as depression or schizophrenia. Pro-euthanasia activists had urged that MAID eligibility be expanded to include them, but “safe and equitable implementation” of MAID in such cases is simply not possible, the committee said.

... 

"The committee also took the testimony of doctors from the Netherlands, one of two countries (Belgium is the other) where psychiatric euthanasia has long been allowed as part of a broader MAID regime — and where it has recently gone from rare exception to troublingly frequent occurrence. Nearly 850 people have received lethal injections for psychiatric suffering there since 2020, including teenagers as young as 16.

In fact, at roughly the same time as the Canadian commission issued its report, the Dutch themselves were tapping the brakes on psychiatric euthanasia. The Netherlands’ main professional organization for psychiatrists has issued new guidelines requiring stricter prior scrutiny for euthanasia requests." 

############

 Here is the Canadian parliamentary report:

MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IN DYING AND MENTAL DISORDER AS THE SOLE UNDERLYING MEDICAL CONDITION: A COMPLEX AND CHALLENGING CONVERSATION AMONG CANADIANS
Report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying
Hon. Yonah Martin and Marcus Powlowsk, Co-chairs.

"Ultimately, the committee makes the following recommendation:
Recommendation 1
That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying. "

The first minutes after being informed of a Nobel prize

 Here's a one-minute BBC audio recording that somehow found its way into my news feed, of me being queried on the phone in the minutes after the announcement of the 2012 Nobel Prize.  It must have been around 4am in California, and you can tell I wasn't prepared to answer the questions :)

Alvin Roth glad to share Nobel Prize with Lloyd Shapley 

"The Nobel Foundation cited the US academics for their work on the "theory of stable allocations and practice of market design".

 

Here's a transcript I made now with the voice recorder app on my iPhone: I put "..." wherever the transcript has me in a long pause or re-starting a sentence (it's apparentI was answering these questions for the first time...)

"No, it wasn't expected, but, ... it certainly was expected that Lloyd Shapley should win the prize. It would have been a grave oversight if he did not, so I'm glad to share it with him.
 

Caller: So, what does this prize mean to you and your profession?
 

... I don't know yet. ... of course, it sheds a bright spotlight on the work...

Caller: So that's a good thing.

You know, my colleagues and I work in an area that we're calling market design, which is sort of a newish area of economics, and I'm sure that when I go to class this morning, my students will pay more attention...

Caller:Yeah, that's a good thing, isn't it?  I know it's early in the morning, but I will ask you anyway.  Can you tell us of the reasons for your interest in this field of economic theory?

...

Well, ...you can't be an economist without noticing all the interesting things that we don't understand about the way economy works.

So, ... this is a prize for matching, and many of the most important things we do in our lives, from getting into university, to getting married, to getting jobs, are matching.  So, I think it's a very natural thing to be interested in, and I'm privileged to have been able to study it." 

When is someone dead? (dead enough to donate organs?)

 Transplantation of deceased-donor organs has made us rethink the notion of death itself.  What does it mean that a person is dead, while organs are still sufficiently alive to be transplanted?  In particular, if death is declared due to cessation of heartbeat, what does it mean if the heart can be transplanted and re-started in another patient's body?  Does it mean the donor wasn't really dead?  

These questions were very front of mind when heart transplants first began in the late 1960's. Those debates were resolved by the legal recognition of brain death, so that a patient could be recognized as dead while still having a heartbeat.   And for years, most deceased donation occurred after brain death.  But these issues are once again controversial, as transplants of all organs are growing not just after brain death, but increasingly from Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD).  

Vox has the (long but very clearly written) story:

The breakthrough changing how Americans donate organs
A growing form of donation is expanding the organ supply in the US — and testing how medicine protects dying patients. by Pratik  Pawar

"In the last decade, DCD has gone from a rare practice to something that now accounts for nearly half of all organ donors who have died in the United States. In 2000, DCD donors supplied just 219 organs (kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts, and pancreas combined) to the transplantation system in the US. In 2025, DCD brought in close to 17,000 organs. (Most transplanted organs, about 85 percent, come from dead donors, though some organs, most often kidneys, can also come from living donors.) 
 

"That growth has saved lives, but it has also pushed transplant medicine into an unusually sensitive moment: the time after a family has decided to let their loved one die but before death has actually occurred.
 

"In brain-death donation, a patient has already been declared dead before the possibility of donation is raised with the family. Because most brain-dead donors are on ventilators, with machines supplying oxygenated blood to their organs, transplant teams can take their time with the donation process.
 

"DCD doesn’t offer that same cushion. Because organs deteriorate so quickly after circulation ceases, the work of donation — the testing, matching, surgical teams flying in — has to be set in motion once the family has decided to withdraw life support but before the patient has died.
 

"This is where the tension in DCD begins. The process pushes transplantation into the narrow interval between that decision to let someone die and the moment death occurs. It creates a situation with almost no parallel in medicine: one set of hands caring for the dying, even as another prepares to recover and transplant their organs."

Prediction markets, polling, and insider trading

 My book about controversial markets has attracted some interest from people following prediction markets.  Here's another recent interview.

 

Nobel Winner Alvin Roth Sizes Up Prediction Markets: 'I Don't Know If They Do Better On Elections Than Polls'  by Daragh Thomas  

In an interview with Benzinga after the release of his new book Moral Economics, Stanford economist Alvin Roth said the strongest use-case for the technology may not be public platforms like Polymarket or Kalshi, but inside corporations. He described a scenario where engineers building a product know about delays that senior executives, working from optimistic reports, do not. A prediction market inside the company can get the information to the top faster. 

...

"He said election markets are unlikely to face serious insider-trading risk, but neither are they guaranteed to beat good polling. “I don’t know that prediction markets do a lot better on elections than good polls do,” he said.

"He flagged a different concern: manipulation. State actors or well-funded propaganda operations could push large sums into a market to engineer a favorable price."

...

"Securities markets exist in part to help companies raise capital, he said, which requires public trust. Prediction markets do not carry the same burden, so the harm from insider activity is less clear.

"He added that if real insider trading is happening off political news, the likelier venue is the commodities market. “The price of Brent Crude moves rapidly when the president says something,” Roth said." 

*********

Earlier: 

Tuesday, June 30, 2026  Sports Betting, Prediction Markets, and ‘Repugnant Transactions’--a conversation at Covers.com

 

Coffee (and) science: medicine and climate change

 First the good medical news for coffee drinkers, from MedpageToday and the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology:

Coffee Lovers and Their Livers Can Celebrate, Study Suggests — Five or more cups a day linked to the greatest benefit  by Mike Bassett, Staff Writer, MedPage Today 

"Coffee consumption has been linked to a number of health benefits, such as reduced risks of dementia, head and neck cancer, and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.
According to data from the U.K. Biobank, a higher intake of coffee was associated with lower risks of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and liver-related mortality.
These associations persisted for both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, and for unsweetened and sweetened coffee."

 

Here's the journal article: Kim H, Rezaee-Zavareh M, Wang Y ...
Coffee Consumption and Improved Liver Outcomes: Clinical, Imaging, and Proteomic Evidence From the UK Biobank, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 2026;  

 

#######

 And here's more sobering news, published in Nature, about how climate change threatens coffee cultivation:

Coffee is under threat: how scientists are fighting to save it from extinction
Coffee plants are critically endangered by climate change. Researchers are finding solutions to keep scientists supplied with their favourite discovery fuel.   By Davide Castelvecchi 

"Nearly all the 10 million tonnes of coffee beans consumed annually around the world come from two plant species: the strong and often bitter robusta (Coffea canephora) and the more delicate-tasting arabica (Coffea arabica). Unfortunately, arabica suffers or dies when temperatures rise just a few degrees1, and robusta requires massive amounts of water and its yields drop drastically in a drought.

...

"Tesfaye says that scientists, of all people, should care about coffee’s future, not just because science is good for coffee, but because coffee is good for science, too. “Many discoveries and knowledge are generated after having a cup of coffee.” 

“Voluntary, Unpaid, and Handsomely Rewarded: Donor Benefits in the World's Whole-Blood Systems,” by Krawiec and Roth

 Around the world, "non-compensation" of blood donors allows for a variety of incentives.

Kimberly D. Krawiec and Alvin E. Roth, “Voluntary, Unpaid, and Handsomely Rewarded: Donor Benefits in the World's Whole-Blood Systems,” SSRN, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2026-12,  1 July 2026, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7030818  

 Abstract
The ideal of the unpaid blood donor is nearly universal; the practice is more complicated. Whole-blood systems around the world preserve a formal commitment to voluntary, nonremunerated donation-and then provide donors with gift cards, sweepstakes entries, cash "expense allowances," paid leave, tax relief, priority service, medals, and, in some places, extra points on a child's school exam. This Essay maps the gap between label and practice. Drawing on examples from thirteen countries spanning five continents, it organizes donor benefits by institutional mechanism: gift cards and sweepstakes; direct monetary transfers; paid work leave; other material and recognition-based benefits; and replacement donation and the informal cash markets it can generate. We demonstrate that "voluntary, nonremunerated donation" frequently coexists with substantial material benefits. Whole-blood donors nearly always receive something of value in exchange for their generosity; what varies is how those benefits are structured, funded, routed, and legally classified. 

 

Jurisdiction	Representative donor benefits	Legal classification / routing
United States	Nontransferable gift cards; sweepstakes (e.g., Super Bowl LX trip; $5,000–$7,000 raffles); promotional items (shirts, mugs, bags, movie tickets).	“Volunteer donor” label retained where benefits are not readily convertible to cash; sweepstakes framed as “no donation necessary.”
South Korea	Promotional K-pop photo cards; vendor and restaurant vouchers (5,000–8,000 won); merchandise; transferable blood-donation card.	Prohibited “consideration” distinguished from “commemorative gifts” and donor encouragement.
Kazakhstan	~$18.75 (2 MCI) for reimbursable donation; ~$2.34 meal equivalent for gratuitous donation.	Categorized as payment; reimbursable donation invited for shortages and rare types.
Bulgaria	Payment in narrow statutory cases (shortage, vaccine/serum/immunoglobulin production, research/diagnostics).	Voluntary/unremunerated rule with “against payment” exceptions.
Germany	Direct monetary transfers at some collection centers; refreshments and health checks only at DRK.	“Aufwandsentschädigung” (expense allowance), set per collection service.
China	Family exam-point awards (Pujiang: 1–3 points); platelet shopping cards $31–$386; paid leave, tax benefits; prepaid phone/transport cards, movie tickets.	“Gratuitous” system plus “appropriate subsidies”; tolerated monetary-equivalent and family-directed rewards.
South Africa	Data/streaming vouchers, raffles, merchandise; private wellness rewards (Discovery Vitality, Momentum, Bonitas).	Donor benefits supplied through blood-service promotions and private wellness programs.
Brazil	One paid day off per 12 months (private employees); donation-day leave (public servants); 120-day priority service at banks, hospitals, etc.	Donation converted into paid-leave entitlement and legally recognized priority status.
Spain	Donor medals, honors, and milestone recognition.	Recognition-based; no direct monetary transfer.
India	Replacement donation; illicit “professional donor” cash market.	Patient-side payment associated with replacement donation.
Nigeria	Tokens, certificates, badges, transport refunds; in practice 68% family replacement and 12.2% commercial donors.	Patient-side payment associated with replacement donation; commercial donors openly reported in donor categories.
Sierra Leone	Predominantly family replacement donors (~90%); paid donors recorded as replacement donors.	Patient-side payment associated with replacement donation; paid donors recorded as family replacement donors.
Argentina	Post-donation meal; medical certificate; 24-hour work-absence justification; 2026 shift away from replacement model.	Statutory donor benefits plus replacement-donation phase-out.

 

"If there is a lesson in this tour of the world’s whole-blood systems, it is that “voluntary, nonremunerated donation” is a phrase asked to carry a great deal of freight. It accommodates a $7,000 gift card, so long as the gift card is offered through a sweepstakes that does not require a blood donation to enter. It accommodates €60 in cash, so long as the cash is legally categorized as an expense allowance. It accommodates extra points on a child’s high-school entrance exam, paid leave, free public transit, priority service at the bank, and a tote bag—often all while the governing statute insists that blood may not be given for reward. "

The Transactions We’re Not Allowed To Have, in conversation with Brian Keating on the Into The Impossible Podcast

  The Transactions We’re Not Allowed To Have, in conversation with Brian Keating on the Into The Impossible Podcast

 

 A Nobel laureate in economics argues the bans we pass to protect our morals are quietly killing people and the data backs him up. Why the line between a market we allow and one we forbid is mostly an accident of disgust. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

My guest won the 2012 Nobel Prize for designing the systems that match kidney donors to patients who would otherwise die waiting.

We cover why it’s easy to buy heroin but hard to hire a hitman, what surrogacy bans actually do to the babies they’re meant to protect, why paying kidney donors could end a shortage that kills thousands a year, and the trade-off statement he wants every lawmaker to say out loud.

He has been called an organ trafficker. He explains why that’s the point.

What you’ll hear:

Why banning something that people want often makes it more dangerous

The kidney market America won’t build and what that silence costs

What the hitman vs. heroin ban asymmetry tells us about effective prohibition

The McCormick statement: the trade-off acknowledgment most policy debates refuse to make

How prediction markets are eroding the boundary between public and private information

Whether Milton Friedman was right to be embarrassed by the economics Nobel

There’s no such thing as a solution. There are only trade-offs.

CHAPTERS

00:00  Who gets called an organ trafficker?

02:26  What makes a transaction repugnant?

03:14  Why bans without support create black markets

03:36  Heroin is easy. Hitmen are not. Why?

04:44  Prohibition, NASCAR, and moonshine

07:26  Surrogacy: legal here, criminal in Europe

12:30  When money turns something legal into a crime

14:28  Can religion corrupt a market?

15:56  Who actually pays for college?

21:38  The Enhanced Games: drugs as a marketing platform

25:30  Adderall, Erd0151s, and the science of getting sharper

30:58  Why AI makes market congestion worse before better

35:00  100,000 kidney failures a year. 30,000 transplants.

36:44  Portland decriminalized heroin. It failed.

39:22  The trade-off statement politicians refuse to make

41:14  Can you legalize sex work and shrink trafficking?

47:42  Kahneman chose to die. Who should decide?

48:30  Should we put GLP-1 drugs in the water?

56:12  America is the Saudi Arabia of blood plasma

01:00:54  Prediction markets and inside information

01:01:34  Sports gambling is more addictive than it looks

01:11:40  Peter Nobel called economics a marketing stunt

01:13:32  Is economics a real science?

Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

 

Featured Guest:

Alvin Roth website: https://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/

Moral Economics (book): https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Economics-Prostitution-Controversial-Transactions/dp/1541702018
 

A roadmap for international kidney exchange in India

  India, which performs the third most kidney transplants in the world (after only the U.S. and China) is a natural location for international kidney exchange on a global scale.  Here's a brief outline of the legal, administrative and procedural obstacles that need to be overcome on the way.

Kashiv, Pranjal MD, DM1; Balwani, Manish Ramesh MD2; Kute, Vivek B.3. International Kidney Paired Donation: Implications for India and Other Low- and Middle-income Countries. Transplantation ():10.1097/TP.0000000000005807, June 26, 2026. | DOI: 10.1097/TP.0000000000005807  

Another NBA Player Charged With Rigging Games for Gamblers

 Bets on a particular player's performance open the door to sinister influences in sports.

The WSJ has the story:

Another NBA Player Charged With Rigging Games for Gamblers
According to a federal indictment, Malik Beasley was in debt to a former teammate when he agreed to help gamblers by manipulating his own performance. By Jared Diamond  and Robert O’Connell 

"The government’s indictment identifies four games during the 2023-24 season where it said Beasley agreed to participate in the scam. Beasley had allegedly accumulated millions of dollars in gambling losses and, at times, owed money to Davis, a retired forward who played with Beasley on the Minnesota Timberwolves during the 2020-21 campaign. In return for fixing his games, Beasley would have his bill to Davis reduced or eliminated, according to the indictment. 

"The charges against the 29-year-old Beasley are yet another example of a prominent NBA player swept up in illegal gambling activities—and the implications for the league are chilling. On Jan. 26, 2024, the day Jontay Porter removed himself from a Toronto Raptors game with a fake injury so his conspirators would win bets, there was another game on the take 500 miles away. (Porter has since pleaded guilty to federal charges and is awaiting sentencing.) 

...

"Once Beasley was on board, the next question was which games to target. The government says the gamblers specifically looked for non-marquee games—far from the NBA’s nationally televised showcases on ESPN and TNT—where Beasley could manipulate his performance.

“It’s better not to be on tv for us,” one defendant wrote in a group chat.

"There was also infighting among the group, with some bettors chasing big paydays while others settled for more modest wins. At one point, one defendant accused another of betting so much that he single-handedly altered the lines, which risked drawing suspicions from authorities. "

Sports Betting, Prediction Markets, and ‘Repugnant Transactions’--a conversation at Covers.com

 I was recently interviewed at the gambling hyper-site Covers.com about the growth of sports gambling both on dedicated sites and on prediction markets.

A Nobel Laureate Talks Sports Betting, Prediction Markets, and ‘Repugnant Transactions’ by Geoff Zochodne -  "Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin E. Roth has published a new book that can help put the raging debates about sports betting into a very relatable context." 

"It’s not often, or ever, you see a Nobel Laureate writing about his ties to match-fixing. 

That is until you see Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin E. Roth writing in his new book that he feels “a certain connection” to point-shaving. It's just for reasons that have less to do with economics or match-manipulation and more because of a shared name.

Another Alvin Roth, nicknamed "Fats," was banned from the NBA because of a college basketball point-shaving scandal that came to light in the early 1950s.

“He (Fats) was also sentenced to jail, but a judge permitted him to join the army instead,” Roth writes in his recently released book “Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work.”   

...

Roth spoke to Covers over the phone recently about his book and his framework for approaching “repugnant transactions,” which, yes, can include sports betting. 

“Remember that when I say something is repugnant, I don't mean that I don't like it or that you shouldn't like it,” Roth said. “I mean that some people don't like it, and I think that gambling falls squarely into that category. Lots of people like to gamble, and lots of people, other people, think they shouldn't be allowed to, so it's a repugnant transaction, and there have been laws of all sorts allowing or banning it. And we've gone back and forth with the United States on lotteries, and more recently on sports betting.”  

...

“I fear that online gambling will have much to teach us about addiction,” Roth writes.  

...

Again, gambling is not the focus of Roth’s work. Nor are prediction markets, which critics often describe as a new form of gambling. Yet Roth says one of the things he writes about is that it is hard to ban something in a given jurisdiction when it’s legally available and within reach in another jurisdiction.

“And, of course, the internet makes everybody a neighbor to everybody else,” Roth says. 

In other words, the fact that prediction markets have popped up offering de facto sports wagering in states that have yet to legalize sports betting is not some new phenomenon. It’s all in keeping with society’s ongoing tug-of-war with morally contested markets. You can ban, you can regulate, but somebody will probably be unhappy in the end with what you’ve done and may still seek out what you’ve forbidden or restricted.