Support from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and from the National Science Foundation (NSF)

The current newsletter of the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation has taken note of the early support that Ido Erev and I received from them, and I'm very happy to acknowledge it. I wonder how widespread are binational science foundations?

Alvin Roth's New Book and NPR Interview

"Roth is a pioneer in the field of game theory and experimental economics and in their application to the design of new economic institutions. Early in his career, he and Prof. Ido Erev from the Technion received BSF funding on three different occasions for their work on how reinforcement learning can make useful predictions in experimental games."

They also quote me in an NPR interview, about kidney exchange, saying
“I kind of think of economists as being helpers here,” he said. “We have some ideas, but we don't do any of the surgeries.”
*************

The NSF also takes note of the support it has given to Nobel laureates, and I am certainly grateful for the support I received:
NSF-funded Nobel Prize winners in science through 2015

ECONOMICS
1970 – Paul A. Samuelson*
1972 – Kenneth J. Arrow*
1973 – Wassily Leontief
1975 – Tjalling C. Koopmans
1978 – Herbert A. Simon
1980 – Lawrence R. Klein
1981 – James Tobin
1982 – George J. Stigler
1983 – Gerard Debreu
1985 – Franco Modigliani
1986 – James M. Buchanan Jr.
1987 – Robert M. Solow
1992 – Gary S. Becker
1993 – Robert W. Fogel, Douglass C. North
1994 – John C. Harsanyi, John F. Nash*
1995 – Robert E. Lucas
1997 – Robert C. Merton
1998 – Amartya Sen
1999 – Robert A. Mundell
2000 – James J. Heckman, Daniel L. McFadden
2001 – George Akerlof, Michael Spence, Joseph Stiglitz
2002 – Daniel Kahneman, Vernon Smith
2003 – Robert C. Engle, Clive W. Granger
2004 - Finn E. Kydland, Edward C. Prescott
2005 – Robert J. Aumann, Thomas C. Schelling
2006 – Edmund S. Phelps
2007 – Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson
2008 – Paul Krugman
2009 – Elinor Ostrom, Oliver E. Williamson
2010 – Peter A. Diamond, Dale Mortensen
2011 – Thomas J. Sargent, Christopher A. Sims
2012 – Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley
2013 – Eugene F. Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, Robert J. Shiller
2014 – Jean Tirole
2015 – Angus Deaton

* Received NSF support after receiving Nobel Prize.

Israeli law internships serve multiple purposes, as recent changes make clear

Internships and pre-licensing employment under other names serves multiple purposes. One purpose is to train future professionals. Another might be to limit entry into a profession. Both things seem to be at issue with law internships in Israel.

Ynet has the story:
New two-year internship challenges Israeli law students
While senior lawyers welcome new regulations announced by Justice Minister Shaked, law students complain internship is akin to 'modern slavery.'

"Israeli law students will now have to complete a two-year internship in order to become certified lawyers as part of new regulations announced by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Tuesday.

"The current requirement is of a one-year internship. The new regulations will come into effect for all students starting law studies this fall.

"In her remarks at the annual conference of the Israel Bar Association, Shaked clarified that the process of being admitted to the bar would now take five years including studies.

"I decided to extend the length of the required internship period to two years believing that law students will be much better qualified and prepared to take their bar exam, and will have to show a great deal of dedication in order to become lawyers," Shaked said.

"This will lead to a decline in the number of lawyers, and an increase in their professional expertise," she concluded."

School Choice: video of an interview I did in Israel

Here's an interview I did while in Israel in April, mostly about school choice (but also about some of my personal history, game theory, etc.) It starts at minute 4:00 of this news broadcast, and goes until minute 12:45...

EduAction conference in Israel

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and me, yesterday.

I just returned from the EduAction conference in Israel, where I got to talk to the Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat about school choice, and to hear about the school choice program he implemented when he became mayor.

Jerusalem Conference on Education and Economics, April 29

I'm on my way to Israel, to participate in a conference on Education and Economics.

The webpage, in Hebrew, is here: כנס ירושלים לחינוך וכלכלה, 29.4  (Jerusalem Conference on Education and Economics, April 29)

I will participate late in the day, in a conversation with the mayor of Jerusalem, followed by the President.

19:00: Nobel laureate in economics for 2012, Professor Alvin Roth , a conversation with the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat , education and implementation of economic theories in the public sector.

19:30: Address by President Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin
************

I gather that this last session may be carried on Channel 2, although I expect that my conversation with the mayor will be conducted in English. (I also expect that it will focus on school choice.)
*****
Update: here's the coverage from the Jerusalem Post
Dovrat worries Education portfolio has become a booby prize

Redesigning the Israeli Medical Internship Match

Israel has a new system for allocating medical intern positions. It's quite different from the system in the U.S., in large part because hospitals are passive. Assaf Romm and Avinatan Hassidim are playing a big role in the design of several markets in Israel, and some papers just appeared on this one in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research:

Original research article   

Assigning Israeli Medical Graduates to Internships

Slava Bronfman, Avinatan Hassidim, Arnon Afek, Assaf Romm, Rony Sherberk, Ayal Hassidim, Anda MasslerIsrael Journal of Health Policy Research 2015, 4:6 (20 March 2015)

Abstract | Provisional PDF| Editor’s summary

Commentary   

The redesign of the medical intern assignment mechanism in Israel

Alvin E Roth, Ran I ShorrerIsrael Journal of Health Policy Research 2015, 4:11 (25 March 2015)

Abstract | Provisional PDF| Editor’s summary

Assaf Romm writes:

"Every year about 500 medical students in Israel are assigned to 23 different hospitals in Israel for an internship (in Hebrew this phase is called סטאז') that lasts one year. Unlike the American market, in which both interns have preferences over being hired by different hospitals, and hospitals have preferences over hiring different resident, in Israel the market is one-sided, and hospitals (which are owned by the government) are not allowed to express their preferences. The reason for that is that the Ministry of Health (MoH) does not want the better medical students to do their internships in the big cities (Tel Aviv and Jerusalem) only, but instead prefers to scatter across the country. Then again, students do have diverse preferences because of family issues or other issues, and we would like to accommodate those preferences if possible. There is also the option of being matched as a couple, and in 2014 there were 24 couples in the market.

In the past the MoH employed the random serial dictatorship mechanism (RSD). Ex-post trades (with no monetary transfers) were allowed, which created a black market (with monetary transfers) for internships in Tel-Aviv and other highly demanded places. This led to MoH banning trading positions if one of the positions traded was ranked in the first to fourth places by the intern that received it through RSD.

Last year our team helped in redesigning the mechanism. The change was meant to improve the efficiency of the results, by moving from RSD which is ex-post efficient, to a mechanism which is rank-efficient (see Featherstone C., 2014, working paper). Using surveys we tried to assess interns' "utilities" from being assigned to differently ranked hospitals, and then we were able to maximize a linear program given those weights (while making sure, per the student body's demands, that no student's "utility" goes below her RSD allocation).

The interesting thing from a theory standpoint is that most of the algorithms that we know of and that provide an ordinally-efficient result require Birkhoff-von Neumann (BvN) decomposition. However, when there are couples in the market it can be shown that some matrices cannot be decomposed to a convex combination of valid "permutation" matrices. Furthermore, the problem of determining whether a matrix can be decomposed is NP-complete. We decided to consider algorithms that approximately decompose matrices, i.e., they result in a convex combination of valid matrices, but the sum of the combination is only very similar to the original matrix, and not exactly equal to the original matrix.

We were able to prove a lower bound on the distance between the approximation and the original matrix, and then came up with an approximation algorithm that manages to almost exactly hit this lower-bound. We tested the algorithm on actual data (and bootstrapped data) from recent years and showed it performs very well.

The new algorithm was deployed last year and was since used three times. The responses were very good, and we've also seen (as expected) a major improvement in rank distribution. MoH has agreed to continue running the new mechanism in the coming years. The student body related to the 2015 lottery also voted for continuing with the new mechanism. (We also ran a survey on medical interns that took part in the match, but unfortunately participation was very low.)

This project is summarized in two papers: the first one above in the IJHPR, and this one:

* Redesigning the Israeli Medical Internship Match (Noga Alon, Slava Bronfman, Avinatan Hassidim and Assaf Romm) - Intended for Economics and CS audience. Includes detailed introduction about the market, analysis of interns' preferences, the NPC result, the approximation algorithm, and simulations that show performance on preference data."

Jacob Lavee on preventing transplant tourism, in the birthplace of transplantation

Jacob Lavee, about whom I've written numerous posts, was just in Boston as the 8th Annual Joseph E. Murray Visiting Professor in Transplant Surgery, to speak about "Preventing transplant tourism: A personal voyage which shaped the Organ Transplant Law in Israel."

Matchmakers for religious schools in Israel

Assaf Romm writes

"The following article in Hebrew tells the story of the Haredi (ultra orthodox jewish) "yeshiva ktana" (=~ elementary school) students and the way they get accepted into "yeshiva gdola" (=~ high school):

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4587559,00.html

The interesting parts are that there are many-to-one matchmakers that make a lot of money by cutting deals between students and high schools, and between elementary schools and high schools. For example, a deal can be getting a group of students from the same elementary school in which there are 12 excellent students and 3 mediocre students to an excellent high school, or paying the matchmaker certain amount of money for convincing excellent students to come to a certain high school. There are also reports of some of the students joining in by going to the matchmakers/elementary school teachers and asking to share the profit. Finally, there are also some mentions of unraveling, and an agreement to not start recruiting students before a certain date.

My thoughts about this: a centralized computer system might not be a good idea in this case, because of this population's complete mistrust in technology, because there isn't any centralized organization that governs all these activities, and because the transfers may make it very hard to achieve near-strategyproofness for both sides, which could be extremely important here."

Religion and deceased donation in Israel

The NY Times accompanies its story on kidney brokers with one on why deceased donation is complicated in Israel
A Clash of Religion and Bioethics Complicates Organ Donation in Israel

The story begins with a photo from the funeral of the soccer player Avi Cohen, who was a registered organ donor at the time of his death, but whose organs weren't donated when religious objections to brain death were raised.

" In the Book of Genesis, it is written that when the great flood submerged the land it extinguished “all in whose nostrils was the breath of life.” Across nearly 2,000 years of Talmudic debate, Jewish scholars have returned to that verse in holding that life ends at the moment when breathing stops. One 19th-century code instructed that if a person appeared lifeless, a light feather was to be placed before his nose: “If it does not flutter,” the text advised, “he is certainly dead.”

The sages could not have anticipated that their writings would provide the underpinnings for cultural resistance to organ donation from the deceased in 21st-century Israel. But their definition of mortality, which can conflict with modern acceptance of brain death, is cited among several reasons Israel has among the lowest rates of deceased organ donation of any developed country."

Two new labor market matching mechanisms in Israel: for psychologists, and doctors

Assaf Romm writes from Israel about the newly instituted stable matching clearinghouse for psychologists, and more briefly about the new match for Israeli doctors.

"Hello Al,

First, it was good seeing you in Israel, and it seems like you were very strategic with choosing the dates for the summer school... We are fine here, even if slightly alarmed by all the alarms. Hopefully we'll reach a cease-fire soon enough.

More market design related, let me tell you about the Israeli psychologists match, which Avinatan Hassidim and I have helped redesigning over the last year. Last Thursday (July 10) was "match day" for the Israeli psychologists match. 970 registered students were matched to 52 MA programs in 12 institutions (universities and "michlalot"). Out of the 970 students that participated, 540 were matched to a program. Out of those, 314 (58.15%) got their first choice, and 518 (95.93%) got their fifth choice or better. From what we heard from programs, they were also very pleased with the process and the results, and would like to continue using the automated matching system for years to come. Furthermore, some of them specifically mentioned that using the new system allowed them stop being strategic, and receiving students that they wouldn't have received otherwise, because they were too much of a long shot (and so, not a good strategic choice under the old system).

---

The Israeli psychology match comes to solve a problem that the psychology departments had when competing over students for clinical psychology studies (in Israel, MA in psychology represent the first step in becoming a psychotherapist). While seats in clinical programs are in very high demand, there are two things that make the process slightly difficult. The first is the restrictions on accepting students (the state enforces quotas), and the second is the competition over top students.

This created in the past a problem of unraveling that was partially solved by a gentlemen agreement among all the psychology departments. The agreement consisted of three scheduled rounds of acceptance and wait listing, such that no department may accept a candidate in any other fashion. This system required the departments to be very strategic in offering acceptances, and often ended with a blitz of calling people from waiting lists before they were being called by others.

---

In May 2013 we approached the heads of the psychology departments, got them to convene and initiated a pilot run for an automated system of admissions for all the MA degrees in psychology in Israel (not including some less competitive programs, and including all the institutions that previously were part of the gentlemen agreement). After a year of designing, implementing, announcing, and finally actually managing the preferences submission process, we finally successfully reached the deadline and the pilot was a great success.

The main obstacles we encountered during the process were:

* Convincing programs that the new matching system will not be biased in favor of large/small programs.

* Convincing applicants that the system is strategyproof, and that it is better for them compared to the old system.

* Dealing with extensive courting behavior (i.e. scholarships being offered under the table, etc.).

* Supporting complicated preferences by the programs (minority quotas, several tracks within the same program).

* Couples (since there aren't many couples, we deferred dealing with couples to next year, and we will implement the algorithm suggested by Ashlagi, Braverman and Hassidim, forthcoming).

* Dealing with politics that have to do with programs approaching candidates and informally "admitting" them prior to the match (in theory, this should have almost zero influence, but in practice it creates a race of arms between the departments).

Up until now we only received a handful of emails from students who participated in the match, and it seems that in retrospect they understood the advantages of a fast and automated system, even if it wasn't clear to them in advance why they now have to submit their preferences without knowing where they were accepted. We plan on sending surveys soon to get a better feeling of the students' experience throughout this process, and possibly we will send a similar survey to the departments that participated.

---

This successful redesign is the second in Israel to happen this year. Earlier this year we (Slava Bronfman and Avinatan Hassidim being the main protagonists, with Arnon Afek, the current director-general of the ministry of health, and myself as side-kicks) have finished redesigning the Israeli medical internship match. If you are interested, I will write a different email explaining the details of that other match, and specifically the theoretical problems we have encountered and how we solved them."

School Choice in Israel

On Thursday, Atila Abdulkadiroglu and I attended and spoke at a conference on Controlled Parental School Choice in Tel Aviv, organized by the Israel Ministry of Education. A growing number of municipalities are using school choice, and we spoke of the importance of making it safe for families to reveal their preferences.

Private and public healthcare in Israel

In Israel, there is disagreement over the right ways to mix publicly funded health care and private insurance. Here's the story from Haaretz:
In dramatic decision, private medical care banned in Israel's public hospitals
Although committee headed by Health Minister Yael German banned private services, medical tourism is still allowed, though it is unclear to what extent.
By Roni Linder-Ganz | 16:39 25.06.14 |

"Private medical services, popularly known by the Hebrew acronym sharap, would no longer be permitted at government hospitals if the recommendations of a committee headed by Health Minister Yael German are adopted."

Here's an ungated report: Health Minister: No Private Care in Public Hospitals  

Health Minister (Yesh Atid) Yael German announced on Wednesday, 27 Sivan 5774 that after about a year of deliberation and meetings, the committee she headed has decided private “Sharap” (שר”פ – שרות רפואה פרטי) medical care would not be offered in the nation’s public hospitals.

German is a supporter of the Sharap service and during the months of meetings she tried to persuade her colleagues to vote in favor of the option, a move she feel would improve the nation’s healthcare as well as shorten waiting lines for appointments with experts.

However the committee decided against it for it believes it is better for the masses to place more of the health care burden on the government instead of the private citizen.

Globes reports that “supporters of private medicine included German herself; Penina Koren, the former head of her office in the Herzliya Municipality; National Economic Council chairman Prof. Eugene Kandel; health economist Prof. Jacob (Kobi) Glazer; Ministry of Health director general Prof. Arnon Afek; and Israel Medical Association Secretary General Leah Wapner. Opponents included former Ministry of Health deputy director general Prof. Gabi Bin-Nun, Prof. Leah Achdut from the Ruppin Academy, Ministry of Finance deputy budgets director Moshe Bar Siman Tov, and Adv. Adi Niv-Yaguda, a specialist in medical law”. If the Sharap plan would have been approved, it would have permitted choosing a specialist in a public hospital, which would also result in a shorter waiting period. Sharap is paid for by the patient, who may or may not have additional healthcare insurance to cover it. For example, a private visit today in Hadassah Hospital with a senior specialist under Sharap costs 1,150 NIS. Kupat Cholim Maccabi will reimburse a patient if s/he sees a senior physician whose name appears on the approved list in the amount of 80% or 616 shekels, whichever is lower.

Opponents feel that the top doctors are taking private patients during the hours they should be seeing HMO patients and therefore, those unable to pay for private medical care are left out in the cold with substandard care and long lines for an appointment or procedure.

-

A few years ago I blogged about a similar debate concerning Britain's National Health Service:

Monday, May 31, 2010

Money and medicine in Britain's National Health Service

The London Times reports NHS bars woman after she saw private doctor 

Surrogacy law in Israel

Apparently it is legal for heterosexual couples to pay surrogate mothers in Israel, but not for same sex couples, and there is legislation being proposed to change this. As usual, it's complicated.
Ministers will vote on surrogacy for gay couples

"The new surrogacy bill is up for vote: The Knesset Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs will discuss Health Minister Yael German's (Yesh Atid) bill Monday, allowing gay couples to use surrogacy services in Israel.
...
It is still unclear whether there will be a majority to pass the bill..
...
"According to the existing "surrogacy law", only heterosexual couples can have access to paid surrogacy. Two years ago the Mor-Yosef committee was asked to decide on the matter and ruled that gay couples should be allowed to use surrogacy under the condition that the surrogate mother is not paid.

"According to the new bill, Health Minister German supplements what she considers a "revolution," allowing gay couples paid surrogacy – much like heterosexual couples.

"This move – which is expected to bring great demand for surrogacy – is not free of limitations. Couples will be allowed to undergoing only two surrogacy procedures, the couples' mothers and grandmothers will not be allowed to be surrogates; however the possibility of having a family member as surrogate does expand to sisters and cousins.

"In addition the bill limits the age of men turning to surrogacy to 54 and not without limitation of age as it has been until now. On the other hand, the allowed surrogacy age has gone up to 38, two years more than what the existing law permits.

New transplant statistics from Israel

The Jerusalem Post has the story: Israel Transplant Center reaches all-time high in number of transplants, potential donors

"Last year brought good news to the Israel Transplant Center and to 392 people whose lives were saved by deceased and live donors.

There was an increase by 24 percent of live kidney donors; 56% of family members of deceased agreed to donate organs; 90,000 more people signed donor cards; and almost half of those who received organs from deceased donors were advanced in the queue because they had signed a donor card.

In addition, the first transplant of a small intestine was successfully performed and 637 corneas were also transplanted in 769 patients (some were split into parts), giving recipients the gift of sight, the center announced on Sunday.

Of the 143 requests to families whose loved ones suffered lower-brain death, 80 of them consented to give one or more organs. The families said it was important to save the lives of others, while the most common reason for refusal were “religious” – even though modern Orthodox clergymen say donating fulfills a very important positive commandment – and the concern that the body to be buried would “not be whole.”

The figure of 392 donated organs was the highest ever.

Of these, 104 of the donors were from live relatives (who gave a kidney or liver lobe), and the rest were from altruistic families who gave their loves ones’ organs.

Of 248 organs from deceased donors, 109 of the recipients had to wait less because they had previously signed up as potential donors. The number of patients waiting to receive a lifesaving organ dropped from 1,114 in 2012 to 1,075 in 2013.

Of the 109 recipients who were advanced in the queue, four received hearts, 25 received lungs, 13 received livers and 67 received kidneys.

Of the deceased donors, 112 were donors of kidneys, 10 of kidney-pancreases, 5 double kidneys (usually from elderly donors), 57 of livers, one liver and kidney, 13 hearts, 24 double lungs, 25 single lungs and one “domino” donation of a liver (when an organ or part of one is removed for the primary purpose of a person’s medical treatment and may prove suitable for transplant into another person)."

HT: Jay Lavee

Organ donor registration in Israel

Judd Kessler and I just got this email from Jacob Lavee (about whom I've written before), with good news that he kindly gave me permission to post:

Dear Al and Judd,

Just a short note to let you know that the Israeli Minister of Health has adopted this week my recommendation to establish by law the modified mandated choice model based upon your work, whereby the issuing or renewal of an ID, passport or driving license will be conditional upon answering the question of becoming a registered donor to which only a positive answer will be given as an option or else the “Continue” button will be selected. It seems that, contrary to my previous worries, the entire registration for these documents is currently being done online and therefore there should be no technical issues to implement this model.

Thank you guys for providing the proof of concept which I cited to the ministerial committee.

This model will be added upon the prioritization model, which is already implemented by law.

Jay
*******************

The work Jay is referring to is a paper, currently out for review at a journal that doesn't like prepublication on the web, "Don’t Take ‘No’ For An Answer: An experiment with actual organ donor registrations," which finds, in a study of the online MA state organ donor registry, that requiring potential donors to choose either "yes" or "no" when asked if they wish to be on the donor registry does not increase registrations, and seems likely to reduce the rate of donations by next of kin when the deceased is unregistered.

Horse meat served in an Israeli restaurant, with subsequent apologies

Here's the story from Haaretz: Psst! That's horse you're eating, Tel Aviv waiter admits
Turkiz serves horse regularly but didn't mention it in the dish description; waiter tells the couple what the menu didn't.

apparently the restaurant has horse meat on its menu, but left it out of the description of at least one dish.

(Many Israelis may share the American repugnance for eating horse, but an additional complication there is that horses don't have split hooves nor chew their cud and so are not kosher.  Apparently the sale of horse meat for human consumption is legal there, unlike here in California...)

HT: Ran Shorrer

Minimum age of marriage

Israel has raised the legal minimum age of marriage to 18, but this is unlikely to prevent the early marriages which circumvented the prior minimum age of 17...

17-year-old wives: Law passed too late for us

Several groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Israeli-Arabs conduct underage marriages, say new law, to raise minimum age for marriage, will not make great difference. With 11,000 underage marriages a year, will law change current custom?

"A new law passed by the Knesset on Monday that permits marriage starting from the age of 18 is not impressing Hasidic members of the haredi public and several groups with the Israeli-Arab sector in which underage marriage is quite common. In many such communities, there are couples who tie the knot before their 17th birthday – the minimum age before the new law.

According to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, 11,747 girls under the age of 18 were married in Israel during 2011. From 2000 to 2009, 19,863 girls married at the age of 18; 15,020 girls said their vows by their 17th birthday; and 2,548 girls up to the age of 16 committed to their partner for the rest of their lives.

According to Hasidic custom, the sons of distinguished rebbis marry even earlier in order to minimize the time frame between puberty and their wedding, and to prevent young males from inappropriate thoughts or worse – sinful deeds.

The legislation is not expected to raise the minimum age for marriage in those communities, as they already ignore the existing law. The ceremony at underage marriages in these communities is conducted privately by rabbis who do not report the event to the authorities. The registration for the wedding is completed at a later date, when both the bride and the groom reach the legal age."

Congestion in the market for law internships in Israel

Aviad Heifetz points me to an article in the Haaretz magazine, on law clerks (in Hebrew, but Google Translate makes it clear enough that they are talking about congestion (apparently after a period of unraveling): http://www.themarker.com/law/1.2151631

"The new rules stipulate that law firms will not be able to interview candidates to specialize before 15 March in the third year of undergraduate law students.

In March the new rules came into effect and the change was felt immediately. That day open all major law firms in the competition for employment outstanding students. Race interviews lasted for a few intense days. Although March 15 falls on a Friday this year many offices were assembly-line interviews and ambitious students frantically moved from office to office.

Egg donation in Israel at a new, higher price

Egg donors to be compensated with NIS 19,000

"The Knesset's Labor, Welfare and Health Committee approved raising compensation sum to egg donors to NIS 19,000 ($5200) due to lack of donors.

"Since the bill to allow women to donate eggs in Israel was approved over a year and a half ago, only seven women had donated eggs, and were given NIS 10,000 ($2800). The Health Ministry requested to raise the compensation total in order to increase the number of donors due to severe shortage of eggs."

"דוקטור לשם כבוד" honorary doctorate at the Technion

When I was in Haifa to attend the conference in memory of Uri Rothblum (where I gave this talk), I was reminded that I used to visit often: for many years I was on the Board of Governors of the Technion.

And so, while I was there, I got an honorary degree, and planted a tree.

In Latin, an honorary doctorate is Doctor honoris causa, in Hebrew "דוקטור לשם כבוד" . (Doctor l'shem cavod, i.e. Doctor for the sake of honor...)

Here's an interview I did by phone with a reporter.
Here's a picture of the assembled cast.

(l-r) Prof. Alvin E. Roth; Elisha Yanay; Alfred J. Bar; Yoram Alster; J. Steven Emerson; Daniel Rose; Prof. Peretz Lavie, president of the Technion; Danny Yamin, Chairman of the Technion Council; Lawrence Jackier, Chairman of the Technion Board of Governors; Melvyn H. Bloom; Ilan Biran; and Prof. Jason L. Speyer.

June 10, 2013 

***************
And here are me and Emilie next to the newly planted tree (the little one on the left, not the big one behind us...)

Update: here's the video of the honorary doctorate ceremonies. (It's long, but I did my best to keep in short, you can see me starting at 1:22:23--most of the applause is for brevity:)

And here is a much shorter video of the tree-planting ceremony, with President Peretz Lavie doing the honors, and Technion chemistry laureate Dan Schechtman and me planting the trees.