A new repugnant use of DNA information--'clarifying' Who is a Jew

The Jerusalem Post has the story:
CHIEF RABBINATE ADMITS USING DNA TESTS TO HELP DETERMINE JEWISH STATUS
Orthodox organizations denounce the use of DNA testing as contrary to Jewish law

"Chief Rabbi David Lau has admitted for the first time that the Chief Rabbinate and the state Rabbinical Courts use DNA testing in certain circumstances to help determine whether a person is Jewish.

The admission is likely to generate outrage among mainstream religious-Zionist and Modern Orthodox groups, given that Jewish law does not recognize the validity of DNA testing to prove Jewishness."

Kidney exchange in Israel using Itai Ashlagi's software

My colleague Itai Ashlagi has been inventing, building, distributing and updating state of the art kidney exchange software ever since he came to Harvard, some years ago. Since then he's been at MIT, and now Stanford, but this recent article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how his software is propagating in Israel still thinks he's at Harvard:

New program finds donors for complicated kidney transplant patients

"JERUSALEM (JTA) — Kidney transplant patients who have had a hard time finding a match will have another opportunity through a new unit at an Israeli hospital.

"Kidney transplant patients who suffer from high levels of antibodies due to previous transplants or blood donations can go for many years without finding a suitable donor. A new and advanced software program can be used to cross-check through advanced information systems from hospitals in Israel and around the world.

"The program, developed by Professor Itai Ashlagi of Harvard University, was donated to the Matnat Chaim organization and will be operated out of Beilinson Hospital’s Department of Transplantation in Petach Tikvah, in central Israel."

Gift-giving cycles: kidney exchange stories from Britain and Israel

The Guardian has a podcast about a British kidney exchange involving three patient-donor pairs. They call it a "chain" but they mean a cycle--it's a cycle of gift giving. You can listen at the link.

Would you give your kidney to a stranger?
The UK’s living donor scheme allows six people to enter a chain, and three of them will get a new kidney from a stranger. Rachel Williams speaks to six participants. 

"The UK’s living donor scheme allows six people to enter a chain, and three of them will get a new kidney from a stranger. Such chains are anonymous but, for the first time, the Guardian’s Rachel Williams has brought together six participants.

In today’s episode, we hear from those giving and receiving a kidney, and Williams explains how the matches are made possible. "

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And from YNet, a story of a non-directed donor who became a directed donor and part of a cycle with four patient-donor pairs:

The kidney club: Doctors at Beilinson Hospital performed an extraordinary 8-way kidney surgery involving 4 donors and 4 recipients brought together by Matnat Chaim, dedicated to encouraging altruistic kidney donations.

the 4 recipients

"The transplant chain was facilitated by Matnat Chaim, an Israeli non-profit dedicated to encouraging healthy volunteers to donate kidneys to patients requiring a transplant. The organization, which has already facilitated 626 transplants to date, was founded in 2007 by Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber after he found himself needing a kidney, finding a donor and then setting out to help others who were in the same predicament.

"This kidney donor chain began with altruistic donor Benjamin, who donated to a man named Lee. Yardena, Lee’s partner, in turn donated a kidney to a woman named Leah, whose son, Yonatan, donated a kidney to a man named Suheib. Suheib’s mother, Maison, then donated her kidney to a woman named Gil—who was meant to be the original recipient of the kidney donated by Benjamin.

""I approached Matnat Chaim Chairman Rabbi Heber and asked him to help me find a kidney donor," said Gil, 36, adding, "to my delight, Benjamin, a person I don’t even know, agreed to donate his kidney … unfortunately though he wasn’t a match.”

"After tests conducted by doctors at Beilinson ahead of the planned cross-transplant, a possibility arose for Gil to be at the receiving end of a new kidney.

"We have all become like family," Gil continued, “All of us are from a different background—religious, secular, right and left-wing, Jews and Arabs—there is now a special connection between us."
*********

See my previous posts on Matnat Chaim
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Gift giving rings have for some reason reminded me today of the anthropological literature on gift giving in cycles through Kula rings in New Guinea, studied by the early anthropologist/ethnographer Bronisław Malinowski.

Merry Xmas to all of you for whom today (or yesterday) is a day of gift giving.

Avinatan Hassidim (and market design) and Katrina Ligett (and privacy) celebrated in Israel

"The Marker," the biggest economic newspaper in Israel, includes two researchers who will be familiar to many readers of this blog in their list of "40 under 40" .

Here's their writeup on Avinatan Hassidim, a computer scientist and market designer at Bar Ilan University:
אבינתן חסידים, 37
"Among other things, Hassidim led the development of an algorithm for embedding doctors in Israel in a residency internship in hospitals (instead of the lottery method) and in recruiting students for a master's degree in psychology for the study programs. Today he is working on developing a system for placing graduates of law studies in Israel in places of specialization."
***********

Here's his web page: Avinatan Hassidim
"My main research interests are auction theory, mechanism design, cake cutting, algorithmic game theory and approximation algorithms. My works have been used to devise the Israelli Medical Interns Lottery, the Israelli Psychology Match and to assign children to schools in various cities in Israel. "
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Earlier related posts:

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Redesigning the Israeli Medical Internship Match

Monday, July 14, 2014

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

***************
And here's The Marker on computer scientist Katrina Ligett,
קתרינה ליגת,
who is singled out for her work on differential privacy (including how privacy can have counterintuitive consequences in equilibrium), among other things.


HT: Ran Shorrer
***********

Update: Itai Ashlagi points out to me that Ya'akov Babichenko of the Technion, who studies learning in games, is also on the list:

יעקב בביצ'נקו

Surrogacy law in Israel

Haaretz has the story of the recent expansion of access to surrogacy in Israel, which however excludes same sex couples.

Why the Battle for Gay Rights in Israel Passes Through Parenthood, Not Marriage

"Thousands of Israelis walked out of their workplaces and took to the streets Sunday, to protest the government’s denial of gay men’s rights to have children through surrogacy.

"The protest over the legislation highlights how in a country where marriage is governed by religious authorities, parenthood is seen as the key to equality.

"The new legislation loosened surrogacy regulations in Israel, giving single women and women unable to become pregnant for medical reasons the right to apply for state support for surrogacy. However, an additional clause that would have granted the same rights to single fathers – and, by extension, gay couples – was nixed."

Altruistic kidney donation in Israel: Matnat Chaim (gift of life)

Matnat Chaim (gift of life) is an Israeli organization, led by a rabbi, that promotes living kidney donation.  It's been quite successful, but has also been the source of some controversy and suspicion.

Here's an academic article about them:

Altruism and Religion: A New Paradigm for Organ Donation
by Aviad RabinowichEmail authorAlan Jotkowitz, Journal of Religion and Health, February 2018, Volume 57, Issue 1, pp 360–365

Abstract: "Activity of NGO’s supporting living donor kidney donations can affect the shortage of kidneys. Matnat Chaim is a Jewish orthodox organization active in Israel since 2009. This is a voluntary organization with aims to shorten and eliminate the waiting list for kidneys. Since the beginning of its activity, it has said to play a key role in 379 kidney transplantations. In 2015, out of 174 live donor kidney transplantations that took place in Israel, Matnat Chaim had a key role in 88 of them (50.6%). We found some ethical issues concerning the organization's activity. The donor can restrict his or her donation to specific characteristics of recipient which can result in organs transplanted in a homogeneous group of the population. Another issue is the question of whether nudging people to kidney donation takes place and whether it is valid to do so. We found that Matnat Chaim does a great deal for promotion and intermediation of kidney donations in Israel. This form of promotion can be implemented by other organizations and countries."

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They earlier were the subject of some investigations, but I haven't heard that anything further has come of this. Here's an article from The Times of Israel in September 2017
Head of transplant organization arrested over ‘organs for donations’ scheme
Charity suspected of bumping potential recipients to top of waiting list in exchange for funding, paying illegal compensation to donors

"Police on Monday arrested the head of a charity that facilitates voluntary organ donations in Israel, and three of its employees, on suspicion that it illegally traded organs for donations.
"The suspicions include managing the waiting list so as to bump potential recipients to the top in exchange for donations to the organization, and paying compensation to potential organ donors, police said.
...
"A police spokesperson explained that the investigation was “particularly complex and sensitive” and officers have made an effort not to interrupt the continuing work of the organization “in order to allow its life saving services to continue regardless of the ongoing probe.”"

Summary of the Israeli Medical Internship Match

“Slava Bronfman, Avinatan Hassidim, Gideon Kalif, and Assaf Romm (2017), Matching practices for entry-labor markets – The Israeli Medical Internship Match, MiP Country Profile 25.”

Summary box

What is allocated?	Medical internships.
Who are the participants?	Graduates of medical schools.
Stated objectives of matching policy	Fairness among doctors, equal spread of talent across the country.
Who’s in charge?	The Ministry of Health and a committee elected by the student body.
In place since	2014
Available capacity	Same as the number of doctors (≈500 local grads + ~200 foreign grads).
Timing of enrolment	May of every year.
Information available to applicants prior to enrolment period	Description and code of the mechanism, summary statistics of previous years.
Restrictions on preference expression	Students must rank all hospitals.
Matching procedure	Variant of competitive equilibrium with equal incomes (CEEI).
Priorities and quotas	Proportional to hospitals’ size, and extra for periphery.
Further special feature	Couples are to the same hospital.

Bronfman, S., Alon, N., Hassidim, A., and Romm, A.,2015. Redesigning the Israeli Medical Internship Match. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, 753-754.

 Bronfman, S., Hassidim, A., Afek, A., Romm, A., Shreberk, R., Hassidim, A. and Massler, A., 2015. Assigning Israeli medical graduates to internships. Israel journal of health policy research, 4(1).

Living kidney donation in Israel: Matnat Chaim in trouble with the law

The Israeli organization Matnat Chaim (gift of life) encourages and facilitates non-directed kidney donation, i.e. living donor kidney donation by donors who don't have a particular recipient in mind. It's generally agreed that they have saved hundreds of lives. In an earlier post I linked to stories reporting that they were under investigation for potential violations of some of Israel's laws involving the financial donations they received. (Israel, like almost everywhere, has laws against paying for a kidney...)

Now the plot has thickened, and some leaders of the organization have been arrested. They have also received strong expressions of support.  Here are two stories in English.

From The Times of Israel:
Head of transplant organization arrested over ‘organs for donations’ scheme
Charity suspected of bumping potential recipients to top of waiting list in exchange for funding, paying illegal compensation to donors 

"The organization is said to have encouraged relatives of those in need of transplants to make donations to the organization in order to shorten the waiting time to receive organs.

"Police noted that they are not treating individual donors or organ recipients as suspects. “If anything, they are victims who themselves have been working to save lives,” the statement said.

"Police said the investigation begun a number of months ago after a complaint was received against the organization from the Health Ministry. Evidence has since been collected from organ recipients, their families and other sources.

"A police spokesperson explained that the investigation was “particularly complex and sensitive” and officers have made an effort not to interrupt the continuing work of the organization “in order to allow its life saving services to continue regardless of the ongoing probe.”
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and from Arutz Sheva (channel 7, Israel National News):
Rabbi Kanievsky supports head of NGO investigated by police
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky publicly visits head of the 'Matanat Chaim' NGO, under investigation for trading organ donations for money.

"Prominent haredi Torah sage and leading halakhic authority Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky visited the house of Rabbi Yeshayahu Haber, who heads the Matnat Chaim NGO, in a public show of support for the embattled organization. Police are currently investigating Matanat Chaim over suspicion that the NGO bumped patients to the top of its recipient list in exchange for donations.

"The visit is seen in the haredi world as signaling Rabbi Kanievsky's support for Haber and Matnat Chaim, which works to assist kidney donations in Israel. Earlier this month, hundreds of people who had received kidney transplants joined in a social media campaign defending Matnat Chaim, which one of them called "a sanctification of Gods name, people who do God's holy work on this earth".

"In early September, police had arrested Haber and other heads of Matnat Chaim over suspicions that members of the association advanced names on the organ transplant wait list in exchange for money that was transferred, in most cases, in the form of donations to the association.

"Police had opened the investigation several months ago following a series of complaints to the Ministry of Health. As part of the probe, police interviewed former donors to the NGO, and their suspicions were strengthened due to the fact that the majority of those donating money were unable to work and their financial situation was poor, leading authorities to conclude that these were not really donations, but in fact payment for being advanced on the waiting list for an organ transplant.

"Matnat Chaim is revered in the haredi world, and many public figures have slammed the investigation, including famed haredi author Chaim Walder, who called it a "witch hunt". Yisrael Hayom's haredi affairs writer Yehuda Shlesinger wrote last week that "the State of Israel should ask forgiveness from Rabbi Yeshayahu Haber, who saved the lives of 466 Israelis and who has been under house arrest for four days in one of the most delusional investigations ever."

Organ donation in Israel

The Israeli Ministry of Health has a number of interesting web pages concerning organ transplantation.

Here is the one on the compensation of living donors for related expenses:

Compensating Live Organ Donors

The compensation is given to donors when the donation and transplant surgery is performed in Israel.

For this purpose, the following refunds are given: 

• Refund due to loss of earnings - A sum equivalent to the benefit paid by the National Insurance Institute to a person serving in reserve duty for a period of less than 40 days: minimum NIS 7,841, maximum NIS 57,563 
• Refund of travel expenses - In a standard and set sum of NIS 2,676, with no need to produce receipts.
• Psychological treatment - Refund for 5 treatments to the value of up to NIS 428 per treatment, subject to the presentation of receipts proving that the treatment was performed, and subject to the treatments being conducted within a period of up to 48 months after the donation.
• Recovery leave - Refund for vacation in a hotel for a period of 7 consecutive days at a value of up to NIS 535 per day. Subject to the presentation of receipts and subject to the vacation being taken within a period of up to 90 days after the donation is made.

Insurance refunds

• Private medical insurance or supplementary insurance of healthcare organizations - Refund to the value of up to NIS 59 per month for a period of 60 months, subject to presentation of the policy and receipts proving purchase of the insurance. It is advisable to purchase this insurance before the operation or in the first three months after the operation.
• Loss of working capacity insurance - Refund to the value of up to NIS 203 per month for a period of 60 months, subject to presentation of the policy and receipts proving purchase of the insurance.
• Life insurance - Refund to the value of up to NIS 128 per month for a period of 60 months, subject to presentation of the policy and receipts proving purchase of the insurance.

All of the insurance payments above will be made from the end of the first year of the donation and for 60 months (5 years). Before the end of the first year from the day of donation, the donor will receive a reminder to send the insurance forms, according to the breakdown appearing in the directions and forms for submitter of an application for expenses file.

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Here is the page on kidney exchange:

National Exchange Program for Live Kidney Donors

*************

And here's a page on deceased organ donation from the point of view of Jewish religious law:

According to Halacha…

2017 Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making (SPUDM 26) at the Technion

I'm on my way to SPUDM26 (The 26th Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference) August 20th-24th 2017, hosted by the Industrial Engineering and Management Faculty of the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Here's the program.

My talk will be called Repugnant transactions and Forbidden Markets.

I’m planning to talk a bit about repugnant transactions generally, and why I think they are important, and perhaps also about black markets. But I’ll use kidneys as my main example, and some of the repugnance issues we’re encountering as we try to move forward with Global Kidney Exchange, in which we’ll include patient-donor pairs from poor countries in American kidney exchange…

Israel transplant investigation

The Israeli organization Matnat Chaim (Gift of Life), founded by Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber, is under investigation about whether it encouraged families to contribute to the organization in order to receive a shorter waiting time for a kidney transplant.

Organ donor organization suspected of moving donors to head of line for money
Police currently investigating an organization specializing in organ donor mediation, on suspicion of receiving money to provide donors with organs before others in line for transplants.
Omri Efraim & Rotem Elizera|Published:  31.03.17 , 15:06

"Israel Police is carrying on an investigation into Matnat Chaim, an organization that helps find organ donations for those in need of a transplant. The investigation is centered on claims that the organization charged for a "donation" intended to push forward those who paid it, despite there being other people in front of them in line waiting for the same organ donation.
...
"The police stressed that the investigation is a very delicate one, involving people who are suspected of paying the extra fee out of a wish to facilitate a vital transplant that for a member of their family.

Matnat Chaim stated that "We know nothing about the investigation carried against (the organization—ed), and so we do not find it necessary to respond." The organization has so far aided in some 400 transplants in Israel. It only works with organ donors wishing to donate organs for zero pay."
**********
Here's another story with a bit more detail:

Police launch inquiry into kidney transplant organizationCops investigating claims that Matnat Chaim bumped patients to top of recipient list in exchange for donations

"The probe follows a complaint from the Health Ministry that recipients were bumped to the top of the list in exchange for donations to the organization.

Police have taken evidence from organ recipients, their families and other sources in the ongoing investigation.

A police spokesperson explained that the investigation was complex and sensitive. The organization is suspected of encouraging relatives of those in need of transplants to make donations to the organization in order to shorten the waiting time to receive a kidney.
...
"Over 400 healthy people have donated a kidney through the organization.
...
"In the past, the organization has said that it had never agreed to accept donations in exchange for promoting a patient in the waiting list. It said that “it completely rejects any suggestion of any hint of wrong-doing.”

Who can be a common law couple?

Being a couple is about a lot of things, including survivor rights and medical visitation and decision-making rights...

Inseparable Israeli Sisters Fighting to Be Recognized as a Common Law Couple
"A day in court with two nonagenarian sisters, refugees from the Holocaust and constant companions, who seek the unprecedented status so that the one who lives longer can inherit the other's old-age allowance."

"The claimants, it turned out, are asking the National Insurance Institute to recognize each of them as being eligible to receive a next-of-kin allowance upon the other’s death. Effectively, they want the NII to grant them common-law status recognition.
A disturbing thought ran through the judge’s head. “Are you telling me that …” she said to attorney Igra who, guessing her thought, dismissed it with an “Absolutely not,” and placed before the judge a court ruling stating that sexual relations are not a condition for common-law recognition.
Relieved, the judge went on to sum up the lives of the two sisters in a few sentences, as she began reading her judgment. The claimants have lived in the same unit of a protected housing project since 2007. The claimants never married, are single and have no children. The claimants have a joint back account, and their old-age allowances have always been deposited in that account. The claimants manage their income and their expenses from the same bank account. The claimants purchased adjoining burial plots. The claimants’ only journeys abroad took place between 1995 and 1998, and always together, according to the Interior Ministry’s border inspection records.
...
"The Labor Court, though acknowledging the innovation and feasibility of the claim, did not accept it"

This request was not accepted by the Israeli court, but it is food for thought.

Living kidney donation in Israel: a competition between two towns

Ran Shorrer points me to this story...

תחרות בין ההתנחלויות: מי יתרום יותר איברים לזרים גמורים

עשרות מתיישבים החליטו לתרום את אחת הכליות שלהם לאדם זר, ללא תמורה. המעשה האצילי הפך אפילו לסוג של תחרות בין היישובים. "ביצהר מובילים עם 10 תורמים, ואנחנו רק שלושה", מסביר תורם מאיתמר. היוזמה מדהימה, אך התרומות לא מיועדות באמת לכל אחד: מרביתן ליהודים בלבד

Google translate:

Competition between the settlements who contribute more organs to complete strangers?

Dozens of settlers decided to donate one of their kidneys to a stranger, for no consideration. Even the noblest deed became a kind of competition between communities. "Yitzhar lead with 10 donors, and we are only three," says Itamar contributor. 

Black markets for kidney transplants--arrests in Israel

A late December story of black markets and law enforcement from the Times of Israel:
2 charged with running international organ traffic ring. Patients allegedly paid $180,000 for a kidney; illegal transplants carried out in Turkey, Bulgaria, Thailand, Philippines

"Roini Shimshilashvili and Albert Murdakhayev were charged with multiple counts of trafficking in organs, brokering organ trafficking and conspiracy, according to a court statement. A third man, identified as a doctor, Zachi Shapira, was charged with multiple counts of assisting in organ trafficking.
...
"The two men allegedly found prospective donors from the former Soviet Union who matched sick Israelis. The donors would be paid to donate their kidneys to the Israelis, “who paid sums of up to $180,000 in most cases,” the court heard. It was not clear how much the donors were paid.

...

"In the last two years, the ring reportedly arranged for 14 transplants in four countries; Turkey, Bulgaria, Thailand and Philippines"


HT: Robert Gutman

The effects of Israel's new organ transplantation law on family consent for deceased donation

Deceased donor organs are a scarce resource with the property that how they are allocated may influence their scarcity, by influencing the decisions of potential donors and their families.  Recent changes in Israeli law give us a window on this...
Incentivizing Authorization for Deceased Organ Donation With Organ Allocation Priority: The First 5 Years
by A. Stoler, J. B. Kessler, T. Ashkenazi, A. E. Roth, J. Lavee

American Journal of Transplantation, Volume 16, Issue 9, September 2016
Pages 2639–2645

Abstract

The allocation system of donor organs for transplantation may affect their scarcity. In 2008, Israel's Parliament passed the Organ Transplantation Law, which grants priority on waiting lists for transplants to candidates who are first-degree relatives of deceased organ donors or who previously registered as organ donors themselves. Several public campaigns have advertised the existence of the law since November 2010. We evaluated the effect of the law using all deceased donation requests made in Israel during the period 1998–2015. We use logistic regression to compare the authorization rates of the donors’ next of kin in the periods before (1998–2010) and after (2011–2015) the public was made aware of the law. The authorization rate for donation in the period after awareness was substantially higher (55.1% vs. 45.0%, odds ratio [OR] 1.43, p = 0.0003) and reached an all-time high rate of 60.2% in 2015. This increase was mainly due to an increase in the authorization rate of next of kin of unregistered donors (51.1% vs. 42.2%). We also found that the likelihood of next-of-kin authorization for donation was approximately twice as high when the deceased relative was a registered donor rather than unregistered (89.4% vs. 44.6%, OR 14.27, p < 0.0001). We concluded that the priority law is associated with an increased authorization rate for organ donation.

Aumann Lecture (video): Economists as Engineers: Game Theory and Market Design

Here's a video of my Aumann Lecture last week in Israel--I took as my starting point Bob's 1985 paper "What is Game Theory Trying to Accomplish?"

Markets for glass, in Israel, in Roman times

YNet has the story:

"A first-of-its-kind accidental discovery of ancient glass kilns at the foot of Mt. Carmel demonstrates that Israel was at the center of the global glass trade during the late Roman period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday.

"The extraordinary kilns, which are approximately 1,600 years old, are “the earliest found in Israel and the missing link for the production and export of glass,” Yael Gorin-Rosen, head curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority Glass Department, told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).
...
“The Valley of Acre was renowned for the excellent quality of sand located there, which was highly suitable for the manufacturing of glass” she explained. This glass traveled the ancient world, Gorin-Rosen said, noting that vessels made in Israel were “discovered at sites in Europe and in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean basin.”

“Now, for the first time, the kilns have been found where the raw material was manufactured,” Gorin-Rosen said.
...
"An edict issued by the Roman emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century CE, refers to two kinds of glass: Judean and Alexandrian. The Judean glass, originating from Israel, was a light green color and less expensive than its contemporary Egyptian, Alexandrian counterpart."

Medical marijuana in Israel

YNet has the story:
Medical marijuana takes off in Israel
"Even though Israel enforces a strict ban on recreational use of marijuana, Israeli doctors have prescribed it to more than 25,000 Israelis to alleviate their symptoms"

"Forbidden to export its cannabis plants, Israel is concentrating instead on marketing its agronomic, medical and technological expertise in the hope of becoming a world hub in the field. The prestigious Hebrew University of Jerusalem has just opened a cannabis research centre joining 19 other teams from local academic institutions.

"About 200 industry players gathered in Tel Aviv this month for Canna Tech, an international conference on the industry. Suited salespeople, some a little red-eyed despite a ban on consumption laid down by the organisers, exhibited products including electronic cannabis cigarettes, cannabis-based creams and ointments and a remedy for dry mouth.

"Some startups are focused on the plant's by-products, others on user accessories, but a few have bigger ideas. "Look at what has happened in the past two years, the speed at which legalisation of cannabis is advancing," said Saul Kaye, head of the first Israeli incubator for cannabis industry startups.

"We're not going to miss this opportunity, and seeing what the first investors are putting on the table, we feel that it is going to be very big." In January, US tobacco giant Philip Morris ploughed $20 million into Israeli company Syke, which produces precision inhalers for medical cannabis."

Matchmaking among the Haredi

Ynet has a story: 
Ultra-orthodox matchmaking: everything it's best not to know

"Among the traditional Haredi public – not the modern stream, which has changed in recent years – pairing one's children is the exclusive responsibility of parents. No yeshiva boy is supposed to choose a girl himself. When parents think the time is right, the phase known as "starting to listen" begins – that is, taking suggestions and statements from matchmakers. For the Hasidim it happens around the age of 18, sometimes even younger. For Lithuanians and Sephardim, it's around the age of 20.

"During this stage parents approach matchmakers, tell them about their son or daughter and specify what they are seeking for their child. Finally, much like in the job market, they give the names of their relatives, neighbors and teachers who can provide those interested with "recommendations," or simply additional details.

"When the two sides feel that the stats are good, a meeting between the couple will be arranged. In most Haredi communities the couple will meet a maximum of three times before they become engaged. In the more devout Hasidic communities, the strict rules permit only one meeting, lasting about 20 minutes. The rationale: they will probably develop feelings, and feelings are bad for business.
...
"Haya, a neighbor of mine, got hitched to a match 38 years ago and is still married. To the same man. Eight out of her 15 children got married in the same way. "We aren't looking for love," she tells me. "We don't marry because I love you or you love me. We have a common goal – to build a home in Israel – and we work together in order to achieve that aim."

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.”
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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.