Econometric Society Fellows (2023), procedures, and some thoughts on prizes in general

The Econometric Society has announced its newest class of Fellows. I don't know them all, but I bet they all deserve that distinction, because it isn't easy to be recognized as a Fellow.  More on that after celebrating and congratulating these jolly good Fellows:

The Society is pleased to announce the election of 29 new Fellows of the Econometric Society.

1. Nava Ashraf, London School of Economics
2. Steve Bond, University of Oxford
3. Tilman Börgers, University of Michigan
4. Robin Burgess, London School of Economics
5. Gabriel Carroll, University of Toronto
6. Yongsung Chang, Seoul National University/Bank of Korea
7. Dean Corbae, University of Wisconsin – Madison
8. Mariacristina De Nardi, University of Minnesota
9. Ben Golub, Northwestern University
10. Christian Hellwig, Toulouse School of Economics
11. Michael Jansson, University of California, Berkeley
12. Steven Koch, University of Pretoria
13. Thierry Mayer, Sciences Po
14. Hyungsik Roger Moon, University of Southern California/Yonsei University
15. Georg Nöldeke, University of Basel
16. Emanuel Ornelas, Sao Paulo School of Economics – FGV
17. Pietro Ortoleva, Princeton University
18. Sven Rady, University of Bonn
19. Gil Riella, School of Public Policy & Government - FGV
20. Uta Schönberg, University of Hong Kong/UCL
21. Katsumi Shimotsu, University of Tokyo
22. Marciano Siniscalchi, Northwestern University
23. Vasiliki Skreta, University of Austin, Texas/UCL
24. Zheng Song, Chinese University of Hong Kong
25. Yves Sprumont, Deakin University
26. Abderrahim Taamouti, University of Liverpool Management School
27. Pierre-Olivier Weill, University of California, Los Angeles
28. Wei Xiong, Princeton University
29. Motohiro Yogo, Princeton University

The 2023 FNC consisted of Gabrielle Demange (Chair) Irene Brambilla, Richard Holden, Dilip Mookherjee, Whitney Newey, Michele Terlit, and Yaw Nyarko.

*********

The great thing about prizes and other recognitions is that they celebrate the accomplishments of the accomplished.  The complicated thing about them is that they inevitably leave out many whose accomplishments are deserving of similar celebration.

What makes the Econometric Society Fellows such an interesting recognition is that its procedures are transparent: it's a nomination process followed by an election, and the electorate is the collection of existing Fellows.  I participate each year by nominating several Fellows, and then voting for quite a few more. 

One flaw in such a system could be that the existing fellows, who initiate many of the nominations, might find it easier to think of people close to them in some sense than to think of equally deserving candidates who aren't so close.  The Fellows Nominating Committee (FNC) is an attempt to address this: their job includes nominating deserving candidates  who seem likely to have been overlooked, perhaps because they are from parts of the world that seem underrepresented among the existing Fellows.

Each year the number of nominees is a multiple of the number of elected Fellows (if memory serves only around a fifth of the nominees have been elected in recent years). The rules of the election since 2020 are that the threshold to get elected is to be included in 25% of the votes cast (and a single "vote"  if I understand correctly is a list submitted by a Fellow that can contain as many of the nominated candidates as he or she wishes to vote for).  I say "since 2020" because it is the sense of many of the past and present officers of the Society that we elect too few Fellows each year, and so the threshold has been dropping in an effort to elect more fellows.  But the equilibrium response of the voters seems to be to vote for a smaller proportion of the nominees, so that the number of new fellows doesn't seem to be increasing at the hoped for rate.

I don't know of a good model to explain all this, but it might  include some notion that the value of being a Fellow (or of receiving other recognition) is a non-monotone function of its scarcity.  If we elect too many new Fellows, this might eventually diminish the value (to existing Fellows) of being a Fellow.  But (less obviously), if we elect too few Fellows the same thing could happen, if being a Fellow stops being something that people aspire to or even have heard of.  

My sense is that being a member of the National Academies is less important among economists than in many sciences precisely because too few economists are elected, so that it comes to seem like a random recognition rather than one that recognizes success as economists define it. One of the reasons that the economics Nobel, awarded yesterday with much fanfare to Claudia Goldin, is so widely applauded, not just in the disciplines in which Nobels are awarded but among the general public as well,  is that Nobels are awarded every year in several disciplines, so that they manage to be both a scarce distinction and a familiar one. (Exceptions that test this rule are the Clark medal, awarded each year by the American Economic Association to an economist younger than 40, which has high prestige among American economists even though so few are well recognized enough at that age to be serious contenders, and the Fields medals of the International Mathematical Union, also awarded to up to four scholars under 40, every four years.)

But nothing is perfect. Congratulations again to the new Fellows, who have received the carefully considered and frugally awarded applause of their peers. 

Vic Fuchs (1924-2023)

My friend and neighbor Vic Fuchs, the dean of American health economists, passed away on Friday.  

He was just a few months short of 100, but in the last year he finished revising the third edition of his 1975 book,  Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice.

He bravely bore some physical ailments, but his mind remained sharp, and he was always a pleasure to talk to. (He used to joke "I'm in perfect health: my psychiatrist says its all in my body.")

He kept abreast of current events, and remained informed and concerned about the state of the health care system in the U.S., and democracy.

Vic Fuchs speaking at the memorial conference for Ken Arrow, Oct. 9, 2017

##########

Update: here's a Stanford obit:

Victor Fuchs, pioneer of health care economics, has died

Fuchs’ influence and tireless devotion to the field of health care economics and the Stanford community spanned decades.

September 18, 2023 | Krysten Crawford

Twenty Years of Marginal Revolution--econ blog pioneers

Economics in the 21st Century has blossomed, including new ways for economists to earn our livings.  Together with and alongside of that have come new ways for economists to communicate, among ourselves and with the wider public.  One of those ways is via blogs, and perhaps the most significant and most general interest economics blog has been Marginal Revolution, by Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen. Yesterday MR marked its 20th anniversary.

Twenty Years of Marginal Revolution! by  Alex Tabarrok, August 23, 2023

"Who would have guessed that after twenty years Tyler and I would still be writing Marginal Revolution! Thanks especially to Tyler, we have had multiple new posts every single day for twenty years!"

Return to the Econ by Joshua Gans

 Joshua Gans indulges his inner anthropologist:

Return to the Econ  by Joshua S. Gans,  August 20, 2023

Abstract: This paper revisits the Econ tribe famously documented by Leijonhufvud (1973). In half a century, the Econ have had their practices upended by technology and, for all but a few pockets of stasis, have changed their status hierarchy with new icons that are the focus of societal energy.

"In conversations with other members of the Econ, about 30 years ago, some rogue elements of Math-Econ, despite having achieved the highest levels of modl carving, made an attempt to carve modls that were actually useful and see if they “worked.” Rumour has it that they did, in fact, work and became useful in all of all things, the allocation of empty space and body parts. These elements were expelled by the Math-Econ as unworthy and left the sect with nothing but their Nobs."

AEA Guidance on the 2023-24 Economics Job Market Cycle

In an effort to forestall/halt/slow unravelling in the market for new Ph.D. economists, the American Economic Association has released some guidelines regarding interviews and offers.

 AEA Guidance on the 2023-24 Economics Job Market Cycle

July 27, 2023

To: Members of the American Economic Association and Economics Department Chairs
From: Peter L. Rousseau, Secretary-Treasurer
Subject: AEA Guidance on the 2023-24 Economics Job Market Cycle

AEA Guidance on the 2023-24 Economics Job Market Cycle

The AEA Executive Committee, in conjunction with its Committee on the Job Market, recognizes that it is to the benefit of the profession if the job market for economists is thick, with many employers and job candidates participating in the same stages at the same time.  Moreover, the AEA's goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion are fostered by having a timeline that remains widely known and accepted, ensuring that candidates can correctly anticipate when each stage will occur.  The AEA has a role to establish professional norms, which includes ensuring fair treatment of job candidates, including that they have enough time to consider job offers.

With these goals in mind, and in light of inquiries from both job candidates and employers about how to proceed, the AEA asks that departments and other employers consider the following timeline for initial interviews and “flyouts” in the upcoming job cycle (2023-24). 

Timing of interview invitations
The AEA suggests that employers wait to extend interview invitations until the day after job market signals are transmitted to employers (roughly December 1).

Rationale: the AEA created the signaling mechanism to reduce the problem of asymmetric information and allow job candidates to credibly signal their interest to two employers. The AEA asks that employers wait to extend interview invitations until those signals have been transmitted, and to use that information to finalize their set of candidates to interview. This helps the job market in several ways: it reduces the problem of imperfect information, it helps ensure a thick market at each stage, and it promotes the AEA’s goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Job candidates from historically under-represented groups may lack informal networks and thus may especially rely on the signals to convey their interest. Waiting to review the signals before issuing invitations promotes a fairer, more equitable process.

We also ask that all employers indicate on EconTrack when they have extended interview invitations. This allows candidates to learn about the status of searches without visiting websites posting crowd-sourced information and potentially inappropriate other content.

Timing of interviews
Initial interviews may take place any time after the AEA signals are sent (roughly December 1). The AEA recommends that all initial interviews take place virtually (e.g. by Zoom). We suggest that interviews not take place during the AEA meeting itself (January 5-7, 2024).

Rationale: In the past, interviews were conducted in-person at the AEA/ASSA meetings. This promoted thickness of the market, because most candidates and employers were present at the meetings, but had the disadvantage of precluding both job candidates and interviewers from fully participating in AEA/ASSA sessions. 

Initial job interviews went online during COVID, and feedback indicated that the benefits of virtual first-round interviews (e.g. low monetary cost, zero cost in travel time, scheduling flexibility, convenience) outweighed the limitations (e.g. less rich interaction).

We ask that interviews NOT take place during the AEA/ASSA meetings (January 5-7, 2024) in order to allow job candidates and interviewers to participate in the conference.

Timing of flyouts
Flyouts have historically happened at times appropriate for the employer, and the AEA sees no reason to suggest otherwise.  We ask that all employers indicate on EconTrack when they have extended flyout invitations. Unlike with interviews, the AEA does not take a position on whether flyouts should be virtual or in-person.

Timing of offers and “exploding” offers
In order to ensure that the job market remains sufficiently synchronized and thick, and that candidates have a chance to compare offers, the AEA recommends that employers leave job offers open (i.e. do not require candidates to accept or decline) until at least January 31.

The AEA also strongly recommends that employers give candidates at least two weeks to consider their job offer.  We recognize that offers made late in the job market season (e.g., March or later) may be of shorter duration.  In some circumstances, employers are under heavy pressure to give less time to candidates for various reasons.  If that is absolutely necessary, we recommend that employers give candidates a minimum of one week to consider the offer, and that candidates be given advance notice of this (e.g. at the flyout stage) whenever possible. 

Rationale: Recently, there is concern about a rise in “exploding offers” – i.e., offers for which candidates are given too few days to sufficiently consider the offer and their alternatives. This can prevent candidates from learning about their options or comparing offers, and at the extreme can be coercive.  Giving candidates two weeks (or, late in the job market season, at least one week) to consider an offer is a reasonable standard.

We also ask that all employers indicate on EconTrack when they have completed or closed their search.

Job market institutions and mechanisms
Please keep in mind the various job market institutions and mechanisms created by the AEA to improve the job market:

• The JOE Network includes a database of job openings for economists.
• Employers may sign up here: https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/employer.
• Job candidates may search the database here: https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/listings.
• The JOE Network has an electronic clearinghouse for job candidates to submit job applications. Job candidates may register here: https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/candidate.
• The AEA Committee on the Job Market releases data and guidance on the job market here: https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/communications.
• EconTrack: a board on which employers can indicate when they have extended interview and flyout invitations, and closed their search: https://www.aeaweb.org/econtrack.

We encourage all employers to review and abide by Best Practices for Economists to Build a More Diverse, Inclusive, and Productive Profession, and in particular those for conducting a fair recruiting process.

Thank you for helping to ensure a transparent and equitable job market for new Ph.D. economists.  

Leo Hurwicz (1917-2008), biography

 Here's a web site devoted to the biography of Leo Hurwicz, by his son Michael: Leonid Hurwicz: Intelligent Designer

Ehud Kalai, interviewed on the past and future of game theory

Here's a half-hour video interview of Ehud Kalai, by Sandeep Baliga, that touches on the history of game theory at Northwestern and elsewhere, his work on axiomatic models of bargaining, Econ-CS (and the Kalai Prize), and more.

 

School choice and related matching algorithms in France, by Vincent Iehlé and Julien Jacqmin

Here's a recent paper that looks at the assignment of students to some of France's Grandes Ecoles, and draws some conclusions about the preferences for those schools.

SIGEM : analyse de la procédure d’affectation dans les grandes écoles de management,, Vincent Iehlé, Julien Jacqmin, Dans Revue économique 2023/2 (Vol. 74), pages 139 à 168 (SIGEM: analysis of the assignment procedure in major management schools)

"First, we list the expected properties of the assignments produced by the SIGEM. To do this we identify the SIGEM algorithm. It is quite standard in this type of environment since it is the “schools” version of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962]. Based on this information, we show that assignments satisfy a stability property that is crucial in educational systems since it guarantees fair treatment of declared wishes and rankings. On the other hand, the use of this version of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962], in opposition to the "candidate" version, raises two reservations concerning, on the one hand, the sub-optimality of the assignments from the point of view candidates and, on the other, the theoretical absence of simple strategies for candidates to play when submitting their wishes. This theoretical analysis of the algorithm is completed by a discussion on the specificities of the SIGEM procedure which can explain the formation of strategic behaviors. The second contribution concerns the use made of the results of this procedure in the case of SIGEM. We show how post-assignment data is used to determine the influential ranking of SIGEM from the so-called cross-dismissal matrix, itself based on the candidates' revealed preferences and their final assignments. The last contribution concerns the exploitation of a stylized fact which justifies the joint analysis of the algorithm and the SIGEM classification. The post-assignment data indeed reveal the existence of a hierarchy of schools that is very rigid and that achieves a consensus among students. This point is particularly interesting because it finally allows to have a finer look at the theoretical properties of the algorithm, the alignment of the preferences of the candidates tending to limit the impact of the negative effects associated with the use of the version "schools" of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962]."

...

"Figure 2 presents for each school the number of ranked candidates and the number of wishes expressed for the school among these ranked. It seems to confirm the existence of these voluntary self-censorship strategies. In particular, we observe a significant loss for schools of average attractiveness (for example, AUDENCIA, NEOMA, SKEMA) which are more likely to be subject to both downward and upward truncation on the part of candidates ."

********

Recall also, 

Strategic Issues in the French Academic Job Market, by Guillaume Haeringer, Vincent Iehlé In Revue économique Volume 61, Issue 4, 2010, pages 697 to 721

Dissertation advisors and job market outcomes by Rose and Shekhar

 Here's a paper on the economics job market, and the influence of dissertation advisers.

Adviser Connectedness and Placement Outcomes in the Economics Job Market, by Michael E. Rose and Suraj Shekhar, forthcoming in Labour Economics

Abstract: We study the role of social networks in the academic job market for graduate students of Economics. We find that the connectedness of a student’s advisor in the coauthor network significantly improves her job market outcome. We use two identification strategies and find that a) higher Eigenvector centrality of an adviser leads to her student getting placed at a better ranked institution, and b) larger distance between an adviser and an institution decreases the probability that her students are placed there. Our study sheds light on the importance of social connections in a labour market where information frictions regarding job openings are virtually absent.

...

"Our setting, the academic job market for Economists, is special in that information frictions regarding job openings are (almost) absent due to Job Openings for Economists. Thus, our finding that social networks play a role in this market is likely because they help decrease the uncertainty about an applicant’s quality."

********

I'm reminded of the timeless joke about how rabbits eat wolves: if you don't know it, there are many versions on the internet, here  (and this one comes with a bonus joke: Rabbit's Ph.D. Thesis and Lion's Watch Repair Business).

How do (should?) economists study repugnance?

 Here's a recent paper by Peter Cserne that looks at different ways that economists study repugnance:

Cserne, P. (2023). Economic analyses of repugnant market transactions: A modest typology. Journal of Institutional Economics, 1-14. doi:10.1017/S1744137423000139

"Abstract: Economic accounts of repugnance concern two broad questions: the rationalisation of sentiments of repugnance (do emotional and visceral reactions of repugnance track valid reasons for not engaging in or condemning certain (trans)actions?) and institutional design (how to institute, regulate, or restrict markets in response to reasonable objections). If repugnance expresses valid practical reasons for regulating or limiting markets, our institutions should acknowledge and express these. If attitudes of repugnance are not rationalisable in the sense of instrumental or moral values, we should disregard or eventually counteract or reduce them. Focusing on a special case of repugnance, when commodification, i.e., the sale of goods or services for money meets societal disapproval, this paper identifies three characteristic ways to combine conceptual, empirical, and normative arguments and map repugnance into a disciplinary ‘epistemic frame’ of economics: repugnance as taste; repugnance as proxy for market failures or moral reasons; repugnance as hypocrisy or contingent cultural fact. Correspondingly, economists advise to (1) work around; (2) make sense of; and (3) explain away people's sentiments of repugnance."

...

"In recent decades, the economic discourse on repugnance has become rich and dense. While the moral limits of markets have been discussed in philosophy and various social and policy sciences for centuries, in the last decades, repugnance as a possible limit to markets has been increasingly subject to technical economic analysis as well (Khalil and Marciano, Reference Khalil and Marciano2018; Roth, Reference Roth2007; Tirole, Reference Tirole2017: 33–50). To be sure, from a longer historical perspective, economists have always been concerned with moral sentiments, including repugnance.

...

"Regarding the moral limits of markets, there is a range of (a) substantive views. For the purposes of this paper, we roughly distinguish three stances: commodification, anti-commodification, and anti-anti-commodification. These are expressed in different (b) conceptual categories: as moral preferences; moral externalities or merit goods; and hypocrisy or cultural facts. Together, they allow to express the substantive concerns in (c) analytical frameworks, in other words, they provide the technical terms for economists to, respectively: work around; rationalise, i.e., make sense of; and explain away people's repugnance. Thus, I suggest distinguishing three substantive stances on repugnance in economics, combining conceptual choices and normative commitments into analytical frameworks.

"First, economists may conceptualise repugnance as a taste or (moral) preference. Following the dictum de gustibus non est disputandum (Stigler and Becker, Reference Stigler and Becker1977), they engage in technical normative analysis and institutional design in an engineering mode (Roth, Reference Roth2002). Normatively, they orient themselves in favour of commodification, i.e., extending the scope of markets. Correspondingly, their analytical strategy is to propose policies to ‘work around’ social sentiments of repugnance.

"Second, economists may conceptualise repugnance in terms of (moral) externality or merit goods, i.e., as versions of or proxies for market failures. In doing so, they make sense of sentiments of repugnance, in terms of ordinary economic analysis. Correspondingly, they propose policies to justify limiting or regulating markets. They engage in the rationalisation of anti-commodification sentiments in terms of public reasonableness.

"Third, economists may conceptualise repugnance as an expression of hypocrisy or as a cultural fact of no independent normative weight. Normatively, they engage in demystifying repugnance either by naturalising it or philosophically debunking sentiments of repugnance as unreasonable ‘romance’; their analytical strategy could be characterised as anti-anti-commodification insofar as they aim to explain away anti-commodification arguments as irrelevant for policy debates around institutional design."

Victor Elias (1937-2023)

Victor Elias died last week, at 85.  He had a strong influence on academic economics in Argentina, not least through the many influential Argentine economists he helped inspire to study in the U.S., particularly at the University of Chicago, where he got his Ph.D. in 1969.

Here's the funeral notice published yesterday in La Nacion:

"Victor Elias, RIP. It is with deep regret that we bid farewell to a great talent and person, with countless  disciples, admirers and friends, economists scattered throughout the world. We accompany the entire community of Tucuman economists, the UNT and especially his children, grandchildren and great-grandson. Signed by: Fernando Alvarez, Hugo Hopenhayn, Rody Manuelli, Juan Pablo Nicolini, Alvin Roth, Silvana Tenreyro, Iván Werning."

Here's the obit from La Gaceta

Murió el economista tucumano Víctor Elías. Tuvo una reconocida trayectoria como académico en la UNT. Tenía 85 años.[Tucuman economist Víctor Elías died. He had a recognized career as an academic at UNT. He was 85 years old.]

"The renowned Tucuman economist and academic Víctor Elías passed away at the age of 85, leaving an enormous legacy that has marked several generations of Tucumans who studied Economics at the National University of Tucumán. 

"The son of Syrian immigrants, he was born in the capital of Tucumán on July 21, 1937 and due to his ancestry he received the nickname "Turk", as he was known inside and outside academic circles. "

Victor Elias and Al Roth, Tucuman, November 2016, photo by Ivan Werning

 

AEA committee on the job market considers early and exploding offers

 John Cawley chairs the AEA committee on the job market, and recently tweeted the request for information below.  Feel free to communicate with him on twitter or directly, as I'll be glad to rely on him to compile and forward all the responses. (I'm one of the few economists not on most social media...but I really will try to read all responses:) (Click to enlarge...)

Advice on dealing with exploding offers in the Economics job market

 The market for new Economics Ph.D.s is in flux, with interviews this year being conducted remotely by Zoom rather than in person at the annual January conference. (Zoom interviews were a Covid innovation that seems likely to stay--mostly because remote interviews seemed to work well.)  But issues of timing can be delicate, and there's some concern that, now that initial interviews aren't being synchonized with the annual meetings, we're seeing more early interviews, flyouts (subsequent in-person, on campus interviews) and offers than in previous years, including more offers that require replies very quickly--exploding offers.  Exploding offers cause difficulties to those who receive them, and they contribute to market-wide difficulties, as they can cause the market to move earlier from year to year, i.e. to unravel into very early offers at diffuse times, so that the market loses thickness.

So...I wasn't too surprised to get an email this week from a colleague who has a student on the market who presently has two exploding offers, each with a one-week deadline.  My colleague writes that his student  presently has flyouts scheduled with other schools through February, and so won't even have visited them by the time his exploding offers expire. "He would much prefer an offer from several of them to these 2 current offers--but I have no idea what is the likelihood of getting offers from them."

He asks me "Does any entity such as the ASSA, Stanford, etc. have a policy that I can mention to these schools? "  And he asks for my advice.  I don't have great advice, but here's my slightly redacted reply:

"The AEA doesn’t have a good policy on this, but the AFA does: see my blog post here

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 American Finance Association guidelines to prevent unravelling of the job market  (it says) “the AFA promotes the following professional norm: If a job candidate receives and accepts a coercive exploding offer (i.e., one that expires before February 20), the AFA does not consider such an acceptance to be binding.”

 "That said, talking to the schools that have issued coercive exploding offers is a good idea, and it may or may not help.  I think there are three main reasons they might make exploding offers.

• 1.       Pure evil: they think your student might get a better offer if they wait, and want to capture him before that.
• 2.       Fear that their other candidates will disappear: they may have a second choice candidate who already has an exploding offer, in which case they may be able to tell you when that offer explodes.  But maybe their fear is less focused than that, in which case you might get them to extend the offer on the understanding that they can make it explode later.
• 3.       Boilerplate: they may have just copy-pasted from some template that had a short fuse offer. In this case there’s a good chance they’ll relax the drop dead date.

 "I’ve encountered other reasons as well. In the 2008 financial crisis some of our students got exploding offers, and when I called one school to inquire, was told that their dean wouldn’t allow them to schedule any more flyouts until/unless they’d been rejected by our student.

 "There are labor markets that suffer a great deal from exploding offers (e.g. private equity right now, among others).  But it’s still not the norm in economics, so I think you have a good chance of getting some more time by asking for it."

Paul David (1935-2023)

 My Stanford colleague Paul David has died. He was an exceptional, iconic economic historian.

Gavin Wright has written this obit:

Professor Paul David died at the age of 87

"Always an economic historian, Paul soon extended his horizons in diverse and seemingly disparate ways.  He became a strong advocate of the view that historical research should be fundamental to the economics discipline; in brief; “history matters.”  The essence of the argument was captured by Paul’s incisive account of the persistence of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard despite its technical disadvantages, one of the most cited articles in all of economics (AER 1985).  “History Matters” is the title of a festschrift presented by a group of Paul’s former students in 2004, in which the editors write: “No scholar has more forcefully and influentially argued the case for making economics a truly historical social science – one that, like evolutionary biology, gives past events a central role in understanding the present.” 

"A continuing focus throughout Paul’s career was the diffusion of new technologies.  An important early paper considered the adoption of the mechanical reaper in the American Midwest.  Invention occurred in the 1830s, yet the first wave of adoption occurred only in the 1850s.  The twenty-year delay, according to Paul, was explained by the fact that a minimum scale was required to cover the fixed costs of purchasing the reaper.  Only when farms size passed this “threshold” did mechanization make economic sense.  Specialists have debated the specifics ever since, but the basic form of Paul’s diffusion model has been highly influential.  In many respects it formalized the accounts of delayed diffusion presented by our late colleague Nate Rosenberg, and thus became something of a “Stanford school” of thought in this area.  Scrolling forward to 1990, the era of the “Solow paradox,” Paul offered an analogy between the delayed productivity effects of computer technology and a similar lag in the impact of electrification between the 1880s and the 1920s.  With the IT-driven productivity surge of the late 1990s, this article also attained iconic status (AER 1990)."

Signaling in the markets for new doctors

 Signaling of interest is catching on in medical labor markets for residents and fellows.

Here's some material from Thalamus (which describes itself as "Complete GME interview management solution for applicants & programs. Easy, secure, and automated interview scheduling to optimize in-person & virtual recruitment.")

The Ultimate Guide to Preference Signaling for Medical Residency Applicants and Programs 2022-2023.

• Part 1: Introduces the history of preference signaling.
• Part 2: Describes its introduction to GME.
• Part 3: Discusses outcomes to date.
• Part 4: Provides advice for applicants and programs.
• Part 5: Describes how Thalamus will support this initiative.

It all seems to have started with the signaling mechanism we use in Economics.

From Part 1: 

"The Emergence of Preference Signaling:

Preference signaling was first implemented in 2006, as part of the recruitment process for economics graduate students administered through the American Economics Association (AEA). Since then, there have been several useful studies analyzing this process by leading economists at institutions including Harvard and Stanford. These include “Preference Signaling in Matching Markets” and “The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective.”

"Of note, one of the authors on the latter article is Dr. Alvin E. Roth, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for proving certain key attributes of the matching algorithm that is used today by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), where Dr. Roth currently serves as a board member. This article has been cited in papers throughout GME that examine preference signaling in specialties including Otolaryngology and Orthopaedic Surgery."

********

Earlier:

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Signaling for interviews in the Economics Job Market: Registration opens tomorrow

Test of Time Award: call for nominations

 Test of Time Award

"The SIGecom Test of Time Award recognizes the author or authors of an influential paper or series of papers published between ten and twenty-five years ago that has significantly impacted research or applications exemplifying the interplay of economics and computation.

...

"The 2023 SIGecom Test of Time Award will be given for papers published no earlier than 1998 and no later than 2013. Nominations are due by February 28th, 2023 

...

"The 2022 Test of Time Award Committee: Alvin Roth, Stanford University; Moshe Tennenholtz, The Technion; Noam Nisan (chair), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem"

Market design coffee m&ms

 Here's an inside joke, for market design coffee (and candy) fans, particularly for regulars at our market design coffees at Stanford.

Here's a clue:

D4	Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
	D40	General
	D41	Perfect Competition
	D42	Monopoly
	D43	Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
	D44	Auctions
	D45	Rationing • Licensing
	D46	Value Theory
	D47	Market Design
	D49	Other

HT: Carmen Wang

Stanford Economics Ph.D. Job Market Candidates for the 2022-23 Economics Job Market.

 22 candidates for the 2022-23 Economics Job Market, from B to Z.

Stanford, Department of Economics Job Market Candidates

Available November 2022 for positions in Summer/Fall 2023

Placement Officers: Pete Klenow 650-725-2620 klenow@stanford.edu and Liran Einav 650-723-3704  leinav@stanford.edu

Trevor Bakker

Aniket Baksy

Lukas Bolte

Yue Cao

Daniele Caratelli

Alex Chan

Fulya Ersoy

Tony Fan

Robin Han

Brian Higgins

Tingyan Jia

Matteo Leombroni

Gina Li

Negar Matoorian Pour

Agathe Pernoud

Beatriz Pousada

Maxwell Rong

Rachel Schuh

Martin Souchier

Reka Zempleni

Adam Zhang

Sally Zhang

Hervé Moulin is celebrated in Paris

 I'm in Paris to speak tomorrow at a ceremony and conference in honor of Hervé Moulin.  

A focus of the talks will be Moulin's work on fairness, and my talk (on controversial markets) will focus in part on how concern for possible unfairness of market outcomes may lead to attempts to ban certain markets.

Here's the announcement of the Friday session:

Cérémonie de clôture de la chaire d’excellence internationale Blaise Bascal [Closing ceremony of the Blaise Bascal Chair of International Excellence]

Vendredi 4 novembre 2022, amphithéâtre Liard en Sorbonne – 14 h à 19 h 30 17 rue de la Sorbonne

Programme

13 h 30 – 14 h : Accueil du public au 17, rue de la Sorbonne – 75005 Paris 

14 h – 14 h 05 : Ouverture de la cérémonie de clôture de la Chaire d’excellence internationale Blaise Bascal par Christine Neau-Leduc, présidente de l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne 

14 h 05 – 14 h 10 : Remerciements de Hervé Moulin, professeur à l’université de Glasgow 

14 h 10 – 15 h : Can we define Fairness? par Hervé Moulin 

15 h – 15 h 45 :  Repugnant Transactions and Controversial Markets par Alvin Roth 

15 h 45 – 16 h 45 : Pause  

16 h 15 –  17 h :  Democracy and the Pursuit of Randomness par Ariel Procaccia 

17 h – 17 h 45 : Fair Social Choice par Marc Fleurbaey 

17 h 45 – 17 h 55 : Discours de clôture par : 

Un représentant de la Région Ile-de-France 

Michel Grabisch, professeur à l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne 

Agnieszka Rusinowska, professeur à l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne 

*********

The following day (Saturday) will be a conference on 

Recent Advances in Fair Division November 5th, 2022, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre Panthéon, Salle 1

8:45-9:00 Welcome to participantso

9:00-9:45 :Haris Aziz, Best of Both Worlds Fairness

9:45-10:30 :Edith Elkind, Mind the Gap: Fair Division with Separation Constraints

10:30-11:00 Coffee 

11:30-12:15 :Juan D Moreno Ternero, The Costs and Benefits of multilingualism

12:15-13:00 :Jean-Jacques Herings, An Axiomatization of the Pairwise Netting Proportional Rule in Financial Networks

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-14:45 :Dominik Peters, Voting in Participatory Budgeting

14:45-15:30 :Rupert Freeman, )A New Fairness Criterion for Assignment Mechanisms

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-16:45 :Utku Unver, Balancing Affirmative Action with Other Societal Interests:  a generalized theory on India’s reservation system

16:45-17:30 :Jean-Francois Laslier, Universalization and Altruism

Informationally Simple Incentives by Simon Gleyze and Agathe Pernoud

 Agathe Pernoud is on the Economics job market from Stanford this year, and is interested in the properties of information in environments in which agents may need to learn their own preferences.

Here are two papers that advance the theory of those situations, and expand on the fragility of 'dominant strategies' as the strategy space is enlarged.

Informationally Simple Incentives by Simon Gleyze and Agathe Pernoud, Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming.

Abstract: We consider a mechanism design setting in which agents can acquire costly information on their preferences as well as others’. A mechanism is informationally simple if agents have no incentive to learn about others’ preferences. This property is of interest for two reasons: First, it is a necessary condition for the existence of dominant strategy equilibria in the extended game.  Second, this endogenizes an “independent private value” property of the interim information structure. We show that, generically, a mechanism is informationally simple if and only if it satisfies a separability condition which rules out most economically meaningful mechanisms."

See also Agathe's job market paper:

How Competition Shapes Information in Auctions by Simon Gleyze and Agathe Pernoud

We consider auctions where buyers can acquire costly information about their valuations and those of others, and investigate how competition between buyers shapes their learning incentives. In equilibrium, buyers find it cost-efficient to acquire some information about their competitors so as to only learn their valuations when they have a fair chance of winning. We show that such learning incentives make competition between buyers less effective: losing buyers often fail to learn their valuations precisely and, as a result, compete less aggressively for the good. This depresses revenue, which remains bounded away from the expected second-highest valuation even when information costs are small. It also undermines price discovery. Finally, we examine the implications for auction design. First, setting an optimal reserve price is more valuable than attracting an extra buyer. Second, the seller can incentivize buyers to learn their valuations, hence restoring effective competition, by maintaining uncertainty over the set of auction participants.