NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023, Cambridge MA

 Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023

Friday, October 27

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 1: Equity

9:00 am

Equal Pay for Similar Work

Diego Gentile Passaro, Brown University

Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University

Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, Brown University

9:45 am

Market Design for Social Justice: A Case Study on A Constitutional Crisis in India

Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

M. Utku Ünver, Boston College

10:30 am

Break

Session 2: Artificial Intelligence

10:45 am

Artificial Intelligence and Statistical Collusion

Martino Banchio, Google Research

Giacomo Mantegazza, Stanford University

11:30 am

Combining Human Expertise with Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Evidence from Radiology

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Alex Moehring, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Pranav Rajpurkar, Harvard University

Tobias Salz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

12:15 pm

Lunch

Session 3: Auctions

1:30 pm

Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price

Alexander Haberman, Stanford University

Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Unobserved Auctions

Hao Li, University of British Columbia

Michael Peters, University of British Columbia

3:00 pm

Entry and Exit in Treasury Auctions

Jason Allen, Bank of Canada

Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER

Eric Richert, University of Chicago

Milena Wittwer, Boston College

3:45 pm

Break

Session 4: Mechanism Design for Social Good

4:15 pm

Test-Optional Admissions

Wouter Dessein, Columbia University

Alexander P. Frankel, University of Chicago

Navin Kartik, Columbia University

5:00 pm

Maximizing the Effect of Altruism

Nicholas T. Wu, Yale University

Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research

Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research

5:45 pm

Adjourn

6:30 pm

Group Dinner at Bambara (across the street from the Royal Sonesta)

Saturday, October 28

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 5: Distributed Ledgers

9:00 am

The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and Anonymous, Decentralized Trust on the Blockchain

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

9:45 am

Can Open Decentralized Ledgers be Economically Secure?

Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago

Rafael Pass, Cornell University

Elaine Shi, Carnegie Mellon University

10:30 am

Break

Session 6: School Choice

11:00 am

Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: Robust Analysis of School Choice

Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University

Dong Woo Hahm, University of Southern California

YingHua He, Rice University

11:45 am

Search and Biased Beliefs in Education Markets

Patrick Agte, Princeton University

Claudia Allende, Stanford University and NBER

Adam Kapor, Princeton University and NBER

Christopher Neilson, Yale University and NBER

12:30 pm

Lunch

Session 7: Signalling and Screening

1:30 pm

Comparison of Screening Devices

Frank Yang, Stanford University

Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Privacy Preserving Signals

Philipp Strack, Yale University

Kai Hao Yang, Yale University

3:00 pm

Adjourn

Nudges, shoves, regulations and designs: debate in Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Do "nudges" provide low cost solutions to big economic problems? Are they crowding out more effective, but harder or more expensive approaches?

The latest volume of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Volume 46 - 2023, (a journal optimized to achieve impact factor, which counts references to previously published articles) contains 34 responses to the (previously published) target article*

The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray

• Nick Chater, George Loewenstein
• Published online  05 September 2022, e147

#####

Here are two of the responses that might be of most direct interest to regular readers of this blog:

• Behavioral market design

• Axel Ockenfels

• Behavioral mechanism design

• Samuel Bowles

########

The issue includes two separate responses by the authors of Nudge:

Select Nudging is being framed

• Nudging is being framed

• Richard H. Thaler
•  

• Conspiracy theory

• Cass R. Sunstein

 

##########

And here's a reply to all the commentary by the authors of the target article:

• Where next for behavioral public policy?

• Nick Chater, George Loewenstein
• "Academic papers are rarely born out of personal struggles. Our target article was."
•  
• ############

*Earlier post:

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Behavioral economics and market design are quite different -- Nick Chater and George Loewenstein reflect

 

Algorithms, Approximation, and Learning in Market and Mechanism Design" November 6-9, 2023 in Berkeley (register for funding)

 Here's the announcement

Register for SLMath (MSRI) Workshop: "Algorithms, Approximation, and Learning in Market and Mechanism Design"  November 6-9, 2023 in Berkeley, California, Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath)

Priority Funding Application Deadline: August 31, 2023

Speakers:

Monday, November 6, 2023: Matching Markets without Money

• Jiehua Chen (Technische Universität Wien)
• Federico Echenique (University of California, Berkeley)
• David Manlove (University of Glasgow)
• Alvin E. Roth (Stanford University)
• Jaychandran Sethuraman (Columbia University)

Tuesday, November 7, 2023: Non-Convex Auction Markets

• Elizabeth Baldwin (Merton College, University of Oxford)
• Paul Milgrom (Stanford University)
• Shmuel Oren (University of California, Berkeley)
• Rakesh Vohra (University of Pennsylvania)
• Yinyu Ye (Stanford University)

(Attendee reception follows Tuesday's events)

Wednesday, November 8, 2023: Algorithmic Mechanism Design

• Dirk Bergemann (Yale University)
• Michal Feldman (Tel-Aviv University)
• Jason Hartline (Northwestern University)
• Roger Myerson (University of Illinois, Chicago)
• Sigal Oren (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)

Thursday, November 9, 2023: Learning in Games and Markets

• Michael Jordan (University of California)
• David Parkes (Harvard University)
• Lillian Ratliff (University of California, Berkeley)
• Tuomas Sandholm (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Eva Tardos (Cornell University)

Market shaping ideas sought at U. Chicago

 The Market Shaping Accelerator at the University of Chicago is seeking to find innovative proposals: MSA Innovation Challenge 2023

"MSA’s inaugural Innovation Challenge 2023 will award up to $2,000,000 in total prizes for ideas that identify areas where a pull mechanism would help spur innovation in biosecurity, pandemic preparedness, and climate change, and for teams to design that incentive mechanism from ideation to contract signing.

...

"Pull mechanisms are policy tools that create incentives for private sector entities to invest in research and development (R&D) and bring solutions to market. Whereas “push” funding pays for inputs (e.g. research grants), “pull” funding pays for outputs and outcomes (i.e. prizes and milestone contracts). These mechanisms “pull” innovation by creating a demand for a specific product or service, which drives private sector investment and efforts towards developing and delivering that product or technological solution.

"One example of a pull mechanism is an Advance Market Commitment (AMC), which is a type of contract where a buyer, such as a government or philanthropic organization, commits to purchasing (or subsidizing) a product or service at a certain price and quantity once it becomes available. This commitment creates a market for the product or service, providing a financial incentive for innovators to invest in R&D and develop solutions to meet that demand.

"An AMC was used in the early 2000s in the case of developing a pneumococcal vaccine for the strain of the virus affecting children in low and middle income countries. Another current example is Frontier, led by Stripe, which is an AMC to accelerate carbon removal.

"In general, pull mechanisms are useful when we know we need an innovation, but we don’t who is best placed to develop it or how."

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

Earlier:

Friday, May 12, 2023

Market Shaping at the University of Chicago: Promoting needed innovation

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

Conference on Economic Design, University of Girona, June 15th-17th, 2023

 Conference on Economic Design, University of Girona,  June 15th-17th,  2023

Here is the program.

Plenary Sessions

June 15th, 19:00 Murat Sertel Lecture

Jordi Massó: On Strategy-proofness and the Salience of Single-peakedness in a Private Goods Allotment Problem

Chair: Salvador Barberà

June 16th, 17:00 Paul Kleindorfer Lecture

Alex Teytelboym: Duality in Market Design

Chair: Tommy Andersson

June 17th, 12:15 Leonid Hurwicz Lecture

Gabrielle Demange: Dual activities in a social network

Chair: Szilvia Pápai

June 15th, 16:00 Nedim Okan Young Scholar Prize

Zhuoqiong Chen: All-pay auctions with private signals about opponents’ values

Chair: Remzi Sanver

Introduction: Ayça Ebru Giritligil

Market Shaping at the University of Chicago: Promoting needed innovation

 One of many exciting talks yesterday at the first day of the New Directions in Market Design conference was by U. Chicago's Rachel Glennerster who announced the new market design initiative at U. Chicago:

Introducing the University of Chicago's Market Shaping Accelerator. Designing market shaping mechanisms to spur innovation to help solve some of the biggest global challenges.

"Accelerating Innovation

"Threats to the global community — such as climate change and pandemics — demand urgent innovation and action at scale. But when commercial incentives for innovation trail behind the social value, market shaping instruments are required to credibly signal demand and spur and scale up innovation.

"The Market Shaping Accelerator aims to harness the momentum and interest in these tools generated from global successes in vaccine development to accelerate their adoption by governments, multilateral institutions, and philanthropies to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.

"Nobel Laureates, Leading Scholars and Innovators Advance the Use of Market Shaping Instruments to Address Global Challenges​

"The Market Shaping Accelerator brings together the world’s leading market shaping experts. The team behind the Accelerator has contributed to both foundational research and prominent policy successes of market shaping mechanisms, including the Pneumococcal and Frontier Advanced Market Commitments (AMCs)."

Rachel Glennerster speaking about market shaping

New Directions in Market Design, NBER conference May 11-12, 2023 in Washington DC (and on YouTube)

 I'm on my way to this conference, celebrating a quarter of a century of practical market design by economists.

New Directions in Market Design, NBER conference May 11-12, 2023 (US Eastern Time)

LOCATION Convene, 600 14th St NW in Washington, DC. and livestreamed on YouTube 

ORGANIZERS Irene Y. Lo, Michael Ostrovsky, and Parag A. Pathak

 NBER conferences are by invitation. All participants are expected to comply with the NBER's Conference Code of Conduct.

Supported by Schmidt Futures

 Thursday, May 11

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am Opening Talk: Alvin Roth, Stanford University and NBER ("Market Design and Maintenance") 

9:30 am Break

9:45 am Electricity and Renewable Energy Market Design

Overview: Mar Reguant, Northwestern University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Martin Bichler, Technical University of Munich

Viewpoint 2: Richard O’Neill, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

11:05 am Market Design for the Environment

Overview: Estelle Cantillon, ULB

Viewpoint 1: Rachel Glennerster, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Nathan Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund

12:25 pm Lunch discussions

2:00 pm Market Design in Healthcare

Overview: Benjamin Handel, University of California at Berkeley and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Mark Miller, Arnold Ventures

Viewpoint 2: Fanyin Zheng, Columbia University

3:20 pm Market Design for Organ Transplantation

Overview: Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College

Viewpoint 1: Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Jennifer Erickson, Organize

4:40 pm Break

5:00 pm Market Design for Education

Overview: Parag Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Derek Neal, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Irene Lo, Stanford University

6:20 pm Adjourn

6:45 pm Group Dinner - JW Marriott

Friday, May 12

8:00 am Continental Breakfast

8:30 am Market Design for Public Housing

Overview: Nathan Hendren, Harvard University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Winnie van Dijk, Harvard University and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Mary Cunningham, Urban Institute

9:50 am Market Design in Transportation

Overview: Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: David Shmoys, Cornell University

Viewpoint 2: Wai Yan Leong, Singapore Land Transport Authority

11:10 am Break

11:30 am Market Design in Financial Markets

Overview: Haoxiang Zhu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Scott Mixon, CFTC

12:50 pm

Lunch discussions

2:20 pm Market Design Tools in the Regulation of Online Marketplaces

Overview: Susan Athey, Stanford University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Preston McAfee, Google

Viewpoint 2: Michael Schwarz, Microsoft

3:40 pm Artificial Intelligence and Market Design

Overview: Kevin Leyton-Brown, University of British Columbia

Viewpoint 1: Hal Varian, Google

Viewpoint 2: Nikhil Devanur, Amazon

5:00 pm Break

5:20 pm Closing Talk: Paul Milgrom, Stanford University

5:50 pm Adjourn

6:30 pm Group Dinner - JW Marriott