Kidney exchange and market design at the NBER

The NBER has disseminated a lot of the work on kidney exchange, and asked me to summarize that work, in the December 2012 issue of the NBER Reporter: Kidney Exchange

The same issue also contains these brief profiles of me and of three other NBER research associates.

The NBER has been at the forefront of recognizing market design as a distinct new area in economics, with a Market Design Working Group organized in 2008, directed by Susan Athey and Parag Pathak.

You can browse the NBER working papers on market design here: Working Papers by NBER Working Group - MD

Call for papers: NBER market design conference, October 28-29, 2011

Susan Athey and Parag Pathak have circulated the following call for papers.

From: Susan Athey and Parag Pathak

To: NBER Market Design Working Group

The National Bureau of Economic Research workshop on Market Design is a forum to discuss new academic research related to the design of market institutions, broadly defined. The next meeting will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Friday and Saturday, October 28-29, 2011.

We welcome new and interesting research, and are happy to see papers from a variety of fields. Participants in the past meeting covered a range of topics and methodological approaches.  Last year's program can be viewed at:  http://www.nber.org/~confer/2010/MDf10/MDf10prg.html

The conference does not publish proceedings or issue NBER working papers - most of the presented papers are presumed to be published later in journals.

There is no requirement to be an NBER-affiliated researcher to participate.  Younger researchers are especially encouraged to submit papers.  If you are interested in presenting a paper this year, please upload a PDF version by September 9, 2011 to this link:

http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=MDf11

Preference will be given to papers for which at least a preliminary draft is ready by the time of submission. Only authors of accepted papers will be contacted.

For presenters and discussants in North America, the NBER will cover the travel and hotel costs. For speakers from outside North America, while the NBER will not be able to cover the airfare, it can provide support for hotel accommodation.

There are a limited number of spaces available for graduate students to attend to conference, though we cannot cover their costs. Please email ppathak@mit.edu a short nominating paragraph.

Please forward this announcement to any potentially interested scholars.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Market design is coming of age

There are an increasing number of signs that Market Design is coming of age as a distinct area of economics. Here are three.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has formed a new Market Design Working Group. Susan Athey and Parag Pathak have organized its first conference, for May 15-16, 2009. Here is the preliminary program.

My Market Design course at Harvard, which for many years used to stand alone, is this year part of a two-semester sequence, with the second semester being Economics 2056b. Topics in Market Design - (New Course) offered by my colleagues Susan Athey and Greg Lewis. More of our Ph.D. students are choosing market design as a field, and we've had some great graduates in the decade I've been at Harvard (all of whom do other things as well:), including Estelle Cantillon, Muriel Niederle, John Asker, Michael Ostrovsky , Ben Edelman, Parag Pathak, Fuhito Kojima, Robin Lee and (this year) Eric Budish and Mihai Manea.

Oxford University Press is preparing a Handbook of Market Design, edited by Nir Vulcan, Muriel Niederle , and Zvika Neeman.