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."

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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."

An upside to dowries, by Natalie Bau, Gaurav Khanna, Corinne Low & Alessandra Voena

 Dowries (like bride prices*) are often criticized, but may have indirect effects that aren't so easy to see, as in this recent NBER paper:

Traditional Institutions in Modern Times: Dowries as Pensions When Sons Migrate by Natalie Bau, Gaurav Khanna, Corinne Low & Alessandra Voena  NBER WORKING PAPER 31176, DOI 10.3386/w31176

Abstract: This paper examines whether an important cultural institution in India - dowry - can enable male migration by increasing the liquidity available to young men after marriage. We hypothesize that one cost of migration is the disruption of traditional elderly support structures, where sons live near their parents and care for them in their old age. Dowry can attenuate this cost by providing sons and parents with a liquid transfer that eases constraints on income sharing. To test this hypothesis, we collect two novel datasets on property rights over dowry among migrants and among families of migrants. Net transfers of dowry to a man's parents are common but far from universal. Consistent with using dowry for income sharing, transfers occur more when sons migrate, especially when they work in higher-earning occupations. Nationally representative data confirms that migration rates are higher in areas with stronger historical dowry traditions. Finally, exploiting a large-scale highway construction program, we show that men from areas with stronger dowry traditions have a higher migration response to reduced migration costs. Despite its potentially adverse consequences, dowry may play a role in facilitating migration and therefore, economic development.

********

*Recall this earlier paper:

Ashraf, Nava, Natalie Bau, Nathan Nunn, and Alessandra Voena. "Bride price and female education." Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 2 (2020): 591-641.

Morality in Economics, as viewed from Sociology (Georg Kanitsar in European J. of Sociology)

Georg Kanitsar, a young sociologist, undertakes the task of looking at how economists think about morality (with a focus on experimental and behavioral econ, and market design). His view of how economists think may shed some light (for economists) on how sociologists think. (I quote below from near the beginning and near the end of his paper.)

Kanitsar, G. (2023). Putting Morals into Economics: From Value Neutrality to the Moral Economy and the Economization of Morality. European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes De Sociologie, 1-30. doi:10.1017/

"Abstract: The economic discipline plays a performative role in constructing the moral order of market society. Yet, little attention has been paid to what economists explicitly regard as moral or how they conceive of morality. This article reflects a recent attempt to put morals into economics, that is, to introduce morality as a research topic in behavioural and experimental economics. It maps three research programs that theorize the moral economy. The programs emphasize the moral foundations of market society, the moral limits of market expansion, and the moral consequences of market trading and, thus, appear irreconcilable with classifications of economists as market enthusiasts or moral agnostics. At the same time, however, the literature centres on an “economized” form of morality that is corrective to market inefficiencies, attributed to the responsibility of the individual, and expressed in rational terms. In doing so, this literature contributes to redefining moral problems in economic terms."

"I consider efforts to incorporate morality into an economic framework advanced by two influential branches of the discipline—behavioural economics and market experiments. To gain an overview of relevant research in these branches, I assemble a database of 39 recent articles and identify 20 key articles among them.

...

" I explore the “economization of morality” by elucidating the moral arguments and the moral background of two authoritative programs in present-day economics: behavioural economics/experiments and market design/experiments. While many renowned economists have produced notable work on morality, these two research programs currently exert a unique influence on the economic discipline and are highly industrious in exporting its findings to policy making.

...

"Discourse in the economic mainstream was long dominated by market enthusiasts and moral agnostics, but the recent surge of behavioural and market experiments has again drawn attention to morality as a research topic in economics. At the argumentative level, the reviewed literature reveals a genuine break with market fundamentalism in the narrow sense. I have identified three strands that shed light on the moral economy and emphasize the moral foundations, limitations, and consequences of markets. Thus, economics has not been deaf to appeals to “put morals into markets” [Amable Reference Amable2011]. At the background level, however, the integration of morality is steered by the discipline’s theoretical and methodological underpinnings. In consequence, a very specific understanding of morality lies at the heart of these research efforts; a form of morality that is functional to market efficiency and attributed to utility-maximizing individuals.

...

"Behavioural economics thus strikes out in the opposite direction as scholarship in economic sociology. On the surface, both disciplines take as a starting point a view of market society as divided in arm’s-length transactions and social ties, and both disciplines have rediscovered morality as their subject matter. Yet, behavioural economics addresses the social sphere with tools that were tailor-made for the neoclassical analysis of markets. The field maintains the analytical primacy on efficiency and rationality, which it inherited from its parent discipline. In experiments, social exchanges are represented as contractual, anonymous, and temporary encounters, and money is regarded as a neutral tool used to express valuations. Conversely, economic sociology views markets as diverse “arenas of social interaction” [Beckert Reference Beckert2009: 245]. Market transactions are considered as far from universal, arelational, and disembedded [Aspers Reference Aspers, Beckert and Zafirovski2005], and the cultural meanings of money rarely reduce it to a qualityless, neutral, and homogenous medium of exchange [Zelizer Reference Zelizer1989]. Thus, the “moral economy” of behavioural economics is situated next to the “amoral economy” of neoclassical economics [Bowles Reference Bowles2016], echoing the traditional opposition between separate spheres of the economic and the moral [Thompson Reference Thompson E1971]. By contrast, economic sociology is increasingly devoted to identifying the multiple moralities underlying economic processes [Beckert Reference Beckert2012; Zelizer Rotman Reference Zelizer Rotman2017], convinced that “all economies are moral economies” [Fourcade Reference Fourcade2017: 665]."

Transition from medical school to residency: defending the parts that work well (namely the NRMP Resident Match)

This post is about a recently published paper concerning the design of the market for new doctors in the U.S.  But it will require some background for most readers of this blog.   The short summary is that the market is experiencing problems related to congestion, and one of the proposals to address these problems was deeply flawed, and would have reduced market thickness and caused substantial direct harm to participants if implemented, and created instabilities that would likely have caused indirect harms to the match process in subsequent years. But this needed to be explained in the medical community, since that proposal was being  very actively advocated.

For those of you already steeped in the background, you can go straight to the paper, here.

Itai Ashlagi, Ephy Love, Jason I. Reminick, Alvin E. Roth; Early vs Single Match in the Transition to Residency: Analysis Using NRMP Data From 2014 to 2021. J Grad Med Educ 1 April 2023; 15 (2): 219–227. doi: https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-22-00177.1

If the title doesn't remind you of the vigorous advocacy for an early match for select positions, here is some of the relevant back story.

The market for new doctors--i.e. the transition from medical school to residency--is experiencing growing pains as the number of applications and interviews has grown, which imposes costs on both applicants and residency programs.  

Below is a schematic of that process, which begins with applicants submitting applications electronically, which makes it easy to submit many.  This is followed by residency programs inviting some of their applicants to interview. The movement to Zoom interviews has made it easier to have many interviews also (although interviews were multiplying even before they moved to Zoom).  

After interviews, programs and applicants participate in the famous centralized clearinghouse called The Match, run by the NRMP. Programs and applicants each submit rank order lists (ROLs) ranking those with whom they interviewed, and a deferred acceptance algorithm (the Roth-Peranson algorithm) produces a stable matching, which is publicly announced on Match Day. (Unmatched people and positions are invited into a now computer-mediated scramble, called SOAP, and these matches too are announced on Match  Day.)

The Match had its origins as a way to control the "unraveling" of the market into inefficient bilateral contracts, in which employment contracts were made long before employment would commence, via exploding offers that left most applicants with very little ability to compare options.  This kind of market failure afflicted not only the market for new physicians (residents), but also the market for later specialization (as fellows). Consequently, over the years, many specialties have turned to matching for their fellowship positions as well.

  The boxes in brown in the schematic are those that constitute "The Match:" the formulation and submission of the ROLs, and the processing of these into a stable matching of programs to residents.  Congestion is bedeviling the parts in blue.

The boxes colored brown are 'The Match' in which participants formulate and submit rank order lists (ROLs), after which a deferred acceptance algorithm produces a stable matching of applicants to programs, which is accepted by programs and applicants on Match Day. The boxes in blue, the applications and interviews that precede the Match, are presently suffering from some congestion.  Some specialties have been experimenting with signals (loosely modeled on those in the market for new Economics PhDs, but implemented differently by different medical specialties).

The proposal in question was to divide the match into two matches, run sequentially, with the first match only allowing half of the available positions to be filled.  The particular proposal was to do this first for the OB-GYN specialty, thus separating that from the other specialties in an early match, with only half of the OB-GYN positions available early.

This proposal came out of a study funded by the American Medical Association, and it was claimed, without any evidence being offered, that it would solve the current problems facing the transition to residency.  Our paper was written to provide some evidence of the likely effects, by simulating the proposed process using the preferences (ROLs) submitted in previous years.  

The results show that the proposal would largely harm OB-GYN applicants by giving them less preferred positions than they could get in a traditional single match, and that it would create instabilities that would encourage strategic behavior that would likely undermine the successful operation of the match in subsequent years.

Itai Ashlagi, Ephy Love, Jason I. Reminick, Alvin E. Roth; Early vs Single Match in the Transition to Residency: Analysis Using NRMP Data From 2014 to 2021. J Grad Med Educ 1 April 2023; 15 (2): 219–227. doi: https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-22-00177.1

Abstract:

"Background--An Early Result Acceptance Program (ERAP) has been proposed for obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) to address challenges in the transition to residency. However, there are no available data-driven analyses on the effects of ERAP on the residency transition.

"Objective--We used National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) data to simulate the outcomes of ERAP and compare those to what occurred in the Match historically.

"Methods--We simulated ERAP outcomes in OB/GYN, using the de-identified applicant and program rank order lists from 2014 to 2021, and compared them to the actual NRMP Match outcomes. We report outcomes and sensitivity analyses and consider likely behavioral adaptations.

"Results--Fourteen percent of applicants receive a less preferred match under ERAP, while only 8% of applicants receive a more preferred match. Less preferred matches disproportionately affect DOs and international medical graduates (IMGs) compared to US MD seniors. Forty-one percent of programs fill with more preferred sets of applicants, while 24% fill with less preferred sets of applicants. Twelve percent of applicants and 52% of programs are in mutually dissatisfied applicant-program pairs (a pair in which both prefer each other to the match each received). Seventy percent of applicants who receive less preferred matches are part of a mutually dissatisfied pair. In 75% of programs with more preferred outcomes, at least one assigned applicant is part of a mutually dissatisfied pair.

"Conclusions--In this simulation, ERAP fills most OB/GYN positions, but many applicants and programs receive less preferred matches, and disparities increase for DOs and IMGs. ERAP creates mutually dissatisfied applicant-program pairs and problems for mixed-specialty couples, which provides incentives for gamesmanship."

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I'm hopeful this paper will effectively contribute to the ongoing discussion of how, and how not, to modify the design of the whole process of transition to residency with an aim to fixing the parts that need fixing, without damaging the parts that work well, i.e. while doing no harm. 

(Signaling will likely continue to play a role in this.)

Mega-Journals and scientific publishing

 Academic publishing is getting more varied. A recent article in JAMA focuses on the rise of 'mega-journals,' which seek to publish papers that are correct, without filtering for (referees' opinions about) novelty or importance.

The Rapid Growth of Mega-Journals: Threats and Opportunities  by John P. A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc1,2; Angelo Maria Pezzullo, MD, MSc3; Stefania Boccia, MSc, DSc, PhD3,4, JAMA. Published online March 20, 2023. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.3212

"Mega-journals, those that publish large numbers of articles per year,1 are growing rapidly across science and especially in biomedicine. Although 11 Scopus-indexed journals published more than 2000 biomedical full papers (articles or reviews) in 2015 and accounted for 6% of that year’s literature, in 2022 there were 55 journals publishing more than 2000 full articles, totaling more than 300 000 articles (almost a quarter of the biomedical literature that year). In 2015, 2 biomedical research journals (PLoS One and Scientific Reports) published more than 3500 full articles. In 2022, there were 26 such prolific journals (Table). The accelerating growth of mega-journals creates both threats and opportunities for biomedical science.

...

"we define mega-journals as open-access peer-reviewed journals that charge article processing fees and publish more than 2000 full articles in a calendar year. The 2 early-launched mega-journals, PLoS One and Scientific Reports, were also characterized by very broad publishing scope, covering scientific topics in general. 

...

"Mega-journals typically claim to publish articles based on whether they are scientifically sound rather than important and novel. Accordingly, their acceptance rates, when disclosed, are 20% to 70%

...

"It would be unfair, nevertheless, to dismiss mega-journals as simply a negative development. Several of their characteristics could be aligned also with desirable scientific practices. First, open access is a good starting point, and it can be coupled with greater transparency. If these journals routinely adopt transparent research practices, such as sharing of data, code, protocols, and statistical analysis plans, they can have a transformative effect, given their large output. Several older, broad-scope mega-journals (eg, PLoS One, Royal Society Open Science) have already championed such efforts. It is crucial that disciplinary-focused mega-journals do the same. Second, publishing technically sound scientific work regardless of the nature of the results is highly commendable. It offers opportunities to curb publication and selective reporting bias. Empirical studies are needed to investigate whether mega-journals do achieve this goal or still have selective reporting biases and variants thereof (eg, “spin”). Third, mega-journals may allow publication of results deemed undesirable in traditional specialty journals with entrenched, inbred publishing practices. Enhanced diversity of perspectives and opportunities to challenge orthodoxy are welcome, provided the journals publish rigorous data and safeguard against conflicts of interest. Securing editorial independence and maximizing transparency about conflicts for editors, reviewers, and authors will be key in reaping such benefits.

...

"At the publisher level, competition may have major indirect effects on medicine and science at large. Scientific publishing has an annual work cycle exceeding $30 billion and very large profit margins, which are possible in part because approximately 100 million hours of peer reviewers’ time is offered free yearly.8 The publishers behind the new generation of specialized mega-journals (Table) are taking this money-making recipe to new heights. Science and scientists may feel thwarted, if not entirely powerless, while big publishing corporations fight for field domination. However, it would be to the benefit of all if scientists, medical and research institutions, and funders gave credit to and rewarded journals (and publishers) that promote more transparent research and more rigorous research practices."

Blue water, green water and climate change

 Much of the discussion of redesigning the markets for water focus on "blue water," i.e. surface water in rivers and lakes, and runoff from rain, and resulting accumulation in reservoirs, snowpacks, and ground water.

Here's a paper in Nature pointing out that, particularly as climates change, we also have to think of "green water," namely water from evaporation and rain, and how to manage that.

Rockström, Johan, Mariana Mazzucato, Lauren Seaby Andersen, Simon Felix Fahrländer, and Dieter Gerten. "Why we need a new economics of water as a common good." Nature (2023).

"Water managers have always had to deal with natural variability, building larger reservoirs and tapping aquifers to fight scarcity, for example. But current challenges and trends in the rest of this century demand a completely different approach: a radical shake-up in how water is governed, managed and valued, from local to global scales, including a re-evaluation of human water needs (see Supplementary information, Box S1).

"Today, the sector concentrates on flows of ‘blue’ fresh water — liquid that runs off the land and is stored in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and underground aquifers. Utilities capture and extract this water locally for drinking and sanitation, agricultural irrigation and industry.

...

"Managing fresh water on a global scale means going beyond our current fixation on capturing blue water, which constitutes 35% of all fresh water on land, to also encompass green water, which makes up the remaining 65% (see Supplementary information, Fig. S1). Flows of moisture and vapour from land and vegetation are essential for regulating the water cycle and securing future rainfall, as well enabling carbon sequestration in soils and forests.

"Globally, up to half of terrestrial precipitation originates from green water evaporated over land, with the rest from evaporation over the ocean3. Thus, landscape changes can alter water supplies in regions downwind, as well as changing local climates and streamflows. For example, deforestation in the Congo Basin lowers rainfall in neighbouring countries, and even across the Atlantic in the Amazon. Heavy irrigation of crops in India can boost the streamflow of the Yangtze River in China, through moisture transported downwind4.

"By analogy with watersheds on land, researchers refer to ‘precipitationsheds’ and ‘evaporationsheds’ in the atmosphere. Simply put, a precipitationshed is where rain comes from and an evaporationshed is where evaporation goes to. (Here, evaporation refers to total evaporation from the ocean and green water flows from land, including from soil and water bodies, as well as transpiration from vegetation.)"

Social media advertising and COVID vaccination, in PNAS

 Vaccine rollout is different than allocating other (initially) scarce goods because it involves overcoming vaccine hesitancy.  Here's a meta-analysis which concludes that advertising was helpful and cost effective.

Athey, Susan, Kristen Grabarz, Michael Luca, and Nils Wernerfelt. "Digital public health interventions at scale: The impact of social media advertising on beliefs and outcomes related to COVID vaccines." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 5 (2023): e2208110120.

Abstract: Public health organizations increasingly use social media advertising campaigns in pursuit of public health goals. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of about $40 million of social media advertisements that were run and experimentally tested on Facebook and Instagram, aimed at increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates in the first year of the vaccine roll-out. The 819 randomized experiments in our sample were run by 174 different public health organizations and collectively reached 2.1 billion individuals in 15 languages. We find that these campaigns are, on average, effective at influencing self-reported beliefs—shifting opinions close to 1% at baseline with a cost per influenced person of about $3.41. Combining this result with an estimate of the relationship between survey outcomes and vaccination rates derived from observational data yields an estimated cost per additional vaccination of about $5.68. There is further evidence that campaigns are especially effective at influencing users’ knowledge of how to get vaccines. Our results represent, to the best of our knowledge, the largest set of online public health interventions analyzed to date.

School choice, by Atila Abdulkadiroğlu and Tommy Andersson

 Here's what looks to be a magisterial survey of school choice by two pioneers of the theory and practice of market design.

School choice by Atila Abdulkadiroğlu and Tommy Andersson, Handbook of the Economics of Education, Available online 3 January 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.hesedu.2022.11.001 

Abstract: School districts in the United States and around the world are increasingly moving away from traditional neighborhood school assignment, in which pupils attend closest schools to their homes. Instead, they allow families to choose from schools within district boundaries. This creates a market with parental demand over publicly-supplied school seats. More frequently than ever, this market for school seats is cleared via market design solutions grounded in recent advances in matching and mechanism design theory. The literature on school choice is reviewed with emphasis placed on the trade-offs among policy objectives and best practices in the design of admissions processes. It is concluded with a brief discussion about how data generated by assignment algorithms can be used to answer contemporary empirical questions about school effectiveness and policy interventions.

Moral certainties versus moral tradeoffs

 An article and a commentary in PNAS raise the possibility that  economists and psychologists and moral philosophers concerned with morally contested transactions may be able to engage in more useful discussions. A problem is that economists mostly think about tradeoffs while many moral philosophers (or at least those who write about medical ethics) often think of morality as involving absolutes. (This is clearly illustrated in discussions about repugnant transactions, such as those involving compensation of donors of blood plasma or kidneys, for example.)

The PNAS article is   

Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés, María Teresa Barbato, Daniel Sznycer, and Leda Cosmides. "A moral trade-off system produces intuitive judgments that are rational and coherent and strike a balance between conflicting moral values." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 42 (2022): e2214005119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214005119

"Significance: Intuitions about right and wrong clash in moral dilemmas. We report evidence that dilemmas activate a moral trade-off system: a cognitive system that is well designed for making trade-offs between conflicting moral values. When asked which option for resolving a dilemma is morally right, many people made compromise judgments, which strike a balance between conflicting moral values by partially satisfying both. Furthermore, their moral judgments satisfied a demanding standard of rational choice: the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences. Deliberative reasoning cannot explain these results, nor can a tug-of-war between emotion and reason. The results are the signature of a cognitive system that weighs competing moral considerations and chooses the solution that maximizes rightness.

"Abstract: How does the mind make moral judgments when the only way to satisfy one moral value is to neglect another? Moral dilemmas posed a recurrent adaptive problem for ancestral hominins, whose cooperative social life created multiple responsibilities to others. For many dilemmas, striking a balance between two conflicting values (a compromise judgment) would have promoted fitness better than neglecting one value to fully satisfy the other (an extreme judgment). We propose that natural selection favored the evolution of a cognitive system designed for making trade-offs between conflicting moral values. Its nonconscious computations respond to dilemmas by constructing “rightness functions”: temporary representations specific to the situation at hand. A rightness function represents, in compact form, an ordering of all the solutions that the mind can conceive of (whether feasible or not) in terms of moral rightness. An optimizing algorithm selects, among the feasible solutions, one with the highest level of rightness. The moral trade-off system hypothesis makes various novel predictions: People make compromise judgments, judgments respond to incentives, judgments respect the axioms of rational choice, and judgments respond coherently to morally relevant variables (such as willingness, fairness, and reciprocity). We successfully tested these predictions using a new trolley-like dilemma. This dilemma has two original features: It admits both extreme and compromise judgments, and it allows incentives—in this case, the human cost of saving lives—to be varied systematically. No other existing model predicts the experimental results, which contradict an influential dual-process model."

Here is their first example:

"Two countries, A and B, have been at war for years (you are not a citizen of either country). The war was initiated by the rulers of B, against the will of the civilian population. Recently, the military equilibrium has broken, and it is certain that A will win. The question is how, when, and at what cost.

"Country A has two strategies available: attacking the opposing army with conventional weapons and bombing the civilian population. They could use one, the other, or a combination of both. Bombing would demoralize country B: The more civilians are killed, the sooner B will surrender, and the fewer soldiers will die—about half from both sides, all forcibly drafted. Conventional fighting will minimize civilian casualties but maximize lives lost (all soldiers).

"More precisely: If country A chooses not to bomb country B, then 6 million soldiers will die, but almost no civilians. If 4 million civilians are sacrificed in the bombings, B will surrender immediately, and almost no soldiers will die. And, if A chooses an intermediate solution, for every four civilians sacrificed, approximately six fewer soldiers will die.

"How should country A end the war? What do you feel is morally right?"

**********

Here is the followup commentary:

Lieberman, Debra, and Steven Shenouda. "The superior explanatory power of models that admit trade-offs in moral judgment and decision-making." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 51 (2022): e2216447119.

"We make “moral” decisions each day (should I stay and help my graduate student with her thesis thereby delaying dinner for my children? And if I do stay, how long is acceptable until the trade-off tips in favor of my children—30 min? An hour? Longer?). There are costs associated with every act, and part of the human condition is that we seek to balance our duties to everyone in our social network.

"Moral judgments, as the above example illustrates, lead to intermediate, compromise solutions. For this reason, the value of moral dilemmas like the trolley problem that yield only binary outcomes is limited to the superficial exploration of normative theories within philosophy—not the underlying mental software driving moral cognition

...

"As a philosophical tool, the trolley problem playfully probes certain (limited) contours of moral decision-making. But, as a methodology imported from philosophy into cognitive science to illuminate moral cognition, the translation is impoverished because it yields only binary, extreme solutions and prevents moral trade-offs or compromise judgments. "

Designing queues for overloaded waiting lists, by Jacob Leshno

 Here's a paper by Jacob Leshno, with a really creative new contribution to the (venerable) queuing literature. 

Leshno, Jacob D. 2022. "Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Waiting Lists." American Economic Review, December, 112 (12): 3876-3910. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201111 (ungated working paper link here)

"Abstract: This paper introduces a stylized model to capture distinctive features of waiting list allocation mechanisms. First, agents choose among items with associated expected wait times. Waiting times serve a similar role to that of monetary prices in directing agents' choices and rationing items. Second, the expected wait for an item is endogenously determined and randomly fluctuates over time. We evaluate welfare under these endogenously determined waiting times and find that waiting time fluctuations lead to misallocation and welfare loss. A simple randomized assignment policy can reduce misallocation and increase welfare."

"A practical recommendation is the simple service-in-random order (SIRO) queuing policy. A SIRO buffer-queue mechanism has a simple description: agents who decline an item are allowed to join a priority pool for their preferred item, and agents in each priority pool have an equal probability of receiving an arriving item. We characterize the SIRO buffer-queue mechanism as the robustly optimal mechanism. This simple randomization does not fully equalize the expected wait across states, but it lessens the expected wait fluctuations and therefore reduces the misallocation probability and achieves higher welfare in equilibrium than FCFS." [FCFS= first come first served.]

"In summary, this paper offers two messages for the practical design of allocation through waiting lists. First, although many public-housing authorities have waiting list policies that discourage applicants from declining items, the analysis suggests agents should be encouraged to decline mismatched items. When the system is overloaded, an agent who declines a mismatched item allows the system to search further and assign the item to a matching agent. Furthermore, such an agent reduces the waiting costs of others by allowing them to be assigned before him. Second, equalizing the expected wait agents face when making their choice can improve welfare. This can be achieved by the SIRO buffer-queue mechanism or by partial information mechanisms. Both are practical mechanisms that offer agents more equal options at the time they make their choice, and thus reduce misallocation and improve welfare."

Lobster traps, whales, and the enforcement of informal property rights

 An experiment to protect whales from becoming entangled in the long ropes that connect lobster traps on the sea floor to buoys on the surface might also change some equilibria among lobster fisherman.

The WSJ has this story:

Endangered Whales Get Lifeline From High-Tech Lobster Traps. Lobstermen are testing equipment designed to help North American right whales avoid deadly entanglements   By Eric Niiler

"Lobstermen have long used buoys to mark the location of their traps. The ropeless systems are designed to limit whales’ risk of entanglement by keeping the buoys and their ropes stowed underwater on the traps until it is time to check the traps. 

...

"Another challenge that could stand in the way of broad use of ropeless gear involves alerting other fishermen to the presence of lobster traps—whose location, in the absence of buoys, can be harder to identify. Conflict between lobstermen with fixed gear and fishermen who drag nets along the seafloor has long been a problem along the New England coast, federal officials said.

"Computer scientists at the Allen Institute for AI—a Seattle-based nonprofit research organization founded by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen—are developing an app to share the location of ropeless gear with other fishermen and regulators, according to Henry Milliken, supervisory research fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole."

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Earlier, on a different aspect of the lobstering equilibrium:

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Policing the lobster commons

"Lobsters are caught in traps that sit on the sea floor, marked by (and recovered via) buoys that float above, connected to the trap by a rope. Lobstermen in Maine are known for policing who sets traps where by cutting the lines (or threatening to cut the lines) of lobstermen who set traps outside of their territory. From time to time there's a question about whether the state should limit certain areas to local lobstermen. Now is such a time..."

Lin Ostrom coauthored a paper on this:

Schlager, Edella, and Elinor Ostrom. "Property-rights regimes and natural resources: a conceptual analysis." Land economics (1992): 249-262.

"The enforcement of the de facto proprietor rights was borne entirely by the lobstermen of each village. The sanction that  they used against anyone who violated communal rules was gear destruction. ...The easiest means of destroying traps is to cut the rope by which the traps are attached to buoys."

Liver exchange--a review by Agrawal, Gupta and Saigal

 

 Here's a review of liver exchange in the transplant literature, with some comparisons to kidney exchange.

Paired exchange Living donor Liver Transplantation: Indications, stumbling blocks, and future considerations by Dhiraj Agrawal, Subhash Gupta,  and Sanjiv Saigal, Journal of Hepatology, In Press,  Pre-proof https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhep.2022.10.019 

Abstract: "The last decade has seen Liver Paired exchange (LPE) as an increasingly used modality across the transplant community by which pairs of incompatible living Liver donors and their intended recipients swap Livers resulting in compatible transplants. The feasibility and benefit of LPE in providing excellent recipient outcomes and robust donor safety have been proven in uncomplicated swaps. Began initially as single-centre two-way or three-way exchanges, LPE has tremendous potential to grow into more complicated chains over days and over multiple centres. Also, LPE is associated with unique technical, logistical, ethical and legislative challenges. This review discusses the indications, potential types of LPE, unique solutions to stumbling blocks in performing LPE, and future considerations on how LPE can expand the living donor liver pool and the armamentarium of living donor liver transplantation (LDLT)".

"The published literature on LPE has nine reports (5 original articles and 4 case reports), including 74 LPEs from Asia and North America.1), 2), 3), 4), 5), 6), 7), 8), 9) LPE constitutes approximately 1.2 to 8.3 % of the total LDLTs performed at the individual centre1), 2), 3), 4), signifying a substantial potential of this form of LDLT to mitigate the liver allograft shortage."

...

1. D. Agrawal, S. Saigal, S.S. Jadaun, S.A. Singh, S. Agrawal, S. Gupta

Paired Exchange Living Donor Liver Transplantation: A Nine-year Experience From North India

Transplantation (2022 Jun 30), 10.1097/TP.0000000000004210

Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35777310

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S. Hwang, S.G. Lee, D.B. Moon, G.W. Song, C.S. Ahn, K.H. Kim, et al.

Exchange living donor liver transplantation to overcome ABO incompatibility in adult patients

Liver Transpl, 16 (4) (2010 Apr), pp. 482-490, 10.1002/lt.22017

PMID: 20222052

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3)

D.H. Jung, S. Hwang, C.S. Ahn, K.H. Kim, D.B. Moon, S.G. Lee, et al.

Section 16. Update on experience in paired-exchange donors in living donor liver transplantation for adult patients at ASAN Medical Center

Transplantation, 97 (Suppl 8) (2014 Apr 27), pp. S66-S69, 10.1097/01.tp.0000446280.81922.bb

PMID: 24849838

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4)

V. Gunabushanam, S. Ganesh, K. Soltys, G. Mazariegos, A. Ganoza, M. Molinari, et al.

Increasing Living Donor Liver Transplantation Using Liver Paired Exchange

J Am Coll Surg, 234 (2) (2022 Feb 1), pp. 115-120, 10.1097/XCS.0000000000000036

PMID: 35213430

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5)

A. Kaplan, R. Rosenblatt, W. Jackson, B. Samstein, R.S. Brown Jr.

Practices and Perceptions of Living Donor Liver Transplantation, Non-directed Donation, and Liver Paired Exchange: A National Survey

Liver Transpl, 28 (5) (2022 May), pp. 774-781, 10.1002/lt.26384

Epub 2021 Dec 26. PMID: 34862704; PMCID: PMC9018478

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6)

H.J. Braun, A.M. Torres, F. Louie, S.D. Weinberg, S.M. Kang, N.L. Ascher, et al.

Expanding living donor liver transplantation: Report of first US living donor liver transplant chain

Am J Transplant, 21 (4) (2021 Apr), pp. 1633-1636, 10.1111/ajt.16396

Epub 2020 Dec 8. PMID: 33171017; PMCID: PMC8016700

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7)

M.S. Patel, Z. Mohamed, A. Ghanekar, G. Sapisochin, I. McGilvray, N. Selzner, et al.

Living donor liver paired exchange: A North American first

Am J Transplant, 21 (1) (2021 Jan), pp. 400-404, 10.1111/ajt.16137

Epub 2020 Jul 10. PMID: 32524750

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8)

S.C. Chan, C.M. Lo, B.H. Yong, W.J. Tsui, K.K. Ng, S.T. Fan

Paired donor interchange to avoid ABO-incompatible living donor liver transplantation

Liver Transpl, 16 (4) (2010 Apr), pp. 478-481, 10.1002/lt.21970

PMID: 20373459

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9)

S.C. Chan, Chok KSh, W.W. Sharr, A.C. Chan, S.H. Tsang, W.C. Dai, et al.

Samaritan donor interchange in living donor liver transplantation

Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis Int, 13 (1) (2014 Feb), pp. 105-109, 10.1016/s1499-3872(14)60016-3

PMID: 24463089

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