Bring Them Home

 I'm in Israel this week, where there are constant reminders of the hostages

at Ben Gurion airport

at Symphony hall

Stanford campus in lockdown--pictures

Stanford is under-crowded in these coronavirus lockdown days of July...

Two recent trips to China, in pictures

From Hangzhou, with Alibaba's Jack Ma, and overlooking West Lake, with the pagoda from the story of White Snake barely visible in the distance (but see Beijing Opera, below):

From Qingdao (where the beer comes from both Factory 1 and Factory 2),  at Lao Shan, and from the HiSense building:

In Beijing: Tsinghua conference (with Ed Hopkins, Jacob Goeree and Ben Roth), Beijing Opera (Madam White Snake), Temple of Heaven, and at DiDi with Will Cheng:

Pursuing Global Kidney Exchange in Rome: photos

I was recently in Rome, where a substantial group gathered (see below) to further the possibilities of Global Kidney Exchange (GKE). Part of our efforts were focused on presentations to a January 15-16 Meeting of the EU Competent Authorities on Organ Donation and Transplantation, Co-Chaired by the European Commission..

You can see a photo of Mike Rees beginning his talk, with the names of various co-conspirators.
Finally, there's good coffee in Rome. I recommend the famously good Sant Eustachio.

So far, the EU competent authorities haven't issued any statement.

Pictures from the Wilson CME MSRI prize ceremony

We gathered in Chicago to celebrate Bob Wilson. Here's a story, with some nice quotes from Andy Skrzypacz:
ROBERT WILSON APPLIED GAME THEORY TO ECONOMICS AND WON

And here are some of the pictures I took:

Bob Wilson

Drew Fudenberg, Hari Govindan, Roger Myerson

Hugo Sonnenschein

Leo Melamed

Roger Myerson and the beer-quiche game

There was also a panel of some proud Wilson students, consisting of me, Paul Milgrom, and Bengt Holmstrom. Mary Wilson took this picture afterwards:

Notes from China 2: Lanzhou

I spoke in Lanzhou on Thursday, in Gansu Province, as part of a festival promoting the revival of the Silk Road as a market for international trade. The sponsors were Time Weekly, Readers Group (a wide circulation, Readers Digest kind of publisher...www.duzhe.com), and the provincial government.

Here's an interview published in China Daily:

诺贝尔经济学奖得主埃尔文·罗斯：中国市场必须由中国经济学家设计
作者：孟肖 来源：时代周刊 2016-09-20

Google translate renders the headline this way: Nobel laureate Erwin Ross: Chinese market must be designed by a Chinese economist

Author: Meng Xiao Source: Times 2016-09-20 

Kwong Sunrise Photo--Al Roth 

The provincial museum is well worth a visit.

And the Yellow River has some beautiful bridges: I took these photos from a riverboat at night.

I recommend the Lanzhou beef noodles, which I had for lunch  The banquet food in Lanzhou is also easy for Americans--fish, lamb, beef and Yak were prominent. (Yak is a kosher animal, by the way...). And toasting goes on throughout, not just in wine but in 100 proof rice liquor...

And in case you were wondering how to spell Erwin Ross in Chinese, I think this is it:

Notes from China 1: Changsha

The first of two stops on my recent trip to China was in Changsha, in Hunan province.  I spoke about market design, following the publication of Who Gets What and Why in Chinese (the Chinese title was changed to The Sharing Economy, but the subtitle was still The New Economic of Matchmaking and Market Design).

Here's a picture I took of the stage, before the talk began:

Here are links to some press coverage, including a visit to ResGreen corporation, a sponsor:

Full coverage

诺奖得主埃尔文-罗斯长沙谈共享经济：核心在于稳定匹配 星辰在线 - ‎Sep 20, 2016‎ 今日，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者埃尔文-罗斯(Alvin E. Roth)携最新的研究成果来到湖南长沙，走进了以绿之韵集团为代表的中国本土企业，与中国的商业巨鳄、学者专家共同探讨共享经济时代下的市场设计话题。 诺贝尔经济学奖得主埃尔文·罗斯：中国市场必须由中国经济学家设计 新浪网 - ‎Sep 19, 2016‎ 罗斯（Alvin E. Roth），罗斯因在博弈论、市场设计和实验经济学领域作出的显著贡献，而于2012年获得诺贝尔经济学奖，目前罗斯在哈佛商学院担任经济及工商管理学教授，他多次访问中国，对目前中国经济的 ... 诺奖得主罗斯走进绿之韵谈共享经济：核心在于稳定匹配 湖南在线 - ‎Sep 21, 2016‎ 埃尔文·罗斯(Alvin E。 Roth)考察湖南企业绿之韵公司. 罗斯此行携最新的研究成果，走进了以绿之韵集团为代表的中国本土企业，与中国的商业巨鳄、学者专家共同探讨共享经济时代下的市场设计话题。出席本 ... 诺贝尔经济学奖得主罗斯考察浏阳经开区企业 红网 - ‎Sep 20, 2016‎ 红网综合讯据浏阳经开区消息9月20日上午，诺贝尔经济学奖获得者埃尔文•罗斯（Alvin E. Roth）一行来到浏阳经开区绿之韵集团考察。浏阳经开区党工委副书记、管委会主任郭力夫，绿之韵集团战略发展顾问、 ...

By the way, the food in Hunan is exotic, here's our lunch menu, which has some unusual items (translated for me by Ms Keny Chen):

Lunch Menu 午宴菜品
Cold Dishes｜冷菜
Chrysanthemum with special sauce 凉拌苦菊
Vinegar walnut kernel 醋泡核桃仁
Preserved duck egg mixed with pepper 擂辣椒皮蛋
Sauced radish peels 萝卜皮
Salty chicken feet 盐焗凤爪
Fennel with special sauce 凉拌茴香
Soup｜汤
海马人参乳鸽汤
Main Dishes｜热菜
Lobster and salmon sashimi 龙虾三文鱼双拼刺身
Roast suckling pig 鸿运烤乳猪
Roasted goose 烧鹅
Braised local tortoise with soy sauce 红烧土乌龟
Stir-fry snake with spicy sauce 香辣蛇
Lactarius deliciosus braised in brown sauce 黄焖寒菌＊
Steamed Leopard Coral Grouper 清蒸蓝东星斑
Steamed scallop with minced garlic and vermicelli 蒜蓉粉丝蒸扇贝
Sautéd razor shell 口味圣子王
Poached domestic chicken 清炖土鸡
Stir-fry snow pea and pleurotus nebrodensis (bailing mushroom) 荷兰豆炒白灵菇
Spiced beef 酱香肉
Steamed ribs with sticky rice and pumpkin 金瓜糯香骨
Stir-fry preserved taro stripe with dried paprika 干椒炒酸芋头丝
Stir-fry diced beef and capsicum 彩椒炒牛仔粒
Stir-fry shrimp with egg white 芙蓉百合
Stir-fry pickles with sliced conch 酸萝卜炒螺片
Stir-fry Chinese edible frog 爆炒田鸡
Stir-fry nostoc commune (agaric) 清炒地木耳
Stir-fry bitter melon with green pepper 清炒苦瓜
Stir-fry Chinese kale (Kai-lan) 清炒芥兰
Staples｜主食
Fried Glutinous Rice Balls with Sesame 大麻果
Potsticker 锅饺

Budapest in three photos

The parliament building, the Holocaust memorial by the river, and a shop with excellent, diverse flavors of ice cream...

The market for photographs: "Man - 60 years and older"

Photographs for sale can be either of specific individuals or "stock photos" of generic images. Here's a picture of me that seems to be both, judging from the keywords the photographer or seller, Richard Kalvar at Magnum Photos, has assigned to it (such as "Man - 60 years and older"):

Keywords: Davos–International conference–American (nationality)–Davos
–Keedup QC–Man - 60 years and older–One Person–Portrait–Professor–ROTH Alvin

The photo gallery of retired Harvard economics professors on the Littauer stairway

Among the many reasons that the Harvard Economics department needs a new or renovated building is that their photo gallery of retired faculty is nearing the top of the stairwell. I haven't seen my photo there in person yet, but several correspondents have sent me a picture of my picture, and this photo captures, in reflection, how little room is left on the stairs...

Some snapshots of the ASSA meetings

Some snapshots from the ASSA meetings

Nobel labs: panoramic photos

One of the funnier post-Nobel phenomena, aside from the attention of journalists, is the attention of artists.  The most interesting of those whom I have interacted with is photographer Volker Steger, who in collaboration with the Landau organization has created a series of photo/interviews consisting of panoramic portraits of the places where Laureates work, together with links to embedded interviews, some just audio, and some video: NOBEL LABS 360° An Interactive Multimedia Project.

You can see the interviews/photos taken so far here: NOBEL LABS 360°, and here are the interviews with me at Stanford. including some in our actual lab, and with my colleague Muriel Niederle.

I haven't fully figured out how to navigate the site, but you can let the panorama rotate slowly, or you can navigate to parts of it by experimenting with your mouse...if you click on the link called "Introducing Alvin Roth" you can see a video of me working at and walking on (and talking about) my treadmill desk...and if you explore more you can find a nice shot that includes Rodin's Burghers of Callais on the Stanford campus.

Tomorrow I will graduate from being the most recent Economics laureate to a more emeritus status, and I'm looking forward to a few fewer distractions, although some of them have been quite fun.

More photography business in Stockholm

My recent trip to Sweden made me of interest to a variety of professional photographers, and in turn gave me a glimpse into the ways they earn their livings. Here's the website of the Swedish photographer Otto Westerlundh. If you scroll down his web page you can get some idea of the wide variety of pictures he shoots. He took some pics of me at a reception in Stockholm.

Speaking of photos, below is one my wife took with her phone, at the rehearsal for the Nobel award ceremony. You can see me practice receiving the award from a stand-in for the Swedish king. You can also pick out the Californians from among the laureates: my Stanford colleague Brian Kobilka is the other fellow in jeans...(The same photo, more or less, later in the day at the actual ceremony is here.)

More on the taking of photos

Here are two followups on my earlier post today on British Airways' claims about photographs. The first via Paola Manzini, concerns US Airways' similar claims. The second, via Ben Edelman, concerns a very recent court victory in the U.S. by the ACLU, regarding citizens' rights to photograph police officers.

Woman thrown off U.S. Airways flight for taking a picture of rude air steward's name tag.
"A photographer was thrown off a U.S. Airways flight and branded a security risk after she took a photo of a rude air steward's name tag so she could complain about her."


A Victory for Recording in Public!
"The CMLP is thrilled to report that in the case of Glik v. Cunniffe, which the CMLP has blogged previously and in which the CMLP attempted to file an amicus brief, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a resounding and unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public."

The market for professionally taken digital photographs

I was recently the subject of a magazine story, and, before it was published, the photographer Shawn Henry came to campus to "take my picture". That phrase doesn't do justice to what he actually did, which resulted in 148 photographs, eventually edited down to 30, and then to 5 that were sent to the magazine editors to choose the final one.

Mr Henry has given me permission to link to his copyrighted photos, in case you want to see how this sausage was made: here are the 148 pictures, the 30 pictures, and the final one (this link may take a minute to load, it's to the Forbes article...)

These pictures didn't take a lot of time for him to make; as I recall, we were together for about half an hour. (Even though we were outdoors, he deployed some lights and reflectors.)

Seeing how a pro works has made me feel better both about how I often don't like either how I look in pictures, or how other people look in pictures that I take.  Many of the pictures linked above were not so flattering (particularly in the set of 148), but I liked the final one. So selection from a wide variety helps. (And now I just need to lose a little weight:)

Modern electronics have probably changed not only the equipment that photographers use, but also how they work.