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Monday, November 15, 2021

Market design course for health policy and medical students, at Stanford, taught by Alex Chan and Kurt Sweat

 Starting tomorrow, a short course in market design:

BIOS 203, Fall 2021: Market Design and Field Experiments for Health Policy and Medicine 

Primary Instructor: Alex Chan chanalex@stanford.edu | Office Hours: By appointment

Secondary Instructor: Kurt Sweat kurtsw@stanford.edu | Office Hours: By appointment


Description. Market design is an emerging field in economics, engineering and computer science about how to organize systems to allocate scarce resources. In this course, we study (1) the theory and practice of market design in healthcare and medicine, and (2) methods to evaluate the impact of such designs. Students will be provided with the necessary tools to diagnose the problems in markets and allocation mechanisms that render them inefficient, and subsequently develop a working toolbox to remedy failed markets and finetune new market and policy designs.

With a practical orientation in mind, we will learn how to construct rules for allocating resources or to structure successful marketplaces through successive examples in healthcare and medicine: medical residency matching, kidney exchange, allocation of scarce medical resources like COVID vaccine and tests, medical equipment procurement, online marketplace for doctors, and, if time permits, reward system for biopharmaceutical innovation. Guest lectures by practicing market designers and C-suite healthcare executives (CEO, CFO) would feature in the course as well.

An important goal of the class is to introduce you to the critical ingredients to a successful design: a solid understanding of institutions, grasps of economic theory, and well-designed experiments and implementation. In the final sessions, students will also learn how to design and deploy one of the most powerful tools in practical market design: A/B testing or randomized field experiments. These techniques are widely used by tech companies like UBER, Amazon, eBay, and others to improve their marketplaces.

At the end of the course, students should have acquired the necessary knowledge to become an avid consumer and user, and potentially a producer, of the market design and field experimental literature (recognized by 4 recent Nobel Prizes in Economics: 2007/2012/2019/2020).

Time & Location.

● Tue, Thu 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (beginning November 16, 2021) at Encina Commons Room 119

Course Webpage. ● https://canvas.stanford.edu/courses/145148


Schedule and Readings

(* required readings, others are optional)

Session 1. Market design and Marketplaces – November 16


1. * Roth, A. E. (2007). The art of designing markets. harvard business review, 85(10), 118.

2. Kominers, S. D., Teytelboym, A., & Crawford, V. P. (2017). An invitation to market design. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 33(4), 541-571.

3. Roth, A. E. (2002). The economist as engineer: Game theory, experimentation, and computation as tools for design economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 1341-1378


Session 2. Matching Markets: Medical Residents and the NRMP – November 18


1. * Chapter 1 in Gura, E. Y., & Maschler, M. (2008). Insights into game theory: an alternative mathematical experience. Cambridge University Press.

2. * Fisher, C. E. (2009). Manipulation and the Match. JAMA, 302(12), 1266-1267.

3. * National Resident Matching Program. (2021). Feasibility of an Early Match NRMP Position Statement

4. Roth, A. E., & Peranson, E. (1997). The effects of the change in the NRMP matching algorithm. JAMA, 278(9), 729-732.

5. Gale, D., & Shapley, L. S. (1962). College admissions and the stability of marriage. The American Mathematical Monthly, 69(1), 9-15.


Session 3. Kidney Exchange and Organ Allocation – November 30


1. * Wallis, C. B., Samy, K. P., Roth, A. E., & Rees, M. A. (2011). Kidney paired donation. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, 26(7), 2091-2099.

2. * Chapter 3 in Roth, A. E. (2015). Who gets what—and why: The new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

3. Gentry, S. E., Montgomery, R. A., & Segev, D. L. (2011). Kidney paired donation: fundamentals, limitations, and expansions. American journal of kidney diseases, 57(1), 144-151.

4. Salman, S., Gurev, S., Arsalan, M., Dar, F., & Chan, A. Liver  Exchange: A Pathway to Increase Access to Transplantation.

5. Sweat, K. R. Redesigning waitlists with manipulable priority: improving the heart transplant waitlist.

6. Agarwal, N., Ashlagi, I., Somaini, P., & Waldinger, D. (2018). Dynamic incentives in waitlist mechanisms. AEA Papers & Proceedings, 108, 341-347.


Session 4. 1 st Half: Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets – December 2


1. * Roth, A. E. (2007). Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets. Journal of Economic perspectives, 21(3), 37-58.

2. * Minerva, F., Savulescu, J., & Singer, P. (2019). The ethics of the Global Kidney Exchange programme. The Lancet, 394(10210), 1775-1778.

3. Chapter 11 in Roth, A. E. (2015). Who gets what—and why: The new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

2 nd Half: Market Design and Allocation during COVID-19 – December 2

1. * Emanuel, E. J., Persad, G., Upshur, R., Thome, B., Parker, M., Glickman, A., ... & Phillips, J. P. (2020). New England Journal of Medicine. Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the time of Covid-19.

2. Piscitello, G. M., Kapania, E. M., Miller, W. D., Rojas, J. C., Siegler, M., & Parker, W. F. (2020). Variation in ventilator allocation guidelines by US state during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic: a systematic review. JAMA network open, 3(6), e201

3. Schmidt, H., Pathak, P., Sönmez, T., & Ünver, M. U. (2020). Covid-19: how to prioritize worse-off populations in allocating safe and effective vaccines. British Medical Journal, 371.

4. Schmidt, H., Pathak, P. A., Williams, M. A., Sonmez, T., Ünver, M. U., & Gostin, L. O. (2020). Rationing safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines: allocating to states proportionate to population may undermine commitments to mitigating health disparities. Ava

5. Neimark, J. (2020). What is the best strategy to deploy a COVID-19 vaccine. Smithsonian Magazine.


Session 5. 1 st Half: Auction Design and Procurement in Medicine – December 7

1. * The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. (2020). Improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats. Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 20

2. * Song, Z., Cutler, D. M., & Chernew, M. E. (2012). Potential consequences of reforming Medicare into a competitive bidding system. Jama, 308(5), 459-460.

3. Newman, D., Barrette, E., & McGraves-Lloyd, K. (2017). Medicare competitive bidding program realized price savings for durable medical equipment purchases. Health Affairs, 36(8), 1367-1375.

4. Cramton, P., Ellermeyer, S., & Katzman, B. (2015). Designed to fail: The Medicare auction for durable medical equipment. Economic Inquiry, 53(1), 469-485.

5. Ji, Y. (2019). The Impact of Competitive Bidding in Health Care: The Case of Medicare Durable Medical Equipment.

6. Thaler, R. H. (1988). Anomalies: The winner's curse. Journal of economic perspectives, 2(1), 191-202.

7. Chapter 2 in Haeringer, G. (2018). Market design: auctions and matching. MIT Press.

2 nd Half: (GUEST LECTURE) Ralph Weber, CEO, MediBid Inc. on “The Online Marketplace for Medicine” – December 7


Session 6. A/B Testing and Field Experiments to Test Designs – December 9


1. * Chapters 1, 4 in List, John. (2021). A Course in Experimental Economics (unpublished textbook, access on course website)

2. * Gallo, A. (2017). A refresher on A/B testing. Harvard Business Review, 2-6.

3. Chan, A. (2021). Customer Discrimination and Quality Signals – A Field Experiment with Healthcare Shoppers.

4. Kessler, J. B., Low, C., & Sullivan, C. D. (2019). Incentivized resume rating: Eliciting employer preferences without deception. American Economic Review, 109(11), 3713-44.


5. Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 in List, John. (2021). A Course in Experimental Economics (unpublished textbook, access on course website)

6. The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. (2019). Understanding development and poverty alleviation. Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019.


Bonus Session (optional). (GUEST LECTURE) Donald Lung, CFO, Antengene on “Designing Markets to Access Biopharmaceutical Intellectual Property Across Regulatory Regimes – the Case of China” – Date TBD

Bonus Session (optional). (GUEST LECTURE) TBD – Date TBD

Monday, October 19, 2020

Censoring repugnant words by algorithm

 Some people like to say things that other people think they shouldn't say.  In the age of the internet, politeness can be (somewhat) automated, by banning certain words.  But of course, words have contexts. Here's a funny story from the Guardian:

Overzealous profanity filter bans paleontologists from talking about bones--A virtual conference was thrown into confusion when the platform hosting the event came with a pre-packaged ‘naughty word’ censor by Poppy Noor.

"Participants in a virtual paleontology session found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place last week, when a profanity filter prevented them from using certain words – such as bone, pubic, stream and, er, beaver – during an online conference.

"The US-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) held its annual meeting virtually this year due to the pandemic, but soon found its audience stifled when they tried to use particular words.

"Convey Services, which was was handling the conference, used a “naughty-word filter,” for the conference, outlawing a pre-selected list of words.

"“Words like ‘bone’, ‘pubic’, and ‘stream’ are frankly ridiculous to ban in a field where we regularly find pubic bones in streams,” said Brigid Christison, a master’s student in biology attending the event

...

"Some discovered bias in the algorithm, too. Jack Tseng, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Berkley pointed out that the filter had banned the common surname Wang but not Johnson – even though both are frequently used as slang words to describe a man’s genitals."

********

Here's Dr. Tseng's tweet:

Z. Jack Tseng, @Tseng_ZJ

"Wang" is banned but not "Johnson" (both used as slangs). This western-centric filter erasing the surname of 90+ million Chinese but not <2 million people of European descent is unexpectedly on brand for 2020,  ! My PhD advisor is X. **** by the way. "

**********

Previous related posts:


HT: Muriel Niederle


Monday, June 1, 2020

Interview congestion in the Ophthalmology Residency Match

An ophthalmology residency program surveyed all its applicants on their experience in the match:

Current Applicant Perceptions of the Ophthalmology Residency Match
Michael J. Venincasa, MD; Louis Z. Cai, MD; Steven J. Gedde, MD; Tara Uhler, MD; Jayanth Sridhar, MD
JAMA Ophthalmology May 2020 Volume 138, Number 5 

"Hundreds of individuals apply for ophthalmology residency positions each year using the Centralized Application Services (CAS), administered by San Francisco Residency and Fellowship Matching Services (SF Match). Although the match rate remains relatively stable at approximately 75%, the mean number of applications submitted has risen from 48 in 2008 to 75 in 2019.1,2 In 2010, highly qualified applicants were advised to apply to between 10 and 20 residency programs,3 but more recent studies suggested a target of 45 applications for these applicants and more than 80 for applicants with less competitive qualification.2 The application process represents a considerable financial burden for applicants; in 2018-2019, the CAS application alone cost $685 to apply to 45 programs, which increased to $1910 for 80 programs. These high costs are not unique to ophthalmology. In emergency medicine, the cost of securing a residency position was estimated at $8312 in 2016.4

These trends also come with increasing administrative burden for residency programs tasked with reviewing rising numbers of applications. As a result, many programs have increasingly emphasized quantifiable cognitive measures, such as clinical grades and the US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) board scores.3 The USMLE Step 1 scores and Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society membership are factors with statistically significant associations with matching into an ophthalmology residency.5
...
"Respondents applied to a mean (SD) of 76.4 (23.5) ophthalmology residency programs, received 14.0 (9.0) invitations to interview (Figure 1), and attended 10.3 (4.4) interviews
...
"When respondents received an interview invitation without the involvement of a wait-list, they most commonly reported receiving the invitation between 3 and 4 weeks prior to the interview date (n = 87 [47.8%]). When instead receiving their invitation from a wait-list (n = 92 [49.7%]), the most common lead time was 1 to 2 weeks prior to the interview date (n = 43 [46.2%]), with 20 (21.5%) invitations arriving less than 1 week prior
...
"Many applicants struggled with scheduling conflicts with other residency programs, where interview dates overlapped or the desired date was filled at the time of invitation response. Certain dates were especially popular for residency programs, with 23 of 116 programs (19.8%) holding interviews on a single day during the 2018-2019 interview cycle.


***********
Note that the Ophtalmology residency match is run by SFMatch, not the larger NRMP, but the growing number of applications and interviews are common to both matching platforms.

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

A look inside Harvard's admissions process

College admissions is a matching process--you can't just study at an elite university, even if you can afford the tuition--you first have to be admitted.

Harvard's admissions process is the subject of a lawsuit, and the discovery process is shedding some light on the deliberations that go on behind the closed doors of the admissions committee.  Here's an account from the NY Times:

‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions Secrets

Now you know some Harvard admissions jargon: "tips" are aspects of a candidates case that might tip him or her over the bar to admission. "Lops" are people tentatively admitted who get lopped off the admit list as it is trimmed to create a class that is balanced the way the admissions office wants.  And the "Z-List" consist of people admitted at the last minute, and required to defer admission for a year, who often have family connections to Harvard.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

The 28th Jerusalem School in Economic Theory: Mechanism Design, June 27 - July 6, 2017

The 28th Jerusalem School in Economic Theory

Mechanism Design

Event date: June 27 - July 6, 2017 

Organizers:
    Eric Maskin, General Director (Harvard University)
    Elchanan Ben-Porath, Codirector (The Hebrew University)
    Stephen Morris (Princeton University)



    Mechanism design is the “reverse engineering” part of economic theory. Normally, economists study existing economic institutions and try to predict or explain what outcomes the institutions generate. But in mechanism design we reverse direction: we start by identifying the outcomes we want and then ask what institutions could be designed to achieve those outcomes. The theory has found wide application in auction design, pollution control, public good provision, and elsewhere.

    List of speakers:
    NAMEAFFILIATIONEMAIL
    Elchanan Ben- Porath                             
    The Hebrew University of Jerusalem              
    benporat@math.huji.ac.il
    Ben Brooks
    The University of Chicago
    babrooks@uchicago.edu
    Sylvain Chassang
    New York University
    chassang@nyu.edu
    Eddie Dekel
    Northwestern University and Tel-Aviv University
    eddiedekel@gmail.com
    Sergiu Hart
    The Hebrew University
    hart@huji.ac.il
    Jason Hartline
    Northwestern University
    hartline@northwestern.edu
    Emir Kamenica
    The University of Chicago
    emir.kamenica@chicagobooth.edu
    George Mailath
    University of Pennsylvania
    gmailath@econ.upenn.edu
    Jakub Kastl
    Princeton University
    jkastl@princeton.edu
    Eric Maskin
    Harvard University
    emaskin@fas.harvard.edu
    Stephen Morris
    Princeton University
    smorris@princeton.edu
    Tim Roughgarden
    Stanford University
    tim@cs.stanford.edu
    Ariel Rubinstein
    Tel-Aviv University and New-York University
    rariel@post.tau.ac.il
    Vasiliki Skerta
    University College London
    v.skerta@ucl.ac.uk
    Balazs Szentes
    London School of Economics
    b.szentes@lse.ac.uk

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

What is the place of Economics in Science?

The AAAS, which publishes Science magazine, has elected a new list of Fellows, 701 in all this year, including several economists (among whom I am one, which is what brought it to my attention):

Section on Social, Economic and Political Sciences
  • Howard E. AldrichUniv. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Nicole Woolsey BiggartUniv. of California, Davis
  • Herbert GintisCentral European Univ., Hungary
  • Randy HodsonOhio State Univ.
  • Edward Paul LazearStanford Univ.
  • Deirdre McCloskeyUniv. of Illinois at Chicago
  • Melvin L. OliverUniv. of California, Santa Barbara
  • Zhenchao QianOhio State Univ.
  • Alvin E. RothHarvard Univ.
  • John SkvoretzUniv. of South Florida
  • Richard Michael SuzmanNational Institute on Aging/NIH
I am a long-time subscriber to Science, but not for it's publications in Economics. So I was interested to note that the new Economics Fellows aren't in a section devoted to Economics, but rather one that is apparently devoted to Sociology, Economics, and Political Science.

That doesn't seem like an unnatural grouping, except for the fact that the other Sections seem to concentrate much more narrowly. Here's the list of all 24 Sections:

AAAS Sections
The 24 sections arrange symposia for the Annual Meeting, elect officers, and provide expertise for Association-wide projects.
For a listing of section officers, click on the sections below.
Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources (Section O)
Anthropology (Section H)
Astronomy (Section D)
Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (Section W)
Visit the AAAS Section W Web site
Biological Sciences (Section G)
Visit the AAAS Section G Web site.
Chemistry (Section C)
Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences (Section R)
Education (Section Q)
Engineering (Section M)
General Interest in Science and Engineering (Section Y)
Geology and Geography (Section E)
History and Philosophy of Science (Section L)
Visit the AAAS Section L Web site
Industrial Science and Technology (Section P)
Information, Computing, and Communication (Section T)
Linguistics and Language Science (Section Z)
Mathematics (Section A)
Medical Sciences (Section N)
Neuroscience (Section V)
Pharmaceutical Sciences (Section S)
Physics (Section B)
Visit the AAAS Section B Web site
Psychology (Section J)
Social, Economic, and Political Sciences (Section K)
Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering (Section X)
Statistics (Section U)
I'm reminded of the quote by Keynes:"If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid. " Looking at the list (Dentists have almost their own Section), I can see that we have a way to go, at least in the AAAS and Science.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

State laws against price gouging

Michael Giberson provides this list:

State
Year
Notes
Alabama
1996
Code of Ala. § 8-31-1 thru § 8-31-6. LINK Alabama law; Any commodity or rental facility.
Arkansas
1997
A.C.A. § 4-88-301 – 4-88-305.
California
1994
Cal. Pen. Code § 396.
Connecticut
1986
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-230.
District of Columbia
2007
D.C. Code § 28-4101 thru 28-4102.
Florida
1992
Fla. Stat. § 501.160.
Georgia
1995
O.C.G.A. § 10-1-393.4.
Hawaii
1983
Haw. Rev. Stat. § 209-9
Idaho
2002
Idaho Code § 48-603; Food, fuel, pharmaceuticals, water.
Illinois
2005
Ill. Admin. Code tit. 14, §§ 465.10 thru 465.30.
Indiana
2002
Ind. Code §§ 4-6-9.1-1 thru 4-6-9.1-7; Fuel.
Iowa
1993
61 IAC 31.1(714); Merchandise needed by victims of disasters.
Kansas
2002
K.S.A. § 50-6,106; Any necessary property or service.
Kentucky
2004
Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann.  § 367.374.
Louisiana
1993
La. R.S. 29:732 LINK Louisiana law.
Maine
2006
10 M.R.S.A. § 1105.
Massachusetts
1990
Md. Reg. Code tit. 940, § 3.18; Petroleum products only.
Michigan
*
Mich. Stat. Ann. § 445.903(1)(z); General consumer code provisions not limited to emergencies.
Mississippi
1986
Miss. Code Ann. § 75-24-25(2).
Missouri
1994
15 CSR § 60-8.030; Necessities.
New Jersey
2001
N.J.S.A. §§ 56:8-107 to 8:109; LINK New Jersey law; Necessities.
New York
1979
NY Gen Bus §396-r.
North Carolina
2003
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-38; LINK North Carolina law.
Oklahoma
1999
15 OK St. §§ 777.1 thru 777.5.
Oregon
2007
ORS 401.960 thru 401.970; LINK Oregon law; Essential consumer goods and services.
Pennsylvania
2006
Rhode Island
2012
Rhode Island General Laws §30-15-19; Essential commodities including home heating fuels, motor fuels, food and water.
South Carolina
2002
SC Code 39-5-145.
Tennessee
2002
TCA Title 47 Chapter 18 Part 51; LINK Tennesee Law.
Texas
1995
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Ann. § 17.46(b)(27) LINK Texas law; Necessities.
Utah
2005
Utah Code § 13-41-101 thru 13-41-202. Link Utah law; Retail goods and services.
Vermont
2006
9 V.S.A. § 2461d; LINK Vermont law; Petroleum or heating fuel product only.
Virginia
2004
Va. Code §§ 59.1-525 et seq., LINK Virginia law; Any necessary goods and services.
West Virginia
2002
W.V. Code § 46A-6J-1
Wisconsin
2006
Wisc. ATCP Ch. 106; Link Wisconsin law.
List updated November 3, 2012 by Michael Giberson.
Please see list of resources below for useful links on price gouging. (http://knowledgeproblem.com/2012/11/03/list-of-price-gouging-laws/