Mohammad Akbarpour, interviewed by Scott Cunningham

Here's an interview of Mohammad Akbarpour, as part of Scott Cunningham's growing series of interviews of interesting economists. (Even the picture of the two of them looks interesting, and it gets better:)

   

Scott writes:

"Welcome to the Mixtape with Scott! Sometimes the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line, but other times the shortest distance is a winding path. This week’s guest, Mohammad Akbarpour from Stanford University, is perhaps an example of the latter. Mohammad is a micro theorist at Stanford who specializes in networks, mechanism and design and two sided matching. Mohammad is an emerging young theorist at Stanford, student of such luminaries as Matt Jackson and Al Roth, whose background in engineering, mathematics and computer science has given him a fresh approach to topics that I associate with Stanford’s theory people as a whole — policy oriented, applied work, mechanism design, networks and matching. He got into economics “the long way” — growing up in Iran, majoring in engineering, and then moving into Stanford’s operations research PhD program. In this interview, he generously shares a snippet of the arc of his life, and it’s a remarkable story, and one I really enjoyed hearing. I think you will too."

Freakonomics interviews John Cawley about celebrity advertisements and repugnance (when the celebrity goes bad)

 My email this morning included this announcement:

"Thank you for sitting down with Freakonomics Radio to discuss your work. The episode "Your Brand’s Spokesperson Just Got Arrested — Now What?" includes your interview and has just been released. You can listen and find the transcript on our website here, or download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We will be posting the episode on our Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages and would love it if you could share it on your social media as well."

The episode interviews John Cawley about this paper:

The Role of Repugnance in Markets: How the Jared Fogle Scandal Affected Patronage of Subway  by John Cawley, Julia Eddelbuettel, Scott Cunningham, Matthew D. Eisenberg, Alan D. Mathios & Rosemary J. Avery NBER WORKING PAPER 31782 DOI 10.3386/w31782  October 2023

And they chat with me a bit about repugnance.

I had blogged about that paper here:

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Repugnance is hard to predict

 

Repugnance is hard to predict

Widespread repugnance, or its absence, is hard to predict.  Why do the U.S. and western Europe have almost opposite positions on the legality of surrogacy and prostitution for example? 

Here's a paper that carefully looked for, and failed to find evidence of a repugnance reaction from consumers about a scandal involving a company spokesperson (but unrelated to the company's business).

The Role of Repugnance in Markets: How the Jared Fogle Scandal Affected Patronage of Subway  by John Cawley, Julia Eddelbuettel, Scott Cunningham, Matthew D. Eisenberg, Alan D. Mathios & Rosemary J. Avery NBER WORKING PAPER 31782 DOI 10.3386/w31782  October 2023

Economics has long studied how consumers respond to the disclosure of information about firms. We study a case in which the disclosed information is unrelated to the product or firm leadership, but which could still potentially affect consumer patronage through the mechanism of repugnance, as described in Roth (2007). The information in this case concerns the arrest of Jared Fogle, the advertising pitchman for the Subway sandwich franchise, who was arrested in 2015 on charges of sex with a minor and child pornography. We study how the disclosure of this information, which was widely covered in the media, affected patronage of Subway. We estimate synthetic control models using data from a large nationwide survey of consumers regarding the restaurants they patronize. Despite the close and long-standing association of Jared Fogle with Subway, and heavy publicity of his crimes, we consistently fail to detect any effect of the Jared Fogle scandal on the probability of visiting a Subway restaurant. These results contrast with past studies of negative information disclosure, which tend to find negative impacts on sales, revenue, or stock price of the relevant companies. The absence of an effect in this case suggests that repugnance did not drive demand, and that consumers largely separated the offenses of a symbol of the firm from the products of the firm.

Paying it forward

 Scott Cunningham, an economist who devotes a lot of his efforts to providing public goods, recently had a post on the phrase "paying it forward." He writes that he connected it with a movie with a similar name, but has recently come to view it differently (for reasons I find too embarrassing to quote, but related to the fact that I use the phrase now and then.)

Wikipedia says "Pay it forward is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying the kindness to others instead of to the original benefactor."  It goes on to say "Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets helped popularize the phrase."  I could have first seen it there, as I read much of Heinlein's science fiction when I was a boy.

My associations with the phrase now mostly come from the motivations and actions of some living kidney donors, particularly in kidney exchange chains.

The phrase is certainly is evocative of what we do so much of in academia (when we're doing academia well): it describes the relationship between studying and teaching, and between teachers and students.

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Scott's post announced that, as part of paying things forward, he's funding a prize for young economists.

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

Australia legalizes medical use of psychedelics

 Scott Cunningham points out that Australia has become the first country to legalize the medical use of certain psychedelics. 

Here's the announcement from the Australian Government's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)

Change to classification of psilocybin and MDMA to enable prescribing by authorised psychiatrists

"From 1 July this year, medicines containing the psychedelic substances psilocybin and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) can be prescribed by specifically authorised psychiatrists for the treatment of certain mental health conditions.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) will permit the prescribing of MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. These are the only conditions where there is currently sufficient evidence for potential benefits in certain patients.

Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, given their specialised qualifications and expertise to diagnose and treat patients with serious mental health conditions, with therapies that are not yet well established. To prescribe, psychiatrists will need to be approved under the Authorised Prescriber Scheme by the TGA following approval by a human research ethics committee. The Authorised Prescriber Scheme allows prescribing permissions to be granted under strict controls that ensure the safety of patients.

The decision acknowledges the current lack of options for patients with specific treatment-resistant mental illnesses. It means that psilocybin and MDMA can be used therapeutically in a controlled medical setting. However, patients may be vulnerable during psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, requiring controls to protect these patients.

For these specific uses, psilocybin and MDMA will be listed as Schedule 8 (Controlled Drugs) medicines in the Poisons Standard. For all other uses, they will remain in Schedule 9 (Prohibited Substances) which largely restricts their supply to clinical trials."

*********

Scott shares a post by Shane Pennington on drugs that contrasts the Australian (medical) decision with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's (legal) decision to maintain the ban on these drugs, despite the growing medical evidence (from U.S. studies, on which the Australian government relied) that psychedelics have some important medical uses.

"To support its decision, the TGA relied heavily on studies conducted in the U.S. and recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decisions recognizing psilocybin and MDMA’s extraordinary therapeutic potential. Around the same time, DEA shot down a petition—based on those same arguments and evidence—that Matt and I submitted on behalf of a palliative-care doctor, requesting rescheduling of psilocybin under U.S. law. The DEA’s four-sentence analysis completely ignored the same studies and FDA decisions that persuaded the Australian regulator to reschedule.  

"The dramatically different fates of these similar petitions reveal a troubling reality about U.S. drug law: Under DEA’s watch, the scientific and medical determinations of the nation’s leading public health agency carry considerable weight around the world but are often ignored at home. That revelation should terrify anyone interested in rational, evidence-driven drug policy. "

******

But the States are the laboratory of democracy: here's an earlier related post.

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Colorado legalizes magic mushroom/psilocybin therapies

Scott Cunningham's Mixtape Podcast Interview with Alvin Roth

 Here's Scott Cunningham's Mixtape Podcast Interview with Alvin Roth... "We discuss Gale and Shapley, Roth and Sotomayor, game theory and more"

You can listen to our conversation at the link above.  He drew me out about some things I hadn't thought of in a while, such as my varied relationships with Gale, Shapley and Bob Wilson, and how my ideas about matching markets developed over the course of my career (which started in Operations Research and then morphed into Economics...)

He also reveals the manner in which he was the perfect reader of my 1990 book Two-Sided Matching with Marilda Sotomayor. 

His site is multi-media, if you scroll down you'll find a video (the one below in on YouTube), and if you keep scrolling down you'll find an essay he wrote called "Paying it Forward..." which recounts more about what our book meant to him and some of our subsequent interactions over the years. And below that is his Transcript of [our] podcast interview, for those who prefer to read rather than listen or watch.

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I've had occasion to blog about Scott:

Friday, February 16, 2018

Sex work, Craigslist, and the law; podcast with Scott Cunningham

Here's a link to an interview with Scott Cunningham, whose work on sex work I've blogged about before. There's a surprising amount of discussion about causal inference and differences in differences. (I always suspected that econometrics was sexy, but this is the first time I’ve heard a podcast about that.)

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

The accidental experiment with legal prostitution in Rhode Island

A scholarly paper and an easy to read-or-listen-to NPR report recount the period in which indoor prostitution was legal in Rhode Island.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The Craigslist market for erotic/adult services

Venus of Willendorf, on OnlyFans

 The NY Times has the story:

OnlyFans May Be a Refuge for Nude Fine Art. The Vienna Tourist Board has joined the adults-only site to display artworks that other social platforms have censored.  By Valeriya Safronova

"OnlyFans has a surprising new member: the Vienna Tourist Board.

"No, its account will not feature after-hours photos of employees. Instead, the board will use the adults-only site to show images of paintings and sculptures displayed in the Austrian capital that have been blocked by social media sites for nudity or sexual content.

"The offending artworks include the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000-year-old limestone figurine of a woman. Facebook removed a photo of it from the Vienna Museum of Natural History’s page several years ago for being “pornographic.”

...

"Vienna is hardly the only city whose art has been censored online. Many artworks, from all over the world, have been incorrectly identified by A.I. as pornography. Facebook has taken down pictures posted by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (of Imogen Cunningham’s photographs of nude bodies), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (of a painting by Evelyne Axell in which a woman is licking an ice cream cone) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (of a 1917 painting of a nude woman by Amedeo Modigliani).

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Here's the Wikipedia page for Venus of Willendorf

Market design at the ASSA on Saturday

I'll attend as many of these as I can today.
A choice of three at 8am:

Advances in Dynamic Mechanism Design

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

 Atlanta Marriott Marquis, International 2

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Vasiliki Skreta, University of Texas-Austin, University College London, and CEPR

Mechanism Design with Limited Commitment

Laura Doval

,

California Institute of Technology

Vasiliki Skreta

, 

University of Texas-Austin, University College London, and CEPR

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 607.72 KB)
•  Download PowerPoint (PDF, 262.74 KB)

Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Limited Enforcement

Marina Halac

,

Yale University

Pierre Yared

,

Columbia University and NBER

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 5.84 MB)

Social Insurance, Information Revelation, and Lack of Commitment

Mikhail Golosov

,

University of Chicago

Luigi Iovino

,

Bocconi University and IGIER

•  View Abstract

Full Surplus Extraction in Mechanism Design with Information Disclosure

Daniel Krahmer

,

University of Bonn

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 247.54 KB)

Discussant(s)

Juan Ortner

,

Boston University

Rahul Deb

,

University of Toronto

Christopher Sleet

,

Carnegie Mellon University

Xianwen Shi

,

University of Toronto

*********

Practical Considerations in Deploying Matching Mechanisms

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

 Atlanta Marriott Marquis, International 9

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Alex Rees-Jones, University of Pennsylvania

How Well Do Structural Demand Models Work? Counterfactual Predictions in School Choice

Parag Pathak

,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Peng Shi

,

University of Southern California

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 4.21 MB)

Reducing Congestion in Matching Markets Using Informative Signals

Itai Ashlagi

,

Stanford University

Mark Braverman

,

Princeton University

Yash Kanoria

,

Columbia University

Peng Shi

,

University of Southern California

•  View Abstract

Obvious Mistakes in a Strategically Simple College Admissions Environment: Causes and Consequences

Ran Shorrer

, 

Pennsylvania State University

Sandor Sovago

,

Vrije University Amsterdam

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 1.07 MB)

An Experimental Investigation of Preference Misrepresentation in the Residency Match

Alex Rees-Jones

,

University of Pennsylvania

Samuel Skowronek

,

University of Pennsylvania

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 741.80 KB)

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Auctions & Mechanism Design

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

 Atlanta Marriott Marquis, L503

Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY

• Chair: Scott Duke Kominers, Harvard University

Knowing What Matters to Others: Information Selection in Auctions

Nina Bobkova

, 

European University Institute (EUI)

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 807.62 KB)

Crowdsourcing and Optimal Market Design

Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

, 

Brown University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 526.91 KB)

Mechanism Design with Ambiguous Transfers

Huiyi Guo

, 

Texas A&M University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 474.84 KB)
•  Download PowerPoint (PDF, 258.92 KB)

Auctions with Entry Versus Entry in Auctions

Jiafeng Chen

, 

Harvard University

Scott Duke Kominers

, 

Harvard University

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Xianwen Shi

, 

University of Toronto

Rahul Deb

, 

University of Toronto

Luciano de Castro

, 

University of Iowa

Benjamin Brooks

, 

University of Chicago

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

Here's one that combines market design with repugnance:

Sex, Drugs, Kidneys and Migrants: Economic Analyses of Contested Transactions

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM

 Atlanta Marriott Marquis, International 5

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Nicola Lacetera, University of Toronto

Testing for Repugnance in Economic Transactions: Evidence from Guest Work in the Gulf

Michael A. Clemens

, 

Center For Global Development

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 933.18 KB)

Paying for Kidneys? A Randomized Survey and Choice Experiment

Mario Macis

, 

Johns Hopkins University

Julio Elias

, 

University of CEMA

Nicola Lacetera

, 

University of Toronto

•  View Abstract

Federalism, Partial Prohibition, and Cross Border Sales: Evidence from Recreational Marijuana

Benjamin Hansen

, 

University of Oregon

Keaton Miller

, 

University of Oregon

Caroline Weber

, 

University of Oregon

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 3.83 MB)

Crimes against Morality: Unintended Consequences of Criminalizing Sex Work

Manisha Shah

, 

University of California-Los Angeles

Lisa Cameron

, 

University of Melbourne

Jennifer Muz

, 

George Washington University

•  View Abstract

Craigslist’s Effect on Violence Against Women

Scott Cunningham

, 

Baylor University

Gregory DeAngelo

, 

West Virginia University

John Tripp

, 

Baylor University

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Matthew Weinzierl

, 

Harvard University

Stefanie Stantcheva

, 

Harvard University

Jennifer Doleac

, 

Texas A&M University

Nicola Lacetera

, 

University of Toronto

***********

New Advances in Matching with Contracts

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019   2:30 PM - 4:30 PM

 Atlanta Marriott Marquis, International 10

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Larry Samuelson, Yale University

Matching with Complementary Contracts

Marzena Rostek

, 

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nathan Yoder

, 

University of Georgia

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 443.50 KB)

Chain Stability in Trading Networks

John William Hatfield

, 

University of Texas-Austin

Scott Duke Kominers

, 

Harvard Business School

Alexandru Nichifor

, 

University of Melbourne

Michael Ostrovsky

, 

Stanford University

Alexander Westkamp

, 

University of Cologne

•  View Abstract

Trading Networks with Frictions

Tamás Fleiner

,

Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Eötvös Loránd University

Ravi Jagadeesan

, 

Harvard University

Zsuzsanna Jankó

, 

Corvinus University

Alexander Teytelboym

, 

University of Oxford

•  View Abstract

Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars

Michael Ostrovsky

, 

Stanford University

Michael Schwarz

, 

Microsoft

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Scott Duke Kominers

, 

Harvard Business School

Ravi Jagadeesan

, 

Harvard University

Larry Samuelson

, 

Yale University

Edward L. Glaeser

, 

Harvard University

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