Followup on school choice in San Francisco

My previous post on how school choice is faring in San Francisco was called  School choice in San Francisco: a promise of transparency.  That promise still hasn't been fulfilled.

The idea was that, after the adoption by the school board of a New school choice system in San Francisco, SFUSD decided to implement the new, strategy-proof  "assignment with transfers" choice system itself (San Francisco school choice goes in-house).

School Board member Rachel Norton wrote in a November 9, 2010 blog post that
"Staff did pledge to make the documentation of the algorithm requirements and process flows public by February; I will continue to push to make the assignment algorithm itself open source."

While SFUSD has prepared a number of documents since then, none of them seem to contain a description of the SF school choice algorithm as actually implemented by the staff. All I can find are descriptions of the priorities used for tie-breaking if more children than can be accommodated by a school would otherwise have been assigned there, but no description of the process by which they would have been assigned before tie breaking has to be invoked.

The latest document of that sort, via Rachel Norton's June 1 blog post, is here: Board of Education Policy.
On page 7, under the heading "Method of Allocating Seats," the document states "The SFUSD will replace the diversity index lottery system with an assignment with transfers algorithm that uses school requests from families and the preferences outlined in this student assignment policy."
However the document doesn't describe the assignment with transfers algorithm at all, just the tie breaking priorities.

So...I'm still in the dark about whether SFUSD has actually implemented the choice system the Board adopted, and I bet SF parents and board members are too.
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Read more »

Congestion in online shopping

Too many choices? Subscribe to a shopping service. The NY Times reports:
Sites That Send Shoppers What They Might Like

"JewelMint is one of a new breed of e-commerce sites — which also include Send the Trend, ShoeDazzle, JustFabulous, Sole Society and the upcoming StyleMint — combining old-fashioned and new-fangled methods for luring customers. They present users with a limited selection of jewelry, shoes and accessories by coupling software algorithms that determine personal style with strategies culled from home shopping TV channels and CD-of-the-month clubs.
The sites are the latest example of retailers inventing new ways to shop online. The recent flurry of innovation in e-commerce has also produced private sale sites like Gilt and daily deal sites like Groupon. Like those, these shopping clubs aim to filter the seemingly infinite options online and show a small selection, catered to an individual’s taste.
JewelMint, Send the Trend and ShoeDazzle follow a similar recipe: a fashion celebrity designs or picks the styles (or just attaches his or her name to the project). Shoppers take a style quiz, confiding their go-to nail polish shades and whether they most covet the wardrobe of Nicole Richie or Reese Witherspoon. Each month, the site selects a handful of items and the shopper buys one for a set fee, skips the month, or forgets about it and gets charged that month’s fee, which can be applied to purchases over the next year.
“When you type in anything to search on the Internet, it’s almost terrifying the tidal wave of information you get back,” said Kate Bosworth, the actress who is the celebrity face of JewelMint and one of its designers. “The idea of harnessing search for different, sought-after things on the Internet is really the new frontier.”

Reverse scholarships reversed at KAIST

A recent article concerning several suicides at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology pointed out that a high powered incentive system might possibly be implicated.

Elite South Korean University Rattled by Suicides
"Mr. Suh also engineered a system that required students to pay extra tuition for each hundredth of a point that their grade point average fell below 3.0 (based on a 4.3-point system). All students pay a token fee each semester, Kaist administrators said, but otherwise their tuition is free, financed by government scholarships.

"Under the so-called punitive tuition program, a bad semester could cost a student’s family thousands of dollars.

"The program, which was applauded at first, has since led to deep humiliation and anxiety among many students. Those who struggled and lost their full rides suddenly saw themselves as losers. Some critics, calling it ruthless, even blamed the program for the recent suicides."

An Experimental Study of Sponsored-Search Auctions

That's the title of a new paper by Yeon-Koo Che, Syngjoo Choi, and Jinwoo Kim.

Abstract:
We study the Generalized Second Price auctions—a standard method for allocating online search advertising—experimentally, considering both the static environment assumed by the prevailing theory and a dynamic game capturing the salient aspects of real-world search advertising auctions. We find that subjects tend to overbid in both treatments relative to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves outcome suggested as most plausible by the theory, but that their behavior in the dynamic game resembles the behavior in the static game. Our analysis thus lends support to the use of a static game as modeling proxy, but calls into question the prevailing equilibrium predictions.

Misc. kidney exchange

A nondirected donor chain that accomplished 3 transplants at Emory, where kidney exchange has been going on since 2009: story and video

Kidney donation kicks off life-saving chain reaction

"In this video, players in this extraordinary transplant exchange tell their story.

You can also watch “The Mother of All Swaps,” a news report from 11 Alive Atlanta"
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The Army embraces kidney exchange: WRAMC again a link in kidney-swap chain

"Last week, surgeons at Walter Reed performed four surgeries involving two couples in a chain of kidney transplant surgeries that began May 5 at hospitals within the National Capital Region — only the second kidney-paired swap in military history.
...
"Walter Reed surgeons participated in the first-ever transplant involved in a kidney swap chain for a U.S. military treatment facility in November. Retired Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joe Pinkowski received a kidney from a donor, and doctors recovered a kidney from his wife, Yolanda, for a patient at another hospital. The surgeries were a part of a record-setting kidney swap involving the couple and 24 other individuals in a series of 26 operations over six days at four hospitals in the region, saving the lives of 13 kidney patients ."
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A three way exchange on Long Island: Three-Way Kidney Exchange Meet for First Time at North Shore University Hospital

"For the first time since North Shore University Hospital established its Kidney Transplant Program in 2007, the transplant team headed by Ernesto Molmenti, MD, the program’s surgical director, and Louis Kavoussi, MD the North Shore-LIJ Health System’s chair of urology, performed a three-way kidney exchange involving donors who were unknown to the recipients until today. The donor chain starts with a person who wants to donate a kidney to a loved one or friend. That kidney is transplanted into a recipient who had a donor willing to give, but was found to be incompatible. To keep the chain going, the donor from the first pair gives a kidney to a patient he doesn’t know but who is a match. Specialized testing determines compatibility in each donor/recipient pairing.


"And so it was with the six people who came together today. Darlene Rawlins, 54, of Baldwin, had been on dialysis for two years. She had hoped that her daughter, Contrina Rawlins-Pettway, 26, also of Baldwin, could donate a kidney, but testing found that the two were incompatible. Same with Jacqueline Gonzalez, 46, of Hollis, who had hoped to receive a kidney from her son, Karl Jordan, 27, also of Hollis. Unfortunately, they were also not a match.

"The third pairing in the three-way exchange involved Steve Michalik, 64, of North Carolina, a bodybuilder who won 22 titles during the 1970s and 1980s, including Mr. USA in 1971, Mr. America in 1972 and Mr. Universe in 1975, against such competitors as Arnold Schwarzenegger and the “Incredible Hulk” Lou Ferrigno. Mr. Michalik asked his good friend Martin Hein Andersen, of Denmark, for a kidney. Participating in today’s news conference via Skype from Denmark, Mr. Andersen travelled to New York to get tested, but he too received the same news -- the two were incompatible.

"But thanks to the latest technology, teamwork and sophisticated testing, the transplant staff at NSUH found a way to make the three-way swap possible. On April 25, Dr. Kavoussi removed the kidneys laparoscopically from the donors and Dr. Molmenti surgically implanted them in each of the recipients. Most returned home three days later."

Limits on the scope of markets

Tim Sullivan points me to this old post by Abe Othman on his blog Constructive Economics: Horseflesh and Hypocrisy

"T. Boone Pickens, from his autobiography The Luckiest Guy in the World:

I believe the greatest opportunity lies in a free marketplace. There are powerful forces afoot trying to restrict that freedom in the interests of the vested and already wealthy.

"T. Boone Pickens, in congressional testimony on a bill to prevent the slaughter of horses for food:

The whole thing, it’s a boondoggle on the American people…People that are for the slaughter should be forced to go down on that kill floor…The brutal slaughter of horses for consumption by wealthy diners in Europe and Japan cuts against our moral and cultural fiber — it’s just plain un-American.

"Remember, if they can come after the horse slaughterers, they can come after the hedge funds. So if you really believe in free markets, have some horse today!"
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I'm inclined to think that Mr. Pickens is  being neither inconsistent nor hypocritical, but rather that he has opinions about the proper scope of markets.

When Steve Leider and I surveyed people on their attitudes towards whether kidneys should be for sale, one set of questions we asked concerned attitudes towards markets.

We measured agreement with statements that markets cause “an unfair distribution of income,” “rewards people fairly,” “lead to an efficient use of resources,” “require a lot of government control,” and are overall “fair and ethical.” However there was no correlation between disliking markets generally and disliking a market for kidneys: if anything, social conservatism was a predictor of dislike of kidney markets, and that was correlated with approval of markets generally. So, a picture began to emerge of people who liked markets generally, but thought they should they should not be extended into certain domains.  Maybe that's the view T. Boone Pickens is expressing.

(See Leider, Stephen and Alvin E. Roth, ''Kidneys for sale: Who disapproves, and why?'' American Journal of Transplantation , 10 (May), 2010, 1221-1227.)

Seeing red at Harvard

A sea of red at Harvard's commencement yesterday...

The Ph.D. grads got out of their gowns pretty fast as they came to lunch...

way to go, Judd.

The market for taxis

With a Start-Up Company, a Ride Is Just a Tap of an App Away
"Uber, a start-up based in San Francisco, offers a cellphone application that is aimed at making using a car service quick and painless.
...
"Uber is not a taxi or limousine company. Instead it operates as a dispatch service, working with local owners of licensed private car companies. Uber provides each car with an iPhone and software that manages incoming requests. When an Uber user needs a ride, the dispatcher and the closest car are notified, and the system sends back an estimate of the pick-up time. While they wait, users can monitor the car’s location on their phone."
...
"Uber, which is available for the iPhone and Android devices, requires users to enter their credit card information when they sign up. When they reach their destination, they can simply hop out, and the ride is charged to the card. Uber gets a percentage of each fare; the rest goes to the car services and drivers."

College admissions and income diversity

In this season of college graduations, David Leonhardt reports on the income distribution of students at selective colleges: Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite

"...a Georgetown University study of the class of 2010 at the country’s 193 most selective colleges. As entering freshmen, only 15 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income distribution. Sixty-seven percent came from the highest-earning fourth of the distribution. These statistics mean that on many campuses affluent students outnumber middle-class students.

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”
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In case you don't know income quartiles off the top of your head, here they are (in much more detail than just quartiles, estimated for 2011) from the Tax Policy Center. The median income for a married couple filing jointly is estimated to be $75,000, and the 75th percentile is $130,000 (the 99th percentile is $762,000).

Frank Delmonico on transplant tourism in China

In a News and Views article in Nature Reviews Nephrology, Frank Delmonico describes commercial transplantation in China as still depending on organs from executed prisoners, and comments on a recent paper comparing the health outcomes of transplant tourist patients and other transplant patients, all from Taiwan.

Transplant tourism—an update regarding the realities by Francis L. Delmonico,
NATURE REVIEWS | NEPHROLOGY VOLUME 7 | MAY 2011, 248-50.

Misc. repugnant transactions

Minn. Voters Will Decide on Gay Marriage Ban
"After nearly six hours of emotional debate, a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman was approved in the Minnesota House late Saturday night. It was the last legislative step needed to put the question on the statewide ballot in November 2012.

"State law already prohibits gay marriage, but supporters of the proposed amendment said it's necessary to prevent judges or lawmakers from legalizing it in the future. Opponents said the constitution should be used to expand rights, not limit them, and predicted a long, divisive debate over the next 18 months.

"The House voted 70-62 mostly along party lines in the GOP-controlled chamber, though four Republicans crossed over to vote 'no' while two Democrats voted in favor of the ban."
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Meanwhile in New York, Donors to G.O.P. Are Backing Gay Marriage Push

"The newly recruited donors argue that permitting same-sex marriage is consistent with conservative principles of personal liberty and small government."

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Mercenaries in the UAE: Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder
"In outsourcing critical parts of their defense to mercenaries — the soldiers of choice for medieval kings, Italian Renaissance dukes and African dictators — the Emiratis have begun a new era in the boom in wartime contracting that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And by relying on a force largely created by Americans, they have introduced a volatile element in an already combustible region where the United States is widely viewed with suspicion.
...
"Still, it is not clear whether the project has the United States’ official blessing. Legal experts and government officials said some of those involved with the battalion might be breaking federal laws that prohibit American citizens from training foreign troops if they did not secure a license from the State Department."
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Switzerland: Zurich votes on 'suicide tourism' laws
"While opinion polls indicate a majority of Swiss remain in favour of assisted suicide, they also suggest that 66% are against what has become known as suicide tourism."

In the end, Zurich Voters Keep 'Suicide Tourism' Alive
"Voters in the Swiss canton (state) of Zurich have rejected calls to ban assisted suicide or to outlaw the practice for nonresidents."
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Selling Educational 'Indulgences' in the U.K.  (HT Kim Krawiec)
"A fierce debate is raging in the U.K. about a new proposal to let wealthy students pay for places at top universities -- even if they've been rejected through the regular admissions process. As it stands now, British universities have firm quotas for the number of students they can admit, and those places are filled through meritocratic competition. Once you get in, you pay a low, flat fee to attend (about $6,000 a year to attend Oxford). But David Willets, the education minister, is proposing to create new, "off-quota" places, open to students who haven't made the cut, as long as they can afford to pay substantially higher fees. Rage and confusion have been the immediate results of his proposal."

Black Market for Blood

According to this AP article, Bulgaria is experiencing first-hand the concept of repugnant transactions:

"It's a grim reality for patients and families in Bulgaria, a struggling EU nation where donors are troublingly scarce, hospitals are strapped for funds and blood traders — mainly Gypsy, or Roma, men — are thriving...

..once a deal is struck, a donor hanging out nearby — or at most a phone call away — is summoned, and turns up at the blood clinic masquerading as a relative. He gets a proof of donation certificate and sells it to the desperate family. The blood heads off to be checked, and if it is found to be disease-free it goes toward filling the clinic's reserves."

It seems the Bulgarian legal apparatus is largely tolerant of the black market, most likely as it believes it to be a critical driver of blood supply. But one must wonder to what degree the presence of a black market crowds out altruistic donors ("voluntary blood donation has been gradually shrinking here over the past two decades..."). At the same time, a black market is less efficient (from a social standpoint) than a publicly operated market for blood; the middlemen are presumably taking much of the rents. So while the jury is still out on whether enforcement of the ban of blood sales or a public embrace is best, this interior solution cannot be optimal.

So why can't Bulgaria get more people to go under the needle? Repugnance has put the Bulgarians in a prickly (groan) spot.

Horsemeat in Canada

Top Chef trots into taboo territory

"Producers of the competitive culinary TV show Top Chef Canada galloped headlong into an internet outcry after news spread about an upcoming episode's focus on horse meat as an ingredient. In the challenge, scheduled to air on May 16th on Food Network Canada, contestants were required to cook traditional French dishes, including both foie gras (also a controversially-obtained food) and horse.

Protesters took to the show's Facebook page after promos for the episode aired, flooding the comments with mentions of Top Chef boycotts, links to anti-horse meat websites and advice on how to contact the show's advertisers. A specifically targeted Facebook group called "Boycott Top Chef – Protect the Horses" was swiftly established as a central location to share resources including educational material and contact information for the show's advertisers and the network's executives.

"Food Network Canada has issued a statement saying, "Please be assured it is not our intention to offend our viewers. The challenge in this episode involves having the competitors create a truly authentic, traditional French menu. One of the most traditional French foods is horsemeat. Horsemeat is also considered a delicacy in many cultures around the world. While we understand that this content may not appeal to all viewers, Food Network Canada aims to engage a wide audience, embracing different food cultures in our programming."

...

"Protesters, however, argue that not only is eating horse meat a moral taboo on par with the consumption of dogs and cats - it's also insufficiently regulated in Canada.

...

While horse meat is not an especially predominant ingredient in Canadian cuisine, and the majority of the meat processed in the country is exported internationally, it can be found for sale in supermarkets and at butcher shops.

An Eatocracy poll from earlier this year indicates that a substantial potion of the population expects to see a shift in perception toward horse meat consumption in the United States.

Do you think Americans will ever accept horse meat as part of their diet?
- No way. Never. 34.82%
- Only if there is no other option and we run out of other food sources 13.71%
- People don't really care that much what they put in their mouths, so yes 5.55%
- Possibly, but only after its health benefits are really proven 3.47%
- It'll take time, but why not? 14.3%
- It would be a huge success now if it were legal 4.11%
- People might try it as a novelty, but not as a staple - it'll always have a bit of a taboo 13.73%
- Maybe some food freaks will consider it a delicacy, but most people won't touch it 9.28%
- Other (please share below) 1.05% 

HT: Joshua Gans (the Canadian professor:) 

Kidney exchange: the view from Michigan

Here's a new working paper on kidney exchange, that gives thoughtful attention to the kinds of weights that might be attached to edges:

Yijiang Li, Jack Kalbfleisch, Peter Xuekun Song, Yan Zhou, and Alan Leichtman, "Optimization and Simulation of an Evolving Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) Program" (May 2011). The University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics Working Paper Series. Working Paper 90. http://www.bepress.com/umichbiostat/paper90

Abstract:
"The old concept of barter exchange has extended to the modern area of living-donor kidney transplantation, where one incompatible donor-candidate pair is matched to another pair with a complementary incompatibility, such that the donor from one pair gives an organ to a compatible candidate in the other pair and vice versa. Kidney paired donation (KPD) programs provide a unique and important platform for living incompatible donor-candidate pairs to exchange organs in order to achieve mutual benefit. We propose a novel approach to organizing kidney exchanges in an evolving KPD program with advantages, including (i) it allows for a more exible utility-based evaluation of potential kidney transplants; (ii) it takes into consideration stochastic features in managing a KPD program; and (iii) it exploits possible alternative exchanges when the originally planned allocation cannot be fully executed. Another primary contribution of this work is rooted in the development of a comprehensive microsimulation system for simulating and studying various aspects of an evolving KPD program. Various allocations can be obtained using integer programming (IP) techniques and microsimulation models can allow tracking of the evolving KPD over a series of match runs to evaluate different allocation strategies. Simulation studies are provided to illustrate the proposed method."

Market design (and experimental economics) in Australia: job opportunity in Victoria

It must be a good sign when governments are advertising for market designers with experimental skills...

Senior Policy Analyst Experimental Economics and Market Design in the Department of Treasury & Finance, Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Design new market mechanisms to deliver better policy outcomes
Build capability in experimental economics and market design methodologies within the VPS
Lead policy design collaborations between the VPS and the university sector

This role will undertake

Analysis and high level policy advice on applications of market design in the delivery of a wide range of government policy, procurement and resource allocation objectives;

Capacity building in experimental economics and market design within the VPS;

The design of new market based policy instruments and supervision of experimental economics sessions to test and refine new policy instruments; and

Policy collaboration across government and between government and the university sector.

To succeed in this interesting and challenging role you will have:

A PhD in experimental economics;

Experience in the design, conduct and supervision of policy experiments in an economics laboratory environment;

A strong record of achievement with the application of a market design methodology to public policy problems; and

High level communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.

Harvard legacy and waitlist admissions

The Crimson reports: Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent

"Harvard’s acceptance rate for legacies has hovered around 30 percent—more than four times the regular admission rate—in recent admissions cycles, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 told The Crimson in an interview this week.

Fitzsimmons also said that Harvard’s undergraduate population is comprised of approximately 12 to 13 percent legacies, a group he defined as children of Harvard College alumni and Radcliffe College alumnae.

"Fitzsimmons’ comments came the week after a discussion at New York University on legacy admissions between Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel, senior fellow at The Century Foundation Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, and Bloomberg News editor at large Daniel L. Golden ’78.

"According to a New York Times story on the event, Brenzel said that Yale rejected 80 percent of its legacy applicants. Brenzel reported that Yale legacies comprise less than 10 percent of the class, according to Kahlenberg.

"Brenzel also said that there is a positive correlation between alumni donations and legacy admissions. According to Brenzel, Yale fundraising suffers when fewer legacies are accepted. Still, he said, this year Yale rejected more children of top donors than it accepted.

...

"Fitzsimmons defended Harvard’s legacy admissions rate.

“If you look at the credentials of Harvard alumni and alumnae sons and daughters, they are better candidates on average,” said Fitzsimmons, part of what he sees as the explanation for the disparity in the acceptance rate. “Very few who apply have no chance of getting in.”

"Because of the family background of legacies, he said, students are more likely to be aware if they are unlikely to be accepted."
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In other 2011 admissions news...
Higher Yield Means Few Waitlist Admissions
"The yield for Harvard College’s Class of 2015 increased to nearly 77 percent, up slightly from 75.5 percent last year, the University announced Thursday morning. The yield at Harvard, which measures what percentage of accepted students choose to attend, is typically among the highest in the nation.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that he anticipates his office will admit approximately 10-15 students off the waitlist this year, with some decisions potentially coming as early as this Tuesday. This number is far lower than the 50 to 125 students Fitzsimmons previously said his office generally hopes to admit each year."

Kristof on randomized trials, and economics

Nicholas Kristof's NY Times column today, Getting Smart on Aid, is a paean to randomized trials experiments, and the work of Michael Kremer, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Dean Karlan and others.

It also includes this thought on economics generally:

"When I was in college, I majored in political science. But if I were going through college today, I’d major in economics. It possesses a rigor that other fields in the social sciences don’t — and often greater relevance as well. That’s why economists are shaping national debates about everything from health care to poverty, while political scientists often seem increasingly theoretical and irrelevant.

"Economists are successful imperialists of other disciplines because they have better tools. Educators know far more about schools, but economists have used rigorous statistical methods to answer basic questions: Does having a graduate degree make one a better teacher? (Probably not.) Is money better spent on smaller classes or on better teachers? (Probably better teachers.)"

Mentoring doctoral students

I'm proud to have gotten an award from my students:)

It does make me remember that I have some (linguistic) reservations about mentoring.

And it makes me a two-timer:

Thank you, students, and congratulations to those who are graduating next week.

Markets for human hair

I recently received this email:

Hi Al,


I noticed that you article posted some time ago (Markets for hair, blood, plasma and eggs) contains a link to The Hair Trader which has now closed. I own website BuyandSellHair.com and it has been running for almost a year. It is now the largest hair trading site based on traffic and number of ads listed.


I was hoping that you'd be able to update your link from The Hair Trader to my site. In exchange for your trouble, i'll send you $20 via PayPal - just send me your PayPal email id.


Look forward to hearing from you.


Kind Regards,


Sunny
BuyandSellHair.com
...The Human Hair Marketplace
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While I didn't take Sunny up on his offer, I did check out his site. The business model is that he charges for ads, but all transactions appear to be between buyers and sellers, and a quick glance suggests that typical sellers are individuals living in the United States.

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The market for human hair has attracted one sure sign that it is thriving: it's now a target for crime, the NY Times reports. Costly Hairstyle Is a Beauty Trend That Draws Thieves’ Notice

"During the past two months alone, robbers in quest of human hair have killed a beauty shop supplier in Michigan and carried out heists nationwide in which they have made off with tens of thousands of dollars of hair at a time.
...
"Once stolen, the hair is typically sold on the street or on the Internet, including eBay, shop owners and the police say.

"The most expensive hair type — and the one in highest demand by thieves and paying customers alike — is remy hair, which unlike most other varieties is sold with its outermost cuticle layer intact. This allows it to look more natural and to last longer without tangling. Remy hair from Indian women is the most popular.
...
"Remy hair from India usually comes from women who have their heads shaved as a sign of having mastered their egos."

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Hair from India has become controversial in one particular market, since wigs are worn by (among others) some orthodox Jewish married women (who are obliged to cover their heads). There have been some problems with deciding what hair is kosher, relating precisely to the question of whether the hair is cut as part of a religious sacrifice.
(Different orthodox rabbis differ on the question of whether a wig is a proper head covering at all, with some rabbis finding them repugnant.)

Gender and annuities: insurance as a repugnant transaction in EU

Considerations of public policy sometimes contribute to making certain kinds of transaction repugnant.
Ran Shorrer points me to this recent decision: Annuities hit by European court ban on gender bias

"The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled gender based pricing of annuity and insurance contracts is incompatible with human rights.

"The ECJ has confirmed a challenge by Belgian courts asking whether taking gender into account when writing private insurance contracts was incompatible with European anti-discrimination directives.


"The Court has ruled that, in the insurance services sector use of gender bias will be invalid with effect from 21 December 2012.
"Currently the expectation by UK providers that men will live shorter lives means males receive a higher income per year from their annuity contract than women with the same size pension pot."

Ran writes: "Since life expectancy really differs between men and women, and since this is a signal that cannot be manipulated , it was widely used and its ban constitutes a huge problem to the producers."