Rankings have lots of problems, but here is an ambitious attempt to look at universities all around the world.
"The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities and the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and then updated on an annual basis. ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution. More than 1000 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 are published on the web. "
Here are the 2009 rankings.
Two of the top ten are from England (#4 Cambridge and #10 Oxford), the rest are in the U.S. The difference in the "overall score" between #2 and #10 is smaller than the difference between #1 and #2, but this may just have to do with how the scales are normalized. The highest ranked university from a country other than the U.S. or England is University of Tokyo, at #20.
Here is a table of Percentage Distribution of Top Universities by Country with Their Share of Global Population and GDP
Only 15 countries have universities ranked in the top 100, and an additional 24 countries have at least one university ranked in the top 500. The top producers of universities are producing them disproportionately to their share of world GDP or population, for example the U.S. has 55.0% of the top 100 universities, and 30.3% of the top 500, but only 23.6% of GDP and 4.5% of population. (Israel is a big outlier, with 1.0% of the top 100 and 1.4% (i.e. 7 universities ) of the top 500, from an economy with 0.3% of world GDP and 0.1% of population.
I have taught at the universities ranked #1, 25, and 50, and studied at #2 and 7. Based on this limited and skewed sample, and on other universities I know well, I can see that both wealth and the quality of the students are big components of university quality, not always perfectly correlated. (What makes the #1 university so extraordinary is the extent to which it succeeds in assembling so much of both in the same place, and what makes the Israeli universities so remarkable is certainly not their wealth.)
Based on the quality of students from various countries who we see in the U.S., I would guess that, if student quality were the main thing being measured, both Turkey and Iran (each with one university in the #400-500 range) are not getting the credit they deserve. (Many of our students from those places had their undergraduate education at home, and apparently got it at pretty good places; even those who come to the U.S. for their undergraduate education are obviously being drawn from pools of students for whom education is a priority.)
Similarly, there may also be countries where wealth rather than student quality is doing most of the work in putting one of their universities into the top 500, and talented and committed students there might be better advised to study overseas if they can. I'm thinking of Saudia Arabia, with one university in the 400-500 range. A number of Gulf countries have been investing in universities, and it will be interesting to see how well they succeed, and how that changes them if they do.
(A very interesting paper by my colleague Eric Chaney looks at the history of scientific productivity in the Muslim world, and gives some food for thought about what aspects of the general culture might promote vibrant universities: "Tolerance, Religious Competition and the Rise and Fall of Muslim Science")
Monday, November 23, 2009
Final remarks in our market design class
Harvard's new academic calendar and Thanksgiving combined to produce an early end to the lecture part of our Market Design class. I ended with some concluding remarks (here are the accompanying slides: 12.3 concluding remarks ).
One remark is that market design is an eclectic field, drawing on game theory, experiments, computation, and field observation of all sorts (rules are data!).
Teaching the class over the last not-quite-a-decade has been an invigorating intellectual experience. When Paul Milgrom and I began the class (when he spent a year at Harvard in 2001), he had the FCC spectrum auction experience under his belt, and I had the redesign of the National Resident Matching Program under mine, and we had plenty of ideas.
I entertained a faint worry that, at the end of the decade, those might still be the only major applications we had to talk about. But, as things turned out, we can no longer fit all the newly implemented market designs into one course (and Susan Athey will again teach a second semester of Market Design, focused on many recent auction applications, in the Spring). Among the designs we talked about this semester are other health care labor markets, Kidney Exchange, School choice mechanisms, signaling for new economists, internet ad auctions, and more.
I've also been gratified by developments in market design as a field of study. Not only have there been successful applications, there's starting to be an academic literature focused on practical market design, and the theoretical and empirical questions it raises. While there are still some special obstacles that have to be overcome to publish market design papers in general economics journals, we've come a long way since I worried about that in my 2002 paper "The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics.
As I remarked in two earlier posts (see Market design is coming of age, and Market design courses this Fall at Harvard and MIT) another sign that the field is healthy is that it is attracting some of the most creative young minds. Some alumni of Harvard and the course who are presently active in market design and/or matching are Estelle Cantillon (with whom I taught the course for two years), Muriel Niederle, John Asker, Nicole Immorlica, Mohammad Mahdian, Michael Ostrovsky, Parag Pathak, Fuhito Kojima, Robin Lee, Mihai Manea, Eric Budish, and Scott Kominers.
One remark is that market design is an eclectic field, drawing on game theory, experiments, computation, and field observation of all sorts (rules are data!).
Teaching the class over the last not-quite-a-decade has been an invigorating intellectual experience. When Paul Milgrom and I began the class (when he spent a year at Harvard in 2001), he had the FCC spectrum auction experience under his belt, and I had the redesign of the National Resident Matching Program under mine, and we had plenty of ideas.
I entertained a faint worry that, at the end of the decade, those might still be the only major applications we had to talk about. But, as things turned out, we can no longer fit all the newly implemented market designs into one course (and Susan Athey will again teach a second semester of Market Design, focused on many recent auction applications, in the Spring). Among the designs we talked about this semester are other health care labor markets, Kidney Exchange, School choice mechanisms, signaling for new economists, internet ad auctions, and more.
I've also been gratified by developments in market design as a field of study. Not only have there been successful applications, there's starting to be an academic literature focused on practical market design, and the theoretical and empirical questions it raises. While there are still some special obstacles that have to be overcome to publish market design papers in general economics journals, we've come a long way since I worried about that in my 2002 paper "The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics.
As I remarked in two earlier posts (see Market design is coming of age, and Market design courses this Fall at Harvard and MIT) another sign that the field is healthy is that it is attracting some of the most creative young minds. Some alumni of Harvard and the course who are presently active in market design and/or matching are Estelle Cantillon (with whom I taught the course for two years), Muriel Niederle, John Asker, Nicole Immorlica, Mohammad Mahdian, Michael Ostrovsky, Parag Pathak, Fuhito Kojima, Robin Lee, Mihai Manea, Eric Budish, and Scott Kominers.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Who gets deceased-donor kidneys? Thinking about changes in the rules.
A lot of thought and politics goes into changing the rules for which patients get which kidneys, how long they wait, and how much that should play a role in the allocation decision, as opposed to other criteria having to do with how well each kidney fits each patient, what is the age difference between deceased donor and recipient, etc.
John Faherty at the Arizona Republic has written an informative account of the ongoing debate: New rules change who gets donated kidneys
"Dr. Kenneth Andreoni, chairman of the United Network for Organ Sharing Kidney Transplantation Committee, has been working to develop a better way to distribute kidneys since 2004.
"The current allocation system went in decades ago," Andreoni said. "It was based on good science, but it was a different time."
The system was built to balance utility with fairness.
For utility, doctors required that donated kidneys and recipients be a close biological match. It was the only way to ensure that the recipient's body wouldn't reject the organ, wasting a precious donation.
For fairness, they established a waiting list. The people on the list the longest were first in line for the next matching kidney.
But in the 1980s and 1990s, things began to change. Better anti-rejection drugs helped a recipient accept a kidney even if they weren't a perfect match. Before long, the allocation system that was supposed to balance utility - the likelihood of a successful transplant - with fairness - time on the waiting list - was out of whack.
All that mattered was the wait time.
Frustration grew among transplant doctors. Without the criteria of a tissue match, the system was no longer using science to make the best choices.
Doctors were sometimes putting healthy young kidneys into recipients with only a few years left to live."
...
"The committee is recommending at least two key elements that are almost certain to be part of the new system.
• The first is dialysis time. The current waiting-list system is less fair than it seems, Andreoni said, because some doctors list patients early, at the first sign of kidney failure, while other doctors wait until after other treatments to list their patients. This puts patients in the second group at a disadvantage.
A dialysis-time list would put all patients on equal footing. The longer you have had to endure the treatment, the sooner you can get a kidney.
• The second element is a complex grading system called the Donor Profile Index. Doctors would measure the quality of a donated kidney to determine how well it will work and how long it will last. Then, they would give that kidney to the patient who would most benefit from it.
That means factoring, to a still-undetermined degree, who would get the most use of a new kidney - who would live the longest.
"Right now, whoever is next in line gets the kidney," Andreoni said. "It does not make the best use of the organ." "
Of course, changes like this, when allocating a scarce resource, involve benefits from some people, but not for everyone.
"With the proposed changes to the allocation system, a patient like Ramirez will be more likely to receive a kidney from a younger person, and probably sooner.
"It's a conundrum. A change would be a really good thing for me," she said. "But if I was older, I might be angry. Maybe they have been waiting for a long time." "
That's what makes some changes politically hard. Sometimes phasing such changes in over time may ease the path.
Update: for those of you who don't click on comments, Michael Giberson said... Why not favor patients with an unmatched donor, and so use deceased donor kidneys to trigger a exchange chain. ?
Mixing the deceased donor kidneys with the kidney exchange pool also involves some complicated political issues, since deceased donor organs are regarded as a shared public resource, but live donor kidneys are of course private property.
But in New England we have permission to do something like what Giberson has in mind, called list exchange: see
Roth, Alvin E., Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, Francis L. Delmonico, and Susan L. Saidman, ''Utilizing List Exchange and Undirected Good Samaritan Donation through 'Chain' Paired Kidney Donations," American Journal of Transplantation, 6, 11, November 2006, 2694-2705.
Here's the first paragraph of the abstract of that paper:
"In a list exchange (LE), the intended recipient in an incompatible pair receives priority on the deceased donor waitlist (DD-waitlist) after the paired incompatible donor donates a kidney to a DD-waitlist candidate. A nondirected donor’s (ND-D) kidney is usually transplanted directly to a DD-waitlist candidate. These two established practices would help even more transplant candidates if they were integrated with kidney paired donation (KPD)."
The paper goes on to report an early NDD chain conducted at the New England Program for Kidney Exchange that passed through the exchange pool, i.e. that included patients with incompatible donors in the middle, with the final link being a donation to someone on the DD-waitlist. We have also done exchanges that may be closer to what Giberson suggests, in which a deceased donor kidney goes to someone in the kidney exchange pool, whose incompatible donor gives to someone else in the pool...whose donor gives to someone on the DD-waitlist.
John Faherty at the Arizona Republic has written an informative account of the ongoing debate: New rules change who gets donated kidneys
"Dr. Kenneth Andreoni, chairman of the United Network for Organ Sharing Kidney Transplantation Committee, has been working to develop a better way to distribute kidneys since 2004.
"The current allocation system went in decades ago," Andreoni said. "It was based on good science, but it was a different time."
The system was built to balance utility with fairness.
For utility, doctors required that donated kidneys and recipients be a close biological match. It was the only way to ensure that the recipient's body wouldn't reject the organ, wasting a precious donation.
For fairness, they established a waiting list. The people on the list the longest were first in line for the next matching kidney.
But in the 1980s and 1990s, things began to change. Better anti-rejection drugs helped a recipient accept a kidney even if they weren't a perfect match. Before long, the allocation system that was supposed to balance utility - the likelihood of a successful transplant - with fairness - time on the waiting list - was out of whack.
All that mattered was the wait time.
Frustration grew among transplant doctors. Without the criteria of a tissue match, the system was no longer using science to make the best choices.
Doctors were sometimes putting healthy young kidneys into recipients with only a few years left to live."
...
"The committee is recommending at least two key elements that are almost certain to be part of the new system.
• The first is dialysis time. The current waiting-list system is less fair than it seems, Andreoni said, because some doctors list patients early, at the first sign of kidney failure, while other doctors wait until after other treatments to list their patients. This puts patients in the second group at a disadvantage.
A dialysis-time list would put all patients on equal footing. The longer you have had to endure the treatment, the sooner you can get a kidney.
• The second element is a complex grading system called the Donor Profile Index. Doctors would measure the quality of a donated kidney to determine how well it will work and how long it will last. Then, they would give that kidney to the patient who would most benefit from it.
That means factoring, to a still-undetermined degree, who would get the most use of a new kidney - who would live the longest.
"Right now, whoever is next in line gets the kidney," Andreoni said. "It does not make the best use of the organ." "
Of course, changes like this, when allocating a scarce resource, involve benefits from some people, but not for everyone.
"With the proposed changes to the allocation system, a patient like Ramirez will be more likely to receive a kidney from a younger person, and probably sooner.
"It's a conundrum. A change would be a really good thing for me," she said. "But if I was older, I might be angry. Maybe they have been waiting for a long time." "
That's what makes some changes politically hard. Sometimes phasing such changes in over time may ease the path.
Update: for those of you who don't click on comments, Michael Giberson said... Why not favor patients with an unmatched donor, and so use deceased donor kidneys to trigger a exchange chain. ?
Mixing the deceased donor kidneys with the kidney exchange pool also involves some complicated political issues, since deceased donor organs are regarded as a shared public resource, but live donor kidneys are of course private property.
But in New England we have permission to do something like what Giberson has in mind, called list exchange: see
Roth, Alvin E., Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, Francis L. Delmonico, and Susan L. Saidman, ''Utilizing List Exchange and Undirected Good Samaritan Donation through 'Chain' Paired Kidney Donations," American Journal of Transplantation, 6, 11, November 2006, 2694-2705.
Here's the first paragraph of the abstract of that paper:
"In a list exchange (LE), the intended recipient in an incompatible pair receives priority on the deceased donor waitlist (DD-waitlist) after the paired incompatible donor donates a kidney to a DD-waitlist candidate. A nondirected donor’s (ND-D) kidney is usually transplanted directly to a DD-waitlist candidate. These two established practices would help even more transplant candidates if they were integrated with kidney paired donation (KPD)."
The paper goes on to report an early NDD chain conducted at the New England Program for Kidney Exchange that passed through the exchange pool, i.e. that included patients with incompatible donors in the middle, with the final link being a donation to someone on the DD-waitlist. We have also done exchanges that may be closer to what Giberson suggests, in which a deceased donor kidney goes to someone in the kidney exchange pool, whose incompatible donor gives to someone else in the pool...whose donor gives to someone on the DD-waitlist.
Incentives for buying health insurance when healthy
My colleague Marty Feldstein worries in the Washington Post about potential incentive mis-alignments in new health care legislation: Obamacare's nasty surprise-Fewer insured, higher costs might be the result
"Here's why: A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition.
This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.) "
HT: Mankiw
"Here's why: A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition.
This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.) "
HT: Mankiw
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Restaurant reservations
An interesting paper by Alexei Alexandrov and Martin A. Lariviere asks Are Reservations Recommended?
From the abstract:
"We examine the role of reservations in capacity-constrained services with a focus on restaurants. Although customers value reservations, restaurants typically neither charge for them nor impose penalties for failing to honor them. However, reservations impose costs on firms offering them. We highlight ways in which reservations can increase a firm’s sales by altering customer behavior. First, when demand is uncertain, reservations induce more customers to patronize the restaurant on slow nights. The firm must then trade off higher sales in a soft market with sales lost to no shows on busy nights. Competition makes reservations more attractive as long as enough customers will consider dining at either restaurant. When there are many firms in the market, it is rarely an equilibrium for none to offer reservations. Second, we show that reservations can increase sales by shifting demand from a popular peak period to a less desirable off-peak time. This is accomplished by informing diners when all peak reservations have been given out. "
And from the Introduction:
"Restaurant reservations are a curious phenomenon. Customers value them, but restaurants give them away. Indeed, firms such as Weekend Epicure have stepped in to profit from the resulting arbitrage opportunity. These “scalpers” reserve tables at popular spots under fictitious names that they share with the first paying party. (Fees are on the order of $35 to $40.) What makes offering reservations even more remarkable is that they are costly to provide. Fischer (2005) identifies three costs to offering reservations. These include additional staff needed to take reservations and added complexity from having to balance the needs of walk-in customers with commitments made to reservation holders. The final consideration is no shows.
Customers can generally fail to keep reservations without penalty, but restaurants suffer if they hold capacity for customers that never come. No shows represent a real problem. Bertsimas and Shioda (2003) report a no-show rate of 3% to 15% for the restaurant they studied. More generally, rates of 20% are not unusual (Webb Pressler, 2003) and special occasions such as New Year’s Eve can push rates to 40% (Martin, 2001).
Why then should restaurants offer reservations? One reason is the operational benefits they provide. Reservations regulate the flow of work. By staggering seatings, a restaurateur can assure that waiters are not overwhelmed by a rush of customers followed by the bartender and kitchen being swamped with orders. Reservations thus allow fast service without excessive capacity (Fischer, 2005). Reservations would then be appealing when either customers are delay sensitive or the firm’s costs increase with arrival variability. Further, reservations may allow a restaurant to estimate demand and improve staffing and sourcing decision."
From the abstract:
"We examine the role of reservations in capacity-constrained services with a focus on restaurants. Although customers value reservations, restaurants typically neither charge for them nor impose penalties for failing to honor them. However, reservations impose costs on firms offering them. We highlight ways in which reservations can increase a firm’s sales by altering customer behavior. First, when demand is uncertain, reservations induce more customers to patronize the restaurant on slow nights. The firm must then trade off higher sales in a soft market with sales lost to no shows on busy nights. Competition makes reservations more attractive as long as enough customers will consider dining at either restaurant. When there are many firms in the market, it is rarely an equilibrium for none to offer reservations. Second, we show that reservations can increase sales by shifting demand from a popular peak period to a less desirable off-peak time. This is accomplished by informing diners when all peak reservations have been given out. "
And from the Introduction:
"Restaurant reservations are a curious phenomenon. Customers value them, but restaurants give them away. Indeed, firms such as Weekend Epicure have stepped in to profit from the resulting arbitrage opportunity. These “scalpers” reserve tables at popular spots under fictitious names that they share with the first paying party. (Fees are on the order of $35 to $40.) What makes offering reservations even more remarkable is that they are costly to provide. Fischer (2005) identifies three costs to offering reservations. These include additional staff needed to take reservations and added complexity from having to balance the needs of walk-in customers with commitments made to reservation holders. The final consideration is no shows.
Customers can generally fail to keep reservations without penalty, but restaurants suffer if they hold capacity for customers that never come. No shows represent a real problem. Bertsimas and Shioda (2003) report a no-show rate of 3% to 15% for the restaurant they studied. More generally, rates of 20% are not unusual (Webb Pressler, 2003) and special occasions such as New Year’s Eve can push rates to 40% (Martin, 2001).
Why then should restaurants offer reservations? One reason is the operational benefits they provide. Reservations regulate the flow of work. By staggering seatings, a restaurateur can assure that waiters are not overwhelmed by a rush of customers followed by the bartender and kitchen being swamped with orders. Reservations thus allow fast service without excessive capacity (Fischer, 2005). Reservations would then be appealing when either customers are delay sensitive or the firm’s costs increase with arrival variability. Further, reservations may allow a restaurant to estimate demand and improve staffing and sourcing decision."
Misc. repugnant transactions
Environmentalists seek to wipe out plush toilet paper (headline in Boston Globe)
They advocate products made of recycled fibers
Egyptian Lawmakers Want to Ban Fake Hymen
"CAIRO (AP) -- Conservative Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity and one scholar has even called for the ''exile'' of anyone who imports or uses it.
The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo, costs about $30. It is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins -- culturally important in a conservative Middle East where sex before marriage is considered by many to be illicit. The product leaks a blood-like substance when inserted and broken."...
"Kotb noted that a medical procedure that reattaches a broken hymen by stitching is illegal in Egypt and can cost hundreds of dollars -- prohibitively expensive for the poor. But many women still secretly seek it out in fear of punishment for pre-marital sex.
Such punishment could include slayings at the hands of relatives, a practice more commonly referred to as honor killings and common in the more conservative tribal areas of the Middle East."
They advocate products made of recycled fibers
"And, activists say, there’s just the foolish idea of the thing: old trees cut down for the briefest and most undignified of ends.
“It’s like the Hummer product for the paper industry,’’ said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We don’t need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds.’’
"The reason for this fight lies in toilet paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper - in this case magazines, newspapers, or computer printouts - are shorter. The web often is rougher.
So, when toilet paper is made for the “away from home’’ market, the no-choice bathrooms in restaurants, offices, and schools, manufacturers use recycled fiber about 75 percent of the time.
But for the “at home’’ market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally “virgin’’ fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc."
Egyptian Lawmakers Want to Ban Fake Hymen
"CAIRO (AP) -- Conservative Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity and one scholar has even called for the ''exile'' of anyone who imports or uses it.
The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo, costs about $30. It is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins -- culturally important in a conservative Middle East where sex before marriage is considered by many to be illicit. The product leaks a blood-like substance when inserted and broken."...
"Kotb noted that a medical procedure that reattaches a broken hymen by stitching is illegal in Egypt and can cost hundreds of dollars -- prohibitively expensive for the poor. But many women still secretly seek it out in fear of punishment for pre-marital sex.
Such punishment could include slayings at the hands of relatives, a practice more commonly referred to as honor killings and common in the more conservative tribal areas of the Middle East."
Friday, November 20, 2009
Harvard housing
Harvard sophomores, juniors and seniors are assigned housing randomly, with some details that require strategic thinking. The objective seems to be to make the Harvard undergraduate houses fairly homogeneous (while allowing friends to form small groups). But it wasn't always so.
An unpublished paper that recounts some of the history, and the previous market designs for housing allocation, is THE HARVARD HOUSING LOTTERY: RATIONALITY AND REFORM, by Susan M. Collins and Kala Krishna
It's an interesting read, and an important kind of market design paper. Rules are data, and histories of rule changes, and how they succeed and fail, are often one of the clearest windows through which to view the obstacles that allocation processes have to overcome to work well.
An unpublished paper that recounts some of the history, and the previous market designs for housing allocation, is THE HARVARD HOUSING LOTTERY: RATIONALITY AND REFORM, by Susan M. Collins and Kala Krishna
It's an interesting read, and an important kind of market design paper. Rules are data, and histories of rule changes, and how they succeed and fail, are often one of the clearest windows through which to view the obstacles that allocation processes have to overcome to work well.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Non-simultaneous kidney exchange chains
Quite a few kidney exchange chains, starting with a non-directed (altruistic) donor, have been done non-simultaneously, since the first non-simultaneous extended altruistic donor (NEAD) chain went through so successfully. The idea is that the need for simultaneity is reduced when a chain starts with a non-directed donor, since no incompatible patient-donor pair is left waiting for a kidney after giving one.
Here's an article about a recent non-simultaneous chain in Maryland: the article gives a good idea of the multiple reasons why non-simultaneity might be desirable. First, it relieves logistical constraints involved with scheduling multiple operating rooms (not to mention waiting rooms and recovery rooms), and second, it allows the chain to continue in the future.
""Four people who otherwise would not have had matching donors now have lifesaving kidneys - from people they've never met. And this transplant chain was set in motion by a man who simply wanted to donate a kidney to someone in need," says Matthew Cooper, MD, director of kidney transplantation at UMMC and associate professor of surgery at the School of Medicine, who oversaw the series of surgeries.
Only a handful of hospitals in the country have performed large kidney transplant exchanges such as this one. The procedures, which took place over two days in four operating suites at the medical center, required extensive coordination and planning not only in the operating rooms, but also in the waiting rooms.
Because the right to privacy for the donors and recipients is protected throughout the process, transplant coordinator Debbie Iacovino arranged separate waiting areas in different parts of the hospital for their families to ensure anonymity.
The kidney exchange started with a 59-year-old man from a suburb of Boston, Mass., who offered to donate a kidney to someone in need. His kidney was given to a Maryland man who was not a match with his intended donor, a woman who is also from Maryland. The woman was matched with a 10-year-boy from Catonsville whose kidneys were failing because of a congenital abnormality.
A friend of the boy's family, a 50-year-old lawyer from Catonsville, gave his kidney to a 64-year-old Florida man, whose wife was a donor for 74-year-old man from Virginia Beach, Va. The Virginia man's son-in-law will be a "bridge" donor, who will give his kidney to a yet-undetermined recipient at a later date, which will allow the chain of transplants to continue."
Here's a video interview:
Video FourWay Kidney Exchange An Interview with Dr Matthew Cooper
http://www.spokenword.org/program/865751 21 minutes
"UMMC's director of kidney transplantation Dr. Matthew Cooper provides an overview of the four-way kidney exchange that involved eight patients from four states on November 2 and 3. Dr. Cooper talks about paired kidney exchanges, how this four-way exchange came about, what happened during the two days of surgery, the significance of this procedure for the people involved and much more."
Here's an article about a recent non-simultaneous chain in Maryland: the article gives a good idea of the multiple reasons why non-simultaneity might be desirable. First, it relieves logistical constraints involved with scheduling multiple operating rooms (not to mention waiting rooms and recovery rooms), and second, it allows the chain to continue in the future.
""Four people who otherwise would not have had matching donors now have lifesaving kidneys - from people they've never met. And this transplant chain was set in motion by a man who simply wanted to donate a kidney to someone in need," says Matthew Cooper, MD, director of kidney transplantation at UMMC and associate professor of surgery at the School of Medicine, who oversaw the series of surgeries.
Only a handful of hospitals in the country have performed large kidney transplant exchanges such as this one. The procedures, which took place over two days in four operating suites at the medical center, required extensive coordination and planning not only in the operating rooms, but also in the waiting rooms.
Because the right to privacy for the donors and recipients is protected throughout the process, transplant coordinator Debbie Iacovino arranged separate waiting areas in different parts of the hospital for their families to ensure anonymity.
The kidney exchange started with a 59-year-old man from a suburb of Boston, Mass., who offered to donate a kidney to someone in need. His kidney was given to a Maryland man who was not a match with his intended donor, a woman who is also from Maryland. The woman was matched with a 10-year-boy from Catonsville whose kidneys were failing because of a congenital abnormality.
A friend of the boy's family, a 50-year-old lawyer from Catonsville, gave his kidney to a 64-year-old Florida man, whose wife was a donor for 74-year-old man from Virginia Beach, Va. The Virginia man's son-in-law will be a "bridge" donor, who will give his kidney to a yet-undetermined recipient at a later date, which will allow the chain of transplants to continue."
Here's a video interview:
Video FourWay Kidney Exchange An Interview with Dr Matthew Cooper
http://www.spokenword.org/program/865751 21 minutes
"UMMC's director of kidney transplantation Dr. Matthew Cooper provides an overview of the four-way kidney exchange that involved eight patients from four states on November 2 and 3. Dr. Cooper talks about paired kidney exchanges, how this four-way exchange came about, what happened during the two days of surgery, the significance of this procedure for the people involved and much more."
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Gaming the Liver Transplant Market (by Jason Snyder)
When my colleagues and I began talking to transplant surgeons about the design of kidney exchanges, it was initially sometimes hard to convince them that incentives played a big role in organ allocation. (I sometimes heard a variation of "Professor, incentives may be important in economics, but not in medicine; no one chooses to become sick.") But explanations were made easier by a 2003 legal settlement in which some hospitals paid fines for pretending their patients were sicker than they were, to give them increased priority on the waiting list for deceased donor liver transplants: Illinois: Prosecutor's Diagnosis Is Fraud.
By the time of the settlement, the rules for determining priority on the waiting list for livers had already been changed to depend on more objectively verifiable criteria, to reduce the ability of hospitals to game the system on behalf of their patients. A recent paper by Jason Snyder of the UCLA Anderson School of Management looks at the effect of this change:
"Gaming the Liver Transplant Market" Forthcoming at The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization
"Approximately 6,000 transplants are performed annually and, on average, 2,500 people die while waiting for a liver. There is substantial variation in the number of transplant centers across markets; some markets have only one firm while other markets have multiple participants. Prior to March 1, 2002, a major determinant of whether a patient would obtain a liver was whether they were in the intensive care unit (ICU). Patients in the ICU jumped to the top of the priority list regardless of how sick they actually were. There is considerable anecdotal evidence suggesting that in order to obtain livers for their patients the transplant centers created faux-ICUs where relatively healthy people were put in the ICU to strategically advance their positions on the waiting list. After March 1, 2002, the allocation of livers changed to a system where livers were allocated solely on clinical indicators of sickness. ICU status was no longer a factor in determining whether a patient obtained a liver or not. This policy resulted in, if anything, an increase in the sickness of the average patient at transplant and a dramatic discontinuous decrease in the number of patients who were in the ICU at the time of their transplant. This seemingly contradictory behavior is consistent with centers strategically misrepresenting the health of their patients prior to the policy reforms.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Louis Menand on the market for PhDs in English
Louis Menand, in Harvard Magazine, has many interesting things to say about the Ph.D. in English literature and the market for Ph.D.s in English and the humanities. The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal
"English was one of the fields surveyed in the two studies of the Ph.D. It is useful to look at, in part because it is a large field where employment practices have a significance that goes beyond courses for English majors. What the surveys suggest is that if doctoral education in English were a cartoon character, then about 30 years ago, it zoomed straight off a cliff, went into a terrifying fall, grabbed a branch on the way down, and has been clinging to that branch ever since. Things went south very quickly, not gradually, and then they stabilized. Statistically, the state of the discipline has been fairly steady for about 25 years, and the result of this is a kind of normalization of what in any other context would seem to be a plainly inefficient and intolerable process. The profession has just gotten used to a serious imbalance between supply and demand."
"The Berkeley study, “Ph.D.s—Ten Years Later,” was based on lengthy questionnaires sent to just under 6,000 people, in six fields, who received Ph.D.s between 1982 and 1985. One of those fields was English. People who received their Ph.D.s in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of 10 years. A third of them took more than 11 years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion was 35. By 1995, 53 percent of those with Ph.D.s that had been awarded from 10 to 15 years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two-fifths of English Ph.D.s were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood. (Some of these people were non-tenure-track faculty, and some were educational administrators. Most of the rest worked in what is called BGN—business, government, and NGOs.) Of those who had tenure, less than a fifth had positions in the kind of research universities in which they had been trained—that is, about 5 percent of all English Ph.D.s. "
...
"The placement rate for Ph.D.s has fluctuated. Between 1989 and 1996, the number of starting positions advertised in history dropped 11 percent; in art and art history, 26 percent; in foreign languages, 35 percent; and in political science, 37 percent. Yet every year during that period, universities gave out more Ph.D.s than they had the year before. It was plain that the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life. That meant if not quite a lost generation of scholars, a lost cohort. This was a period that coincided with attacks on the university for “political correctness,” and it is not a coincidence that many of the most prominent critics of academia were themselves graduate-school dropouts: Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, Richard Bernstein, David Lehman. Apart from their specific criticisms and their politics, they articulated a mood of disenchantment with the university as a congenial place to work.
There were efforts after 1996 to cut down the size of doctoral programs, with apparently some positive effect on the job market. But time-to-degree numbers did not improve. In the sixties, the time-to-degree as a registered student was about 4.5 years in the natural sciences and about six years in the humanities. The current median time to degree in the humanities is nine years. That does not include what is called stop-time, which is when students take a leave or drop out for a semester or longer. And it obviously does not take into account students who never finish. It is not nine years from the receipt of the bachelor’s degree, either; it is nine years as a registered student in a graduate program. The median total time it takes to achieve a degree in the humanities including stop-time is 11.3 years. In the social sciences, it is 10 years, or 7.8 as a registered student. In the natural sciences, time-to-degree as a registered student is just under seven years. If we put all these numbers together, we get the following composite: only about half of the people who enter doctoral programs in English finish them, and only about half of those who finish end up as tenured faculty, the majority of them at institutions that are not research universities. An estimate of the total elapsed time from college graduation to tenure would be somewhere between 15 and 20 years. It is a lengthy apprenticeship."
"... The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s. "
"The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that the producers of knowledge are produced. Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions, and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago. Doctoral education is the horse that the university is riding to the mall. People are taught—more accurately, people are socialized, since the process selects for other attributes in addition to scholarly ability—to become expert in a field of specialized study; and then, at the end of a long, expensive, and highly single-minded process of credentialization, they are asked to perform tasks for which they have had no training whatsoever: to teach their fields to non-specialists, to connect what they teach to issues that students are likely to confront in the world outside the university, to be interdisciplinary, to write for a general audience, to justify their work to people outside their discipline and outside the academy. If we want professors to be better at these things, then we ought to train them differently."
"English was one of the fields surveyed in the two studies of the Ph.D. It is useful to look at, in part because it is a large field where employment practices have a significance that goes beyond courses for English majors. What the surveys suggest is that if doctoral education in English were a cartoon character, then about 30 years ago, it zoomed straight off a cliff, went into a terrifying fall, grabbed a branch on the way down, and has been clinging to that branch ever since. Things went south very quickly, not gradually, and then they stabilized. Statistically, the state of the discipline has been fairly steady for about 25 years, and the result of this is a kind of normalization of what in any other context would seem to be a plainly inefficient and intolerable process. The profession has just gotten used to a serious imbalance between supply and demand."
"The Berkeley study, “Ph.D.s—Ten Years Later,” was based on lengthy questionnaires sent to just under 6,000 people, in six fields, who received Ph.D.s between 1982 and 1985. One of those fields was English. People who received their Ph.D.s in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of 10 years. A third of them took more than 11 years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion was 35. By 1995, 53 percent of those with Ph.D.s that had been awarded from 10 to 15 years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two-fifths of English Ph.D.s were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood. (Some of these people were non-tenure-track faculty, and some were educational administrators. Most of the rest worked in what is called BGN—business, government, and NGOs.) Of those who had tenure, less than a fifth had positions in the kind of research universities in which they had been trained—that is, about 5 percent of all English Ph.D.s. "
...
"The placement rate for Ph.D.s has fluctuated. Between 1989 and 1996, the number of starting positions advertised in history dropped 11 percent; in art and art history, 26 percent; in foreign languages, 35 percent; and in political science, 37 percent. Yet every year during that period, universities gave out more Ph.D.s than they had the year before. It was plain that the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life. That meant if not quite a lost generation of scholars, a lost cohort. This was a period that coincided with attacks on the university for “political correctness,” and it is not a coincidence that many of the most prominent critics of academia were themselves graduate-school dropouts: Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, Richard Bernstein, David Lehman. Apart from their specific criticisms and their politics, they articulated a mood of disenchantment with the university as a congenial place to work.
There were efforts after 1996 to cut down the size of doctoral programs, with apparently some positive effect on the job market. But time-to-degree numbers did not improve. In the sixties, the time-to-degree as a registered student was about 4.5 years in the natural sciences and about six years in the humanities. The current median time to degree in the humanities is nine years. That does not include what is called stop-time, which is when students take a leave or drop out for a semester or longer. And it obviously does not take into account students who never finish. It is not nine years from the receipt of the bachelor’s degree, either; it is nine years as a registered student in a graduate program. The median total time it takes to achieve a degree in the humanities including stop-time is 11.3 years. In the social sciences, it is 10 years, or 7.8 as a registered student. In the natural sciences, time-to-degree as a registered student is just under seven years. If we put all these numbers together, we get the following composite: only about half of the people who enter doctoral programs in English finish them, and only about half of those who finish end up as tenured faculty, the majority of them at institutions that are not research universities. An estimate of the total elapsed time from college graduation to tenure would be somewhere between 15 and 20 years. It is a lengthy apprenticeship."
"... The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s. "
"The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that the producers of knowledge are produced. Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions, and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago. Doctoral education is the horse that the university is riding to the mall. People are taught—more accurately, people are socialized, since the process selects for other attributes in addition to scholarly ability—to become expert in a field of specialized study; and then, at the end of a long, expensive, and highly single-minded process of credentialization, they are asked to perform tasks for which they have had no training whatsoever: to teach their fields to non-specialists, to connect what they teach to issues that students are likely to confront in the world outside the university, to be interdisciplinary, to write for a general audience, to justify their work to people outside their discipline and outside the academy. If we want professors to be better at these things, then we ought to train them differently."
Monday, November 16, 2009
Humanities job market: priming the pump
The American Council of Learned Societies has decided to give the job market for humanities Ph.D.s a boost, in the face of the tough job market expected this year. It looks like their stimulus package is well designed:
"The American Council of Learned Societies announces a new initiative to address the serious employment challenges faced by many of today’s new Ph.D.s while also supporting teaching at universities and colleges. The ACLS New Faculty Fellows program will allow 50 recent Ph.D.s in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to take up two-year positions at universities and colleges, where their particular research and teaching expertise will benefit the receiving institution. Awardees will commit to teaching three semester-length courses each year and receive an annual stipend of $50,000, a $5,000 annual research and travel allowance, health insurance, and a $1,500 one-time moving allowance. The program is supported by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Applicants for this program must be nominated by the university that awarded their Ph.D. In this first iteration of the program, nominations are limited to the 60 U.S. members of the Association of American Universities, each of which has designated a liaison for the ACLS New Faculty Fellows program. Possible applicants at participating institutions are encouraged to contact their advisor or department or program chair for further information on the program.
Read more: Stimulus for Humanities Job Market "
The link gives the following additional information:
"All 60 U.S. members of the Association of American Universities have been invited to nominate candidates who do not have a tenure-track position and who will have received a Ph.D. between January 2008 and December of 2009 in the humanities or the "humanistic social sciences," defined as including history, anthropology and such areas as political theory, historical sociology and economic history. The AAU members may nominate between 5 and 40 individuals, based on the size of the Ph.D. classes they produce each year in the humanities.
From these nominees, 50 finalists will be selected based on statements about their teaching and research interests.
Then the AAU universities and a few dozen liberal arts colleges (the latter group is still being defined) will be able to offer positions to the finalists, provided that the universities agree to pay one-third of the costs and the colleges one-fourth of the costs. The AAU institutions will not be allowed to offer positions to their own Ph.D.'s. Any finalists who don't get a job offer will get a one-year stipend of $35,000."
HT: Itay Fainmesser who will be at the ASSA meetings in Atlanta
"The American Council of Learned Societies announces a new initiative to address the serious employment challenges faced by many of today’s new Ph.D.s while also supporting teaching at universities and colleges. The ACLS New Faculty Fellows program will allow 50 recent Ph.D.s in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to take up two-year positions at universities and colleges, where their particular research and teaching expertise will benefit the receiving institution. Awardees will commit to teaching three semester-length courses each year and receive an annual stipend of $50,000, a $5,000 annual research and travel allowance, health insurance, and a $1,500 one-time moving allowance. The program is supported by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Applicants for this program must be nominated by the university that awarded their Ph.D. In this first iteration of the program, nominations are limited to the 60 U.S. members of the Association of American Universities, each of which has designated a liaison for the ACLS New Faculty Fellows program. Possible applicants at participating institutions are encouraged to contact their advisor or department or program chair for further information on the program.
Read more: Stimulus for Humanities Job Market "
The link gives the following additional information:
"All 60 U.S. members of the Association of American Universities have been invited to nominate candidates who do not have a tenure-track position and who will have received a Ph.D. between January 2008 and December of 2009 in the humanities or the "humanistic social sciences," defined as including history, anthropology and such areas as political theory, historical sociology and economic history. The AAU members may nominate between 5 and 40 individuals, based on the size of the Ph.D. classes they produce each year in the humanities.
From these nominees, 50 finalists will be selected based on statements about their teaching and research interests.
Then the AAU universities and a few dozen liberal arts colleges (the latter group is still being defined) will be able to offer positions to the finalists, provided that the universities agree to pay one-third of the costs and the colleges one-fourth of the costs. The AAU institutions will not be allowed to offer positions to their own Ph.D.'s. Any finalists who don't get a job offer will get a one-year stipend of $35,000."
HT: Itay Fainmesser who will be at the ASSA meetings in Atlanta
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Market for lesson plans
College professors sell textbooks, business school professor can profit from case studies, and now there's a market for lesson plans for elementary and middle school classes: Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions .
The "cash" in the headline is clear enough, while the "questions" seem to be of two kinds. The first is about intellectual property, who owns what:
"While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms."
The other kinds of questions involve the repugnance we sometimes see raised by markets for things that used to be given away or handmade:
"Beyond the unresolved legal questions, there are philosophical ones. Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, said the online selling cheapens what teachers do and undermines efforts to build sites where educators freely exchange ideas and lesson plans.
“Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing,” he said. “But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.” "
The internet is a big facilitator here:
"Just about every imaginable lesson for preschool through college is now up for sale — on individual teachers’ blogs as well as commercial sites where buyers can review and grade the material.
Teachers Pay Teachers, one of the largest such sites, with more than 200,000 registered users, has recorded $600,000 in sales since it was started in 2006 — $450,000 of that in the past year, said its founder, Paul Edelman, a former New York City teacher. The top seller, a high school English teacher in California, has made $36,000 in sales.
Another site, We Are Teachers, went online last year with a “knowledge marketplace” that includes lesson plans and online tutoring."
The "cash" in the headline is clear enough, while the "questions" seem to be of two kinds. The first is about intellectual property, who owns what:
"While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms."
The other kinds of questions involve the repugnance we sometimes see raised by markets for things that used to be given away or handmade:
"Beyond the unresolved legal questions, there are philosophical ones. Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, said the online selling cheapens what teachers do and undermines efforts to build sites where educators freely exchange ideas and lesson plans.
“Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing,” he said. “But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.” "
The internet is a big facilitator here:
"Just about every imaginable lesson for preschool through college is now up for sale — on individual teachers’ blogs as well as commercial sites where buyers can review and grade the material.
Teachers Pay Teachers, one of the largest such sites, with more than 200,000 registered users, has recorded $600,000 in sales since it was started in 2006 — $450,000 of that in the past year, said its founder, Paul Edelman, a former New York City teacher. The top seller, a high school English teacher in California, has made $36,000 in sales.
Another site, We Are Teachers, went online last year with a “knowledge marketplace” that includes lesson plans and online tutoring."
Signaling for interviews in the Economics Job Market: Registration opens tomorrow
Here is the American Economic Association's announcement of the 2009 mechanism for Signaling for Interviews in the Economics Job Market
"The AEA coordinates a mechanism through which applicants can signal their interest in receiving an interview at the January meetings. From November 16, until December 1, shortly after the December JOE comes out, each applicant on the economics job market can register and designate no more than two departments (or other employers) to whom to send a signal of particular interest. On December 3, the AEA will transmit these signals to the departments a candidate has chosen. (Signals will not be made public.)
Please see Signaling for Interviews in the Economics Job Market for a detailed description as well as the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. "
Those already registered may select or update signals until Midnight, EST on December 1, 2009. This is a firm deadline.
(I hope to have a paper ready for circulation reasonably soon, with my colleagues on the AEA job market committee...)
"The AEA coordinates a mechanism through which applicants can signal their interest in receiving an interview at the January meetings. From November 16, until December 1, shortly after the December JOE comes out, each applicant on the economics job market can register and designate no more than two departments (or other employers) to whom to send a signal of particular interest. On December 3, the AEA will transmit these signals to the departments a candidate has chosen. (Signals will not be made public.)
Please see Signaling for Interviews in the Economics Job Market for a detailed description as well as the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. "
Those already registered may select or update signals until Midnight, EST on December 1, 2009. This is a firm deadline.
In each of the years when signaling has been available (2006-9), about 1,000 signalers have used the system (almost all choosing to send 2 signals). Around 25% of JOE listings have received at least one signal in each of those years. So signaling has been pretty widespread, with lots of senders and receivers.
So, that said, should you signal? Or perhaps there's some reason not to signal?
In a December 2008 survey of those appearing on departmental lists of job candidates, 66% of respondents reported signaling. Of the remaining 33% of respondents, 26% reported that they missed the deadline, 21% reported they didn’t know about the mechanism, 41% thought signaling wouldn’t help their chances of getting a job, and 5% thought signaling would hurt their chances of getting an interview.
On this last point I can offer some reassurance; in our surveys of department recruiting committees, there is no indication whatsoever that anyone regards a signal as a negative indicator in deciding whether to offer an interview.
There is also some indication that signals help, at least sometimes (again from survey data, since we don't have direct access to data on who gets interviews), particularly for signals sent to employers who don't receive an excessive number of signals. (The 21 employers receiving the most signals received about 1/6 of all signals: ten of these employers are in the Boston, NY, and D.C. metropolitan areas.) Overall, a signal seems to increase the likelihood of an interview by around 6 percentage points.
I think it is sensible for most candidates to send the two signals they are allotted. I think the most you can expect a signal to do is to cause someone at the signaled department to take one more look at your dossier, and consider whether it makes sense to include you on their already pretty full schedule of interviews, given your interest. So, choose your signals with that in mind, and they may work for you.(I hope to have a paper ready for circulation reasonably soon, with my colleagues on the AEA job market committee...)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Nothing human need be foreign to economics
Economists like to think of Economics as a broad church that welcomes investigation of a wide range of human activity from many viewpoints. Nothing human is foreign to us. Non-economists (and perhaps some economists as well) take a much narrower view of what economists can and should investigate, and how well we can do so.
An inadvertently hilarious juxtaposition of those two views comes in a column in The Guardian: Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good--Market theory closed down public discourse about injustice. But we urgently need to describe what we should value
The author opines: "But don't look to economists to get us out of this hollow mould of neoliberal economics and its bastard child, managerialism – the cost-benefit analysis and value-added gibberish that has made most people's working lives a mockery of everything they know to value."
She then goes on to suggest that the evils of economics may be remedied by philosophers, and praises Amartya Sen's new book The Idea of Justice.
The joke of course is that the author of the column is blissfully unaware that Amartya is an eminent economist, and the winner of the 1998 Nobel prize in economics.
Needless to say, justice is an excellent thing for economists to study, and strive to understand and achieve.
An inadvertently hilarious juxtaposition of those two views comes in a column in The Guardian: Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good--Market theory closed down public discourse about injustice. But we urgently need to describe what we should value
The author opines: "But don't look to economists to get us out of this hollow mould of neoliberal economics and its bastard child, managerialism – the cost-benefit analysis and value-added gibberish that has made most people's working lives a mockery of everything they know to value."
She then goes on to suggest that the evils of economics may be remedied by philosophers, and praises Amartya Sen's new book The Idea of Justice.
The joke of course is that the author of the column is blissfully unaware that Amartya is an eminent economist, and the winner of the 1998 Nobel prize in economics.
Needless to say, justice is an excellent thing for economists to study, and strive to understand and achieve.
A grave problem of supply and demand
Grave sites, once sold and occupied, are intended to be occupied for a very long time, and their sale can't easily be negotiated if more valuable uses turn up. So there is less turnouver than in other kinds of real estate, with predictable consequences, as this Globe article attests: Supply limited, demand eternal, graveyards fill up.
"Provincetown’s shortage, while unusually acute, underscores a broad and burgeoning problem in the crowded Northeast. With land expensive and limited acreage available in large swaths of Eastern Massachusetts, budget-crunched communities are struggling to buy sites for new burial grounds as their existing cemeteries fill up."
...
"In Provincetown, many who have reserved burial plots are relative newcomers to the town, and in response, town officials this week passed a rule restricting burial plots to those who have maintained a principal residence for at least two years. Still, that was a short sojourn, some said, for a chance to spend eternity in a slice of heaven.
Said Lemme, the cemetery supervisor: “We might have to make that a little stricter.’’ "
"Provincetown’s shortage, while unusually acute, underscores a broad and burgeoning problem in the crowded Northeast. With land expensive and limited acreage available in large swaths of Eastern Massachusetts, budget-crunched communities are struggling to buy sites for new burial grounds as their existing cemeteries fill up."
...
"In Provincetown, many who have reserved burial plots are relative newcomers to the town, and in response, town officials this week passed a rule restricting burial plots to those who have maintained a principal residence for at least two years. Still, that was a short sojourn, some said, for a chance to spend eternity in a slice of heaven.
Said Lemme, the cemetery supervisor: “We might have to make that a little stricter.’’ "
Friday, November 13, 2009
School choice, and separation of church and state
As a beneficiary of both a democratic and a religious tradition, I think that separation of church and state is good not just for states (if they happen to be liberal democracies), but also for religious communities (if they aspire to be self governing). In Britain, there are state funded religious schools, so school choice issues for religious schools get resolved by secular courts: Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question .
"Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority. "
The case in question is wending its way through the appeals court process. But it appears that, by accepting state funding, Britain's religious communities have let the state into the church, so to speak.
Update:Dec. 15. British High Court Says Jewish School’s Ethnic-Based Admissions Policy Is Illegal
Update: January 10: Faith schools facing admissions curb
"Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority. "
The case in question is wending its way through the appeals court process. But it appears that, by accepting state funding, Britain's religious communities have let the state into the church, so to speak.
Update:Dec. 15. British High Court Says Jewish School’s Ethnic-Based Admissions Policy Is Illegal
Update: January 10: Faith schools facing admissions curb
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Incentives in Chicago school choice
The Chicago Sun Times reports:
"Poring over data about eighth-graders who applied to the city's elite college preps, Chicago Public Schools officials discovered an alarming pattern.
High-scoring kids were being rejected simply because of the order in which they listed their college prep preferences.
"I couldn't believe it,'' schools CEO Ron Huberman said. "It's terrible.''
CPS officials said Wednesday they have decided to let any eighth-grader who applied to a college prep for fall 2010 admission re-rank their preferences to better conform with a new selection system.
Previously, some eighth-graders were listing the most competitive college preps as their top choice, forgoing their chances of getting into other schools that would have accepted them if they had ranked those schools higher, official said.
Under the new policy, Huberman said, a computer will assign applicants to the highest-ranked school they qualify for on their list.
"It's the fairest way to do it," Huberman told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Wednesday."
This is the same issue that led to the redesign of the Boston school choice system.
HT Parag Pathak
update: see earlier stories on the changes in the Chicago magnet school program here and here.
"Poring over data about eighth-graders who applied to the city's elite college preps, Chicago Public Schools officials discovered an alarming pattern.
High-scoring kids were being rejected simply because of the order in which they listed their college prep preferences.
"I couldn't believe it,'' schools CEO Ron Huberman said. "It's terrible.''
CPS officials said Wednesday they have decided to let any eighth-grader who applied to a college prep for fall 2010 admission re-rank their preferences to better conform with a new selection system.
Previously, some eighth-graders were listing the most competitive college preps as their top choice, forgoing their chances of getting into other schools that would have accepted them if they had ranked those schools higher, official said.
Under the new policy, Huberman said, a computer will assign applicants to the highest-ranked school they qualify for on their list.
"It's the fairest way to do it," Huberman told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Wednesday."
This is the same issue that led to the redesign of the Boston school choice system.
HT Parag Pathak
update: see earlier stories on the changes in the Chicago magnet school program here and here.
Morality of buying kidneys (and brokering them)
Robby Berman, the founder and director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society (www.hods.org ), has an opinion piece in today's YNet: Buying kidneys is moral
It begins:
"I am responsible for the needless deaths of more than 100 Jews. All were victims of kidney disease, literally and figuratively dying on dialysis. They pleaded with me to introduce them to people willing to sell their kidneys, and I refused to do so because it is illegal.
If media reports are true, however, Sammy Shem-Tov and Dimitry Orenstein of Jerusalem did work as a kidney shadchanim (matchmakers) - saving hundreds of lives. Their motives weren’t pure. It took lots of money to get them to break the law and risk prison. So who acted morally and who did not? To me the answer is obvious. They are heroes even if they became wealthy in the process. "
It goes on to make some arguments related to repugnance.
It begins:
"I am responsible for the needless deaths of more than 100 Jews. All were victims of kidney disease, literally and figuratively dying on dialysis. They pleaded with me to introduce them to people willing to sell their kidneys, and I refused to do so because it is illegal.
If media reports are true, however, Sammy Shem-Tov and Dimitry Orenstein of Jerusalem did work as a kidney shadchanim (matchmakers) - saving hundreds of lives. Their motives weren’t pure. It took lots of money to get them to break the law and risk prison. So who acted morally and who did not? To me the answer is obvious. They are heroes even if they became wealthy in the process. "
It goes on to make some arguments related to repugnance.
School choice and school capacity
Deciding what is the capacity of a popular high school is tricky in a city that uses school choice. Here's an article from the NY Times about Francis Lewis high school in Queens, in NYC. It is way over 'capacity' because it is popular: At School in Queens, Success Draws Crowd.
(To put it another way, capacity is flexible, and so are students; some eat lunch at 9am, since the lunchroom has to be scheduled all day...)
Following the publication of the story, the Times published some letters to the editor from proud former teachers and students at Francis Lewis (including one from a famous economist).
(To put it another way, capacity is flexible, and so are students; some eat lunch at 9am, since the lunchroom has to be scheduled all day...)
Following the publication of the story, the Times published some letters to the editor from proud former teachers and students at Francis Lewis (including one from a famous economist).
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
More Milgrom
Northwestern has put up a page of material following the 2009 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics Lecture and Conference, including Paul's slides, and a video of his lecture.
There are also links to the slides and bibliographies of the talks given on Friday (including the 10 minute presentations given by panelists; now I'm working on my 1 minute talk...)
Vijay Krishna (Pennsylvania State University): Auctions and Information[Presentation and Bibliography - PDF]
Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland): Auctions with Multiple Objects[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
Panel Discussion: Market Design.Moderated by Rakesh Vohra (Northwestern University)
Susan Athey (Harvard University) [Slides]
Preston McAfee (Yahoo! Inc.) [Slides]
Paul Milgrom (Stanford University) [Slides]
Alvin Roth (Harvard University) [Slides]
Stephen Morris (Princeton University): Trade and Information[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Agency Models[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
John Roberts (Stanford University): Organizational Economics[Presentation - PDF]
And here is my previously posted unofficial conference photo.
There are also links to the slides and bibliographies of the talks given on Friday (including the 10 minute presentations given by panelists; now I'm working on my 1 minute talk...)
Vijay Krishna (Pennsylvania State University): Auctions and Information[Presentation and Bibliography - PDF]
Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland): Auctions with Multiple Objects[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
Panel Discussion: Market Design.Moderated by Rakesh Vohra (Northwestern University)
Susan Athey (Harvard University) [Slides]
Preston McAfee (Yahoo! Inc.) [Slides]
Paul Milgrom (Stanford University) [Slides]
Alvin Roth (Harvard University) [Slides]
Stephen Morris (Princeton University): Trade and Information[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Agency Models[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]
John Roberts (Stanford University): Organizational Economics[Presentation - PDF]
And here is my previously posted unofficial conference photo.
College admissions: the costs of having too many acceptances
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on Ithaca College which illustrates some of the difficulties of the college admissions process from the colleges' point of view: Ithaca College Overshoots Its Admissions Mark and Pays a Price. (This link may need a subscription, so here's a longish excerpt that gives the idea...)
"In a year of unusually high uncertainty over admissions at private colleges, Ithaca College appears to have missed its target by a larger margin than most.
Now it is dealing with the financial consequences—even paying 31 students up to $10,000 each to defer their enrollment for a year—and adjusting its admissions policies and financial-aid spending plans in response.
Ithaca had aimed to enroll 1,700 to 1,750 new freshmen but found itself with an incoming class of 2,027 for this fall.
Ending up with a class that is 20 percent larger than expected is certainly better than having to operate with a class that is 20 percent under target. But "coming in heavy" with a class, as this circumstance is known in the field, can often bring its own short-term and long-term costs, and create some added financial instability.
"They have to feed that animal for four years," said George Dehne, a longtime consultant to colleges, whose firm does not count Ithaca as a client. "It looks like someone took their hands off the wheel."
The feeding includes extra spending for financial aid, for additional instructors (Ithaca had to hire several dozen), and for a new temporary residence hall, constructed in six weeks at a cost of $2.5-million."
...
"Ithaca had suffered a decline in freshman enrollment in 2008, falling 11 percent below its budgeted target of 1,600. Many of the steps it took over the past year to enroll the entering class in 2009 were designed to compensate. The steps included lowering selectivity (Ithaca accepted 73 percent of its 2009 applicants, compared with 59 percent in 2008) changing its merit-aid policy so money could be spread among more applicants, and intensifying "yield" efforts to get more admitted students to attend.
Other colleges did the same things, according to a survey released last month by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.
But Ithaca lacked some of the levers colleges traditionally use to give themselves more control over admissions, most notably the early-decision option.
Many colleges use early decision to lock in a portion of their class early in the admissions cycle, which helps reduce some of the risks inherent in later stages of the process, when institutions decide how many students to admit outright and how many to place on the waiting list."
...
"Mr. Maguire, Ithaca's new enrollment-management chief, ... said the college is reinstating early decision, two years after dropping it. Without it, he said, Ithaca didn't have a solid picture of its admissions situation until very late in the process. Freshman deposits came in with a "huge spike at the very end of April.""
"The Cost of Too Many Freshmen
Ithaca College made several adjustments in policies and spending after enrolling 20 percent more students than it expected to this fall. These included:
Reinstituting early decision, to give the college more control over admissions earlier in the process.
Raising admissions selectivity for the fall of 2010 to reduce the admit rate.
Erecting a temporary residence hall in six weeks at a cost of $2.5-million.
Allocating up to $1.2-million in additional funds to hire nearly 50 part-time faculty members, two new full-time faculty members, and to pay 30 current full-time professors overload pay for teaching extra courses.
Providing 20-percent reductions on room charges, and paying the cable-TV bills, for students who had to be housed in lounges.
Offering admitted students up to $10,000 each to defer their enrollment for a year (Ithaca says 31 students took the offer, at a total cost of about $250,000).
Providing $2,000 in incentives to upperclassmen to move off campus. "
"In a year of unusually high uncertainty over admissions at private colleges, Ithaca College appears to have missed its target by a larger margin than most.
Now it is dealing with the financial consequences—even paying 31 students up to $10,000 each to defer their enrollment for a year—and adjusting its admissions policies and financial-aid spending plans in response.
Ithaca had aimed to enroll 1,700 to 1,750 new freshmen but found itself with an incoming class of 2,027 for this fall.
Ending up with a class that is 20 percent larger than expected is certainly better than having to operate with a class that is 20 percent under target. But "coming in heavy" with a class, as this circumstance is known in the field, can often bring its own short-term and long-term costs, and create some added financial instability.
"They have to feed that animal for four years," said George Dehne, a longtime consultant to colleges, whose firm does not count Ithaca as a client. "It looks like someone took their hands off the wheel."
The feeding includes extra spending for financial aid, for additional instructors (Ithaca had to hire several dozen), and for a new temporary residence hall, constructed in six weeks at a cost of $2.5-million."
...
"Ithaca had suffered a decline in freshman enrollment in 2008, falling 11 percent below its budgeted target of 1,600. Many of the steps it took over the past year to enroll the entering class in 2009 were designed to compensate. The steps included lowering selectivity (Ithaca accepted 73 percent of its 2009 applicants, compared with 59 percent in 2008) changing its merit-aid policy so money could be spread among more applicants, and intensifying "yield" efforts to get more admitted students to attend.
Other colleges did the same things, according to a survey released last month by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.
But Ithaca lacked some of the levers colleges traditionally use to give themselves more control over admissions, most notably the early-decision option.
Many colleges use early decision to lock in a portion of their class early in the admissions cycle, which helps reduce some of the risks inherent in later stages of the process, when institutions decide how many students to admit outright and how many to place on the waiting list."
...
"Mr. Maguire, Ithaca's new enrollment-management chief, ... said the college is reinstating early decision, two years after dropping it. Without it, he said, Ithaca didn't have a solid picture of its admissions situation until very late in the process. Freshman deposits came in with a "huge spike at the very end of April.""
"The Cost of Too Many Freshmen
Ithaca College made several adjustments in policies and spending after enrolling 20 percent more students than it expected to this fall. These included:
Reinstituting early decision, to give the college more control over admissions earlier in the process.
Raising admissions selectivity for the fall of 2010 to reduce the admit rate.
Erecting a temporary residence hall in six weeks at a cost of $2.5-million.
Allocating up to $1.2-million in additional funds to hire nearly 50 part-time faculty members, two new full-time faculty members, and to pay 30 current full-time professors overload pay for teaching extra courses.
Providing 20-percent reductions on room charges, and paying the cable-TV bills, for students who had to be housed in lounges.
Offering admitted students up to $10,000 each to defer their enrollment for a year (Ithaca says 31 students took the offer, at a total cost of about $250,000).
Providing $2,000 in incentives to upperclassmen to move off campus. "
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
College admissions in the UK, update
The Times offers British students a Good University Guide, with some advice on navigating the various parts of the British college admissions process, including the scramble known as "clearing," and the difficulties of taking advantage of re-graded exams.
Act fast to snap up a place
Competition to make it to university through clearing will be more intense this year as applicants chase fewer places
Guide to Clearing: essential information on universities in the clearing system
John O’Leary outlines some of the pros and cons of 40 UK universities likely to be offering the most places through clearing this year
A-level system will not help students 'trade up'
Pupils who do better than expected in exams will miss out on places at leading universities because courses are already full.
"Those who are unfairly marked down in A-level exams could lose their place, even if they successfully appeal and later get a higher grade. Some courses are closed to British applicants even though they still have places for foreign students. This is because for financial reasons the Government restricts the number of British students that universities can recruit. Overseas students pay higher fees and do not receive the grants or subsidised loans available to home students. "
There's also a guide to the mysteries of college admissions on this side of the pond: How to get into an American university
Students are increasingly looking across the Atlantic for university – but the application system can seem daunting.
"One of the main differences between the US and here is that there is no central body that handles the admissions, as Ucas does in the UK. "
Here are my earlier posts on British college admissions:
University admissions in the UK, and University admissions in the UK: admissions formulae
Act fast to snap up a place
Competition to make it to university through clearing will be more intense this year as applicants chase fewer places
Guide to Clearing: essential information on universities in the clearing system
John O’Leary outlines some of the pros and cons of 40 UK universities likely to be offering the most places through clearing this year
A-level system will not help students 'trade up'
Pupils who do better than expected in exams will miss out on places at leading universities because courses are already full.
"Those who are unfairly marked down in A-level exams could lose their place, even if they successfully appeal and later get a higher grade. Some courses are closed to British applicants even though they still have places for foreign students. This is because for financial reasons the Government restricts the number of British students that universities can recruit. Overseas students pay higher fees and do not receive the grants or subsidised loans available to home students. "
There's also a guide to the mysteries of college admissions on this side of the pond: How to get into an American university
Students are increasingly looking across the Atlantic for university – but the application system can seem daunting.
"One of the main differences between the US and here is that there is no central body that handles the admissions, as Ucas does in the UK. "
Here are my earlier posts on British college admissions:
University admissions in the UK, and University admissions in the UK: admissions formulae
Monday, November 9, 2009
Mazel tov to Methodist Hospital in San Antonio
A Methodist milestone: 50th paired donor kidney exchange transplant
"The transplant team at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital performed their first exchange procedure in March 2008 and completed the 50th procedure just 19 months later, with 42 of the exchange transplants performed in just the past 10 months. "
Update: here's a link to the hospital's news release, which makes clear that they are performing all these exchanges primarily among patients in Texas: Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital Reaches National Milestone with 50th Paired Kidney Exchange Transplant
"The transplant team at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital performed their first exchange procedure in March 2008 and completed the 50th procedure just 19 months later, with 42 of the exchange transplants performed in just the past 10 months. "
Update: here's a link to the hospital's news release, which makes clear that they are performing all these exchanges primarily among patients in Texas: Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital Reaches National Milestone with 50th Paired Kidney Exchange Transplant
Competition among stock exchanges
The NY Times has a story about how New Rivals Pose Threat to New York Stock Exchange.
"While the exchange has been under assault since the beginning of the decade, its decline has accelerated in recent years as aggressive competitors have emerged. Today, 36 percent of daily trades in stocks that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange are actually executed on the exchange, down from about 75 percent nearly four years ago. The rest of are conducted elsewhere, on new electronic exchanges or through dark pools. "
..."Unlike the Big Board, the new electronic exchanges are virtually unknown outside financial circles. Direct Edge, the largest, is in Jersey City. Another, the BATS Exchange, is based in Lenexa, Kan. Both are only about five years old. But each now accounts for about a 10th of daily United States stock trading. "
I'm reminded of Estelle Cantillon's paper with Pai-Ling Yin on a battle between London and Frankfurt exchanges: Competition between Exchange: Lessons from the Battle of the Bund
"While the exchange has been under assault since the beginning of the decade, its decline has accelerated in recent years as aggressive competitors have emerged. Today, 36 percent of daily trades in stocks that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange are actually executed on the exchange, down from about 75 percent nearly four years ago. The rest of are conducted elsewhere, on new electronic exchanges or through dark pools. "
..."Unlike the Big Board, the new electronic exchanges are virtually unknown outside financial circles. Direct Edge, the largest, is in Jersey City. Another, the BATS Exchange, is based in Lenexa, Kan. Both are only about five years old. But each now accounts for about a 10th of daily United States stock trading. "
I'm reminded of Estelle Cantillon's paper with Pai-Ling Yin on a battle between London and Frankfurt exchanges: Competition between Exchange: Lessons from the Battle of the Bund
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Market designers at the Milgrom/Nemmers Prize conference
A multitude of market designers. Here's a photo ofBob Wilson, Paul Milgrom; and Parag Pathak in the near background: Faces to recognize, and names to conjure with.
Here's my pre-conference post: Paul Milgrom: Nemmer's Prize Lecture and Conference
Fraud in online auctions
Losing Out After Winning an Online Auction
NY Times article discusses deadbeat sellers and fraudulent escrow services.
NY Times article discusses deadbeat sellers and fraudulent escrow services.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
More on repugnant language
While the Federal Communication Commission continues to regard the broadcast of some words as repugnant, language scholars continue to trace how taboo terms gradually become more acceptable. (See my earlier post Fleeting expletives and wardrobe malfunctions: FCC vs Fox Television and CBS.)
Oxford University Press has just issued a new edition of The F-Word. Their blurb begins:
"We all know what frak , popularized by television's cult hit Battlestar Galactica , really means. But what about feck ? Or ferkin ? Or foul --as in FUBAR , or "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition"? In a thoroughly updated edition of The F-Word , Jesse Sheidlower offers a rich, revealing look at the f-bomb and its illimitable uses. Since the fifteenth century, no other word has been adapted, interpreted, euphemized, censored, and shouted with as much ardor or force..."
Oxford University Press has just issued a new edition of The F-Word. Their blurb begins:
"We all know what frak , popularized by television's cult hit Battlestar Galactica , really means. But what about feck ? Or ferkin ? Or foul --as in FUBAR , or "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition"? In a thoroughly updated edition of The F-Word , Jesse Sheidlower offers a rich, revealing look at the f-bomb and its illimitable uses. Since the fifteenth century, no other word has been adapted, interpreted, euphemized, censored, and shouted with as much ardor or force..."
Friday, November 6, 2009
Peer effects in learning and teaching, but not in golf
The October '09 issue of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics contains three papers on peer effects.* The first of these begins "Is an employee's productivity influenced by the productivity of his or her nearby co-workers? The answer to this question is important for the optimal organization of labor...and for the optimal design of incentives." It then goes on to say that it detects no such effects from the random groupings of golfers in professional golf tournaments.
The second paper does find peer effects in random groupings of cadets at West Point, and the third paper finds that students do better when their teachers have better colleagues, i.e. they find that the teachers experience peer effects as measured by the performance of their students.
*The three papers are:
"Peer effects in the workplace: Evidence from random groupings in professional golf tournaments," by Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo.
"The Effects of Peer Group Heterogeneity on the Production of Human Capital at West Point," by David S. Lyle.
"Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers," by C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann.
The second paper does find peer effects in random groupings of cadets at West Point, and the third paper finds that students do better when their teachers have better colleagues, i.e. they find that the teachers experience peer effects as measured by the performance of their students.
*The three papers are:
"Peer effects in the workplace: Evidence from random groupings in professional golf tournaments," by Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo.
"The Effects of Peer Group Heterogeneity on the Production of Human Capital at West Point," by David S. Lyle.
"Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers," by C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Paul Milgrom: Nemmer's Prize Lecture and Conference
If the creeks don't rise, I'll be at Northwestern this afternoon, listening to Paul speak about "The Promise and Problems of Market Design"
His talk will be followed by a conference in his honor tomorrow.
Here's the abstract of Paul's talk:
"Market design has become an exciting area of economics research, with many of its findings useful for setting detailed rules in real markets. For matching markets, most proposed designs aim to be "straightforward" - making it a dominant strategy for participants to report information truthfully. But some recent matching and auction designs sacrifice incentive-compatibility conditions to give priority to various other desiderata. This lecture reviews the goals of market design and the unavoidable trade-offs that are sometimes required, and explores how economists should seek to resolve these trade-offs. "
Here's the conference lineup:
Vijay Krishna (Pennsylvania State University): Auctions and Information
Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland): Auctions with Multiple Objects
Panel Discussion: Market Design.Moderated by Rakesh Vohra (Northwestern University): Susan Athey (Harvard University), Preston McAfee (California Institute of Technology), Alvin Roth (Harvard University), Paul Milgrom (Stanford University)
Stephen Morris (Princeton University): Trade and Information
Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Incentives
John Roberts (Stanford University): Organizational Design
His talk will be followed by a conference in his honor tomorrow.
Here's the abstract of Paul's talk:
"Market design has become an exciting area of economics research, with many of its findings useful for setting detailed rules in real markets. For matching markets, most proposed designs aim to be "straightforward" - making it a dominant strategy for participants to report information truthfully. But some recent matching and auction designs sacrifice incentive-compatibility conditions to give priority to various other desiderata. This lecture reviews the goals of market design and the unavoidable trade-offs that are sometimes required, and explores how economists should seek to resolve these trade-offs. "
Here's the conference lineup:
Vijay Krishna (Pennsylvania State University): Auctions and Information
Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland): Auctions with Multiple Objects
Panel Discussion: Market Design.Moderated by Rakesh Vohra (Northwestern University): Susan Athey (Harvard University), Preston McAfee (California Institute of Technology), Alvin Roth (Harvard University), Paul Milgrom (Stanford University)
Stephen Morris (Princeton University): Trade and Information
Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Incentives
John Roberts (Stanford University): Organizational Design
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Voters find same sex marriage repugnant in Maine
Maine voters overturn state’s new same-sex marriage law.
"Maine voters overturned the state’s same-sex marriage law yesterday, delivering a potentially crushing blow to gay-rights advocates after a year when their cause seemed to be gaining momentum with legislative and legal victories in four states."...
"The “people’s veto’’ came six months after Maine’s law was approved, and one year after California voters rejected gay marriage by a similar margin."
So same sex marriage has been moved out of the repugnant category in several states by courts, and by legislatures, but not yet by voters. As the AP report notes (ungrammatically),
"Gay marriage measures have lost in every state, 31 in all, in which it has been put to a popular vote. "
"Maine voters overturned the state’s same-sex marriage law yesterday, delivering a potentially crushing blow to gay-rights advocates after a year when their cause seemed to be gaining momentum with legislative and legal victories in four states."...
"The “people’s veto’’ came six months after Maine’s law was approved, and one year after California voters rejected gay marriage by a similar margin."
So same sex marriage has been moved out of the repugnant category in several states by courts, and by legislatures, but not yet by voters. As the AP report notes (ungrammatically),
"Gay marriage measures have lost in every state, 31 in all, in which it has been put to a popular vote. "
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The DARPA network challenge
DARPA will pay $40,000 to whoever (whichever team) first reports the locations of ten weather balloons to be inflated December 5, around the U.S. Here is the announcement: DARPA Network Challenge.
Noam Nisan has some thoughts on this at AGT, and points out that very quickly some people started to offer to share the prize among those who would notify them of individual balloon's locations, conditional on the team formed in this way winning. Here's a wiki for people to share market design ideas on how to form a winning team.
Note that this is an aggregation of information problem a little like a prediction market, even though it is for postdiction rather than prediction...
Noam Nisan has some thoughts on this at AGT, and points out that very quickly some people started to offer to share the prize among those who would notify them of individual balloon's locations, conditional on the team formed in this way winning. Here's a wiki for people to share market design ideas on how to form a winning team.
Note that this is an aggregation of information problem a little like a prediction market, even though it is for postdiction rather than prediction...
Monday, November 2, 2009
Blackmail, legal and illegal
Reflecting on the recent Letterman case, the NY Times ponders The Art of Blackmail
Doing it on your own is illegal, but if you do much the same thing by threatening a lawsuit, it is legal.
"Blackmail is a “wonderfully curious offense,” to use the phrase of Paul H. Robinson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his coauthors in a recent paper. A threat to tell the truth is no crime, and neither is asking someone for money. But if you demand money to prevent the truth from being told, Professor Robinson said, you’ve crossed the line. At its core, he explained, the offense is “a form of wrongful coercion.” "
However you can threaten to sue if a settlement is not reached first, and that isn't blackmail.
"Those confrontations, however, did not cross the line into the criminal realm, he said, because they had been sanitized by lawyering. Attorneys, he noted, can create a legal filing that promises to bring out unpleasant facts in depositions or during trial; a settlement is not, technically, a payoff. He called it “wrapping an extortion threat in a legal cloak.”
It happens all the time, said Gerald B. Lefcourt, a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan. “Threatened lawsuits, and even filed lawsuits, are often no more than blackmail,” he said.
Doing it on your own is illegal, but if you do much the same thing by threatening a lawsuit, it is legal.
"Blackmail is a “wonderfully curious offense,” to use the phrase of Paul H. Robinson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his coauthors in a recent paper. A threat to tell the truth is no crime, and neither is asking someone for money. But if you demand money to prevent the truth from being told, Professor Robinson said, you’ve crossed the line. At its core, he explained, the offense is “a form of wrongful coercion.” "
However you can threaten to sue if a settlement is not reached first, and that isn't blackmail.
"Those confrontations, however, did not cross the line into the criminal realm, he said, because they had been sanitized by lawyering. Attorneys, he noted, can create a legal filing that promises to bring out unpleasant facts in depositions or during trial; a settlement is not, technically, a payoff. He called it “wrapping an extortion threat in a legal cloak.”
It happens all the time, said Gerald B. Lefcourt, a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan. “Threatened lawsuits, and even filed lawsuits, are often no more than blackmail,” he said.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Compensating donors: how about bone marrow?
The National Law Journal reports: Cancer patients seek to overturn ban on paying for bone marrow
"Prohibiting someone from making money for donating an irreplaceable kidney is one thing. But what about donating bone marrow, which replenishes itself within weeks?
That question is at the heart of a new lawsuit, filed Monday, challenging the constitutionality of the federal law that prohibits compensating bone marrow donors. The plaintiffs want to make modest recompense for such donors legal — say, paying partial tuition for a college student or making a mortgage payment for a first-time home buyer.
In the lawsuit filed Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, cancer and blood disease patients and health care advocates are suing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to enjoin enforcement of provisions of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 that criminalize compensating donors. They argue the statute violates due process rights and interferes with public health.
"This constitutional challenge is about an arbitrary law that criminalizes a promising effort to save lives," the complaint states. A bone marrow transplant is often the "only hope" for tens of thousands of Americans diagnosed with a deadly blood disease such as leukemia. "There is a desperate shortage of unrelated marrow donors, particularly for minorities," the complaint says.
Offering modest incentives to attract more donors could end that shortage, argued Jeff Rowes of the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, who is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "
"Prohibiting someone from making money for donating an irreplaceable kidney is one thing. But what about donating bone marrow, which replenishes itself within weeks?
That question is at the heart of a new lawsuit, filed Monday, challenging the constitutionality of the federal law that prohibits compensating bone marrow donors. The plaintiffs want to make modest recompense for such donors legal — say, paying partial tuition for a college student or making a mortgage payment for a first-time home buyer.
In the lawsuit filed Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, cancer and blood disease patients and health care advocates are suing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to enjoin enforcement of provisions of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 that criminalize compensating donors. They argue the statute violates due process rights and interferes with public health.
"This constitutional challenge is about an arbitrary law that criminalizes a promising effort to save lives," the complaint states. A bone marrow transplant is often the "only hope" for tens of thousands of Americans diagnosed with a deadly blood disease such as leukemia. "There is a desperate shortage of unrelated marrow donors, particularly for minorities," the complaint says.
Offering modest incentives to attract more donors could end that shortage, argued Jeff Rowes of the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, who is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "
Megan McArdle links to the Institute of Justice press release, and suggests that inclusion of bone marrow in the National Organ Transplant Act was simply a mistake.
A paper on bone marrow donation recently appeared in the American Economic Review, you can find an ungated version here: One Chance in a Million: Altruism and the Bone Marrow Registry
by Ted C. Bergstrom, Rod Garratt, and Damien Sheehan-Connor.
The paper argues that (because of the need for bone marrow matches to be perfect on the 6-vector of Human Leukocyte Antigens, and because of different distributions of these by race and ethnicity), we would get more bang for the buck by investing in recruiting more minority donors than additional random donors.
As it happens, for non-minority donors, the present policy in many places is just the opposite of compensating donors; if you want to register as a bone marrow donor you may have to pay the costs, presently around $65.
HT: Mary O'Keeffe and Steve Leider
Update, 11/4/09: Some comment on the legal theory of the case over at the Volokh Conspiracy, with a second and third post here and here and more to come...
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Kidney exchange at the ASSET conference in Turkey
The annual meeting of the Association of Southern European Economic Theorists is meeting in Istanbul this weekend. Among other notable events (such as keynote talks by Andy Postlewaite and Muhamet Yıldız), there is a session today on Kidney Exchange. Below are links to the program (with links to all the papers) and to the kidney exchange papers.
ASSET 2009
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
October 30-31, 2009
Conference Program
Saturday, October 31
S3.1: Kidney Exchange Room: WH 201Chair: Antonio Nicolò, University of Padua
Dynamic Analysis of Kidney Exchange Problems
Silvia Villa, Università Di Genova
Paired Kidney Donation and Listed Exchange
Özgür Yılmaz, Koç University
Pairwise Kidney Exchange with Age Based Preferences
Antonio Nicolò, University of Padua
HT: Bettina Klaus
ASSET 2009
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
October 30-31, 2009
Conference Program
Saturday, October 31
S3.1: Kidney Exchange Room: WH 201Chair: Antonio Nicolò, University of Padua
Dynamic Analysis of Kidney Exchange Problems
Silvia Villa, Università Di Genova
Paired Kidney Donation and Listed Exchange
Özgür Yılmaz, Koç University
Pairwise Kidney Exchange with Age Based Preferences
Antonio Nicolò, University of Padua
HT: Bettina Klaus
Market design in science fiction
Stephen Weinberg, a well read economist at University of Albany (which I still think of as SUNY Albany), sends me the following email:
"I hope you're doing well. I've been greatly enjoying your mechanism design blog.
I'm not sure if you like science fiction, but if so, I thought you'd be amused to know that a recent scifi novel includes a plot point based around mechanism design. The novel is Eye of the Storm by John Ringo.
The basic gist is that, in previous books, the US had to create a humongous army to fight off an alien invasion. It then dropped down to only nominal force levels for a few decades (during which the ex-soldiers didn't age because of "rejuv" technology). Now they need to quickly create a new army, so to start with they've called up enough soldiers for a couple of divisions. The mechanism design part is that they decide to staff the divisions by letting officers use points to bid on their positions and subordinates. Some of the more talented officers decide to collude to game the system.
I've gone ahead and copied in the relevant chapters, in case you find it amusing. "
If I could have figured out how to create an "after the jump" break on this blogger I would have included the long, interesting excerpts Stephen included, which, among other things, had sniping in a combinatorial auction as a critical strategy.
"I hope you're doing well. I've been greatly enjoying your mechanism design blog.
I'm not sure if you like science fiction, but if so, I thought you'd be amused to know that a recent scifi novel includes a plot point based around mechanism design. The novel is Eye of the Storm by John Ringo.
The basic gist is that, in previous books, the US had to create a humongous army to fight off an alien invasion. It then dropped down to only nominal force levels for a few decades (during which the ex-soldiers didn't age because of "rejuv" technology). Now they need to quickly create a new army, so to start with they've called up enough soldiers for a couple of divisions. The mechanism design part is that they decide to staff the divisions by letting officers use points to bid on their positions and subordinates. Some of the more talented officers decide to collude to game the system.
I've gone ahead and copied in the relevant chapters, in case you find it amusing. "
If I could have figured out how to create an "after the jump" break on this blogger I would have included the long, interesting excerpts Stephen included, which, among other things, had sniping in a combinatorial auction as a critical strategy.
Friday, October 30, 2009
The "Netflix for academic journals"
For those without comprehensive electronic access to journals through big university libraries, the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports The Netflix of Academic Journals Opens Shop
"By opening the largest online rental service for scientific, technical, and research journals, the company Deep Dyve is hoping to do for academic publications what Netflix has done for movies: make them easily accessible and inexpensive for everyone.
The Web site has been an academic-journal search engine since 2005 and unveiled its rental program this week. Now anyone can “rent” an article—which means you can view it on your computer without ownership rights or printing capabilities—for as little as 99 cents for 24 hours. Users can also subscribe for monthly passes. Currently the site has 30 million articles from various peer-reviewed journals.
William Park, chief executive of Deep Dyve, says the model will not only allow more people to read articles they might otherwise not see, but will actually encourage users to purchase more content from journals. He says that now, only about 0.2 percent of people visiting journal Web sites go on to buy articles, because they don’t know exactly what they are getting from just a title and an abstract.
“Nobody would buy a car without at least evaluating it first,” Mr. Park says. “The same is true for anything, whether it’s a dollar or $10,000.”
Mr. Park says that Deep Dyve has revenue-sharing partnerships with hundreds of publications (about 80 percent of which are scientific) and hopes to expand to more of the humanities within the coming months."
"By opening the largest online rental service for scientific, technical, and research journals, the company Deep Dyve is hoping to do for academic publications what Netflix has done for movies: make them easily accessible and inexpensive for everyone.
The Web site has been an academic-journal search engine since 2005 and unveiled its rental program this week. Now anyone can “rent” an article—which means you can view it on your computer without ownership rights or printing capabilities—for as little as 99 cents for 24 hours. Users can also subscribe for monthly passes. Currently the site has 30 million articles from various peer-reviewed journals.
William Park, chief executive of Deep Dyve, says the model will not only allow more people to read articles they might otherwise not see, but will actually encourage users to purchase more content from journals. He says that now, only about 0.2 percent of people visiting journal Web sites go on to buy articles, because they don’t know exactly what they are getting from just a title and an abstract.
“Nobody would buy a car without at least evaluating it first,” Mr. Park says. “The same is true for anything, whether it’s a dollar or $10,000.”
Mr. Park says that Deep Dyve has revenue-sharing partnerships with hundreds of publications (about 80 percent of which are scientific) and hopes to expand to more of the humanities within the coming months."
Forced Labor
A new book recently arrived in the mail: Forced Labor, Coercion and Exploitation in the Private Economy, edited by Beate Andrees and Patrick Belser of the UN's International Labour Office. Here is the executive summary.
The terms "debt bondage" and "bonded labor" appear to be terms of art for involuntary servitude in various forms.
The book is mostly about the developing world, although there is a chapter on "Trafficking for Forced Labor in Europe," concerning migrant workers. The book has no chapter on the United States (where newspaper reports about involuntary servitude mostly seem to focus on illegal immigrants caught up in forms of indentured servitude, and sometimes deal with prostitution). I would be glad if that is because the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution is largely effective:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
The terms "debt bondage" and "bonded labor" appear to be terms of art for involuntary servitude in various forms.
The book is mostly about the developing world, although there is a chapter on "Trafficking for Forced Labor in Europe," concerning migrant workers. The book has no chapter on the United States (where newspaper reports about involuntary servitude mostly seem to focus on illegal immigrants caught up in forms of indentured servitude, and sometimes deal with prostitution). I would be glad if that is because the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution is largely effective:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Hours per week worked by (young) surgeons
In Britain as in the United States, there is considerable debate about the hours worked by physicians and surgeons, and what these mean for patient safety. Convincing data are lacking, but the Royal College of Surgeons of England has just weighed in with a new report, saying that limiting the hours of surgeons endangers patients: Patients are being harmed by working time limits, finds new study
The report argues that frequent handoffs allow patient information to be lost, as doctors have less chance to observe changes in a patient's condition.
"Surgeons across the country say patients are much less safe in the NHS since the August introduction of European Working Time Regulation (EWTR) 48 hour working limits as continuity of care for patient collapses, this is the damning assessment of a survey of NHS surgeons. Services are only being held together by a ‘grey market’ of doctors willing to covertly breaking the legislation to maintain care for patients."
..."The College surveyed 900 surgeons - almost an eighth of the UK surgical workforce – with responses from more than 360 consultants and more than 500 trainees to see how surgical services were faring under the new working time restrictions. It found some alarming results:
...
"A third say handover arrangements are inadequate in their hospital and 23 per cent say they cannot stay involved in all stages of individual patients clinical care that require their expertise."
...
"Patients are being lost and at increased risk of dying as a direct result of so many shift changeovers and rotas which leave no time available to handover. Trainee surgeons across the country are staying on unpaid after the hours limit because they want to see through care for patients. They are also taking on additional paid locum work in the hope of gaining the training opportunities they cannot get in their formal working week. Meanwhile hospitals are relying on this goodwill because they know they couldn’t stay open without them. As a result there is an emerging grey market in hospital cover with doctors true working hours being kept off the books."
On the other side is the argument that sleepy doctors endanger patients. We don't let airline pilots work long hours, why should the doctors who staff emergency rooms and operating rooms be different? In the United States, the 1984 death of Libby Zion led to new legislation in her name to limit the working hours of medical residents: A Life-Changing Case for Doctors in Training
The report argues that frequent handoffs allow patient information to be lost, as doctors have less chance to observe changes in a patient's condition.
"Surgeons across the country say patients are much less safe in the NHS since the August introduction of European Working Time Regulation (EWTR) 48 hour working limits as continuity of care for patient collapses, this is the damning assessment of a survey of NHS surgeons. Services are only being held together by a ‘grey market’ of doctors willing to covertly breaking the legislation to maintain care for patients."
..."The College surveyed 900 surgeons - almost an eighth of the UK surgical workforce – with responses from more than 360 consultants and more than 500 trainees to see how surgical services were faring under the new working time restrictions. It found some alarming results:
...
"A third say handover arrangements are inadequate in their hospital and 23 per cent say they cannot stay involved in all stages of individual patients clinical care that require their expertise."
...
"Patients are being lost and at increased risk of dying as a direct result of so many shift changeovers and rotas which leave no time available to handover. Trainee surgeons across the country are staying on unpaid after the hours limit because they want to see through care for patients. They are also taking on additional paid locum work in the hope of gaining the training opportunities they cannot get in their formal working week. Meanwhile hospitals are relying on this goodwill because they know they couldn’t stay open without them. As a result there is an emerging grey market in hospital cover with doctors true working hours being kept off the books."
On the other side is the argument that sleepy doctors endanger patients. We don't let airline pilots work long hours, why should the doctors who staff emergency rooms and operating rooms be different? In the United States, the 1984 death of Libby Zion led to new legislation in her name to limit the working hours of medical residents: A Life-Changing Case for Doctors in Training
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
College admissions in Illinois, conclusion?
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Resigns in Wake of Admissions Scandal
Richard Herman, chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has resigned in the wake of an admissions scandal in which well-connected applicants were put on a "clout list" and given preferential treatment, the Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday. Mr. Herman, who made a remorseful apology to the faculty after a state panel found he was the "ultimate decision maker" for clout-listed applicants, will join the university's faculty. His resignation follows those of the university president last month and several trustees.
Richard Herman, chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has resigned in the wake of an admissions scandal in which well-connected applicants were put on a "clout list" and given preferential treatment, the Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday. Mr. Herman, who made a remorseful apology to the faculty after a state panel found he was the "ultimate decision maker" for clout-listed applicants, will join the university's faculty. His resignation follows those of the university president last month and several trustees.
Roger Myerson and Paul Romer on designing nations and cities
Two emininent economists have been thinking about design on the largest of scales.
Roger Myerson thinks about nation building in general, and Iraq in particular, and reflects on the role of political leaders' reputations, for patronage among other things.
Paul Romer thinks about macro-market-design in the form of new "charter cities," to be modeled roughly on Hong Kong.
Here is Roger, in "A Field Manual for the Cradle of Civilization:Theory of Leadership and Lessons of Iraq, " Journal of Conflict ResolutionVolume 53 Number 3 June 2009 470-482. (HT Paul Milgrom)
"Agency incentive problems in government make patronage an essential aspect of statebuilding, and political leaders become fundamentally constrained by their reputations. Democratic competition requires many leaders to develop independent reputations for exercising power and patronage responsibly, which can be encouraged by political decentralization."
Roger then recounts Xenophon's description of the rise of Cyrus (Koresh), the Persian leader.
"The key to Cyrus’s success was his apparent love of justice, which was inculcated by his education and which enabled him to earn the trust and loyalty of a great army. But what kind of justice was it that Cyrus loved so much? It was certainly not justice for poor peasants, whose crops were gathered to support his conquering forces.
What Cyrus loved was justice for the soldiers who served his cause. Apparently Cyrus’s greatest pleasure in life was to judge the valor of troops in battle and to reward them richly for their accomplishments, asking nothing for himself. As a mechanic knows the names of his tools, Cyrus learned the names of all the captains in his army, so that each could be confident of his service being remembered. When everybody recognized Cyrus as the best leader to distribute their booty after a victory, he could take power, first over the multinational coalitional forces and, ultimately, over Asia."
Paul Romer, explains the idea of charter cities here, and in a Q&A at Freakonomics, here: Can “Charter Cities” Change the World? A Q&A With Paul Romer
He argues that to credibly move to better rules, you might have to do some things all at once and start fresh. (He suggests a good place to start would be to have a new Cuban city administered by Canada at Guantanamo Bay, to try to recreate the experience of Hong Kong.)
He too isn't afraid to think big:
"Q. It all sounds great as a theoretical exercise, but honestly, don’t your colleagues tell you that something like this will never happen?
A. They do say this, which is actually kind of ironic when you line it up with the other things they say. They recognize that the construct of a charter city is something that could make everyone better off. They admit that there is no technological or economic constraint that keeps us from building many of these. Then they say that for political reasons, it will never happen. They tell me that you can’t change politics; you can’t overcome nationalism; there is no way for countries to work together to extend the reach of good rules. Then these same economists suggest that we should just stick to business as usual. We should offer conventional economic advice and assume that political systems will naturally follow our advice when we point to something that could make everyone better off. But of course, they have already revealed that they don’t believe this. What’s going on here is a kind of self-censoring. Economists seem to think that we should propose things that are acceptable and that political systems will pursue, but that we should avoid proposing or even discussing things that are controversial or politically incorrect. I think we’d do our jobs better if we just said what’s true without trying to be amateur politicians. "
Romer and Myerson seem to have different views of where economics ends and politics begins.
Roger Myerson thinks about nation building in general, and Iraq in particular, and reflects on the role of political leaders' reputations, for patronage among other things.
Paul Romer thinks about macro-market-design in the form of new "charter cities," to be modeled roughly on Hong Kong.
Here is Roger, in "A Field Manual for the Cradle of Civilization:Theory of Leadership and Lessons of Iraq, " Journal of Conflict ResolutionVolume 53 Number 3 June 2009 470-482. (HT Paul Milgrom)
"Agency incentive problems in government make patronage an essential aspect of statebuilding, and political leaders become fundamentally constrained by their reputations. Democratic competition requires many leaders to develop independent reputations for exercising power and patronage responsibly, which can be encouraged by political decentralization."
Roger then recounts Xenophon's description of the rise of Cyrus (Koresh), the Persian leader.
"The key to Cyrus’s success was his apparent love of justice, which was inculcated by his education and which enabled him to earn the trust and loyalty of a great army. But what kind of justice was it that Cyrus loved so much? It was certainly not justice for poor peasants, whose crops were gathered to support his conquering forces.
What Cyrus loved was justice for the soldiers who served his cause. Apparently Cyrus’s greatest pleasure in life was to judge the valor of troops in battle and to reward them richly for their accomplishments, asking nothing for himself. As a mechanic knows the names of his tools, Cyrus learned the names of all the captains in his army, so that each could be confident of his service being remembered. When everybody recognized Cyrus as the best leader to distribute their booty after a victory, he could take power, first over the multinational coalitional forces and, ultimately, over Asia."
Paul Romer, explains the idea of charter cities here, and in a Q&A at Freakonomics, here: Can “Charter Cities” Change the World? A Q&A With Paul Romer
He argues that to credibly move to better rules, you might have to do some things all at once and start fresh. (He suggests a good place to start would be to have a new Cuban city administered by Canada at Guantanamo Bay, to try to recreate the experience of Hong Kong.)
He too isn't afraid to think big:
"Q. It all sounds great as a theoretical exercise, but honestly, don’t your colleagues tell you that something like this will never happen?
A. They do say this, which is actually kind of ironic when you line it up with the other things they say. They recognize that the construct of a charter city is something that could make everyone better off. They admit that there is no technological or economic constraint that keeps us from building many of these. Then they say that for political reasons, it will never happen. They tell me that you can’t change politics; you can’t overcome nationalism; there is no way for countries to work together to extend the reach of good rules. Then these same economists suggest that we should just stick to business as usual. We should offer conventional economic advice and assume that political systems will naturally follow our advice when we point to something that could make everyone better off. But of course, they have already revealed that they don’t believe this. What’s going on here is a kind of self-censoring. Economists seem to think that we should propose things that are acceptable and that political systems will pursue, but that we should avoid proposing or even discussing things that are controversial or politically incorrect. I think we’d do our jobs better if we just said what’s true without trying to be amateur politicians. "
Romer and Myerson seem to have different views of where economics ends and politics begins.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Does a decrease in the number of traffic fatalities increase live kidney donation?
Over at Economic Logic, the Economic Logician reviews an article, The Effect of Traffic Safety Laws and Obesity Rates on Living Organ Donations by Jose Fernandez and Lisa Stohr. It finds that a decrease in availability of deceased donor organs (through an increase in helmet and seatbelt laws) elicits some increase in live donor kidney donation.
Here's the abstract, followed by EL's summary.
Abstract: This paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors. Using panel data from 1988-2008, we find that a 1% decrease in the supply of cadaveric donors per 100,000 increases the supply of living donors per 100,000 by .7%. With respect to traffic safety laws, a national adoption of partial helmet laws is estimated to decrease cadaveric donors by 6%, but leads to a 4.2% increase in the number of living donors, or a net effect of 1.8% decrease in the supply of kidney donations. The recent rise in obesity rates is estimated to increase living donor rates by roughly 18%. Lastly, we find evidence that increases in disposable income per capita is associated with an increase in the number of non-biological living donors within a state, but is not found to have an effect on biological donor rates.
And here is EL's summary:
"There are times where you really wonder why authors would even think that some variables could be correlated and how they then come up with a story that can explain this statistical relationship coming from seemingly nowhere. The paper by Jose Fernandez and Lisa Stohr is one of these.To quote their abstract, "this paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors." Despite reading this sentence ten times, I could not make any theoretical sense of it. But reading through the paper, a good story can be made. Tightening traffic safety laws reduces the number of fatalities, and thus the number of cadaveric organ donors. An increase in obesity increases the demand for organs, in particular kidneys. Thus one can instrument for supply and demand using these measures. With this in mond, one can then study how variations in the supply of supply of cadaveric organs (which are of poor value) and demand can motivate living donors to come forward, as they trade off the usefulness of their donation with the personal harm it will inflict upon them. Fernandez and Stohr fiand that donors respond indeed to cadaveric supply and to the increase in demand due to obesity."
Here's the abstract, followed by EL's summary.
Abstract: This paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors. Using panel data from 1988-2008, we find that a 1% decrease in the supply of cadaveric donors per 100,000 increases the supply of living donors per 100,000 by .7%. With respect to traffic safety laws, a national adoption of partial helmet laws is estimated to decrease cadaveric donors by 6%, but leads to a 4.2% increase in the number of living donors, or a net effect of 1.8% decrease in the supply of kidney donations. The recent rise in obesity rates is estimated to increase living donor rates by roughly 18%. Lastly, we find evidence that increases in disposable income per capita is associated with an increase in the number of non-biological living donors within a state, but is not found to have an effect on biological donor rates.
And here is EL's summary:
"There are times where you really wonder why authors would even think that some variables could be correlated and how they then come up with a story that can explain this statistical relationship coming from seemingly nowhere. The paper by Jose Fernandez and Lisa Stohr is one of these.To quote their abstract, "this paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors." Despite reading this sentence ten times, I could not make any theoretical sense of it. But reading through the paper, a good story can be made. Tightening traffic safety laws reduces the number of fatalities, and thus the number of cadaveric organ donors. An increase in obesity increases the demand for organs, in particular kidneys. Thus one can instrument for supply and demand using these measures. With this in mond, one can then study how variations in the supply of supply of cadaveric organs (which are of poor value) and demand can motivate living donors to come forward, as they trade off the usefulness of their donation with the personal harm it will inflict upon them. Fernandez and Stohr fiand that donors respond indeed to cadaveric supply and to the increase in demand due to obesity."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Markets for body parts, continued
While it's illegal to buy or sell organs for treatment, there's a legal market for "tissues" such as bone. But it's still fenced in with lots of repugnance. As with solid organs, the issue of "objectification" (or "commodification") of the body is a big issue, which bears on who may be compensated for what, among other things..
Inside a Creepy Global Body Parts Business
Even if it is unrealistic to expect that all commercialization of the body could be ruled out in modern medicine, says Schneider, it is important to set boundaries. For that reason, she insists that human tissue ought to be used sparingly -- that is, only when such use is medically necessary and clearly superior to other forms of treatment.
The conviction that the body is much more than an object has also shaped the policies of the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Parliament and the European Council, the EU's body representing the leaders and ministers of the 27-member bloc. All of these bodies condemn the practice of trading in human body parts to turn a profit.
In Germany, the country's organ transplant act regulates the removal of tissue. Only those who have consented to organ and tissue harvesting are considered as donors. If a person dies and is not already a donor, his or her closest relatives can consent to donation. Paragraph 17 of the transplant act explicitly states: "Trading in organs or tissue intended for use in the medical treatment of others is prohibited." Physicians who remove tissue can only be paid suitable compensation for their efforts. The law calls for prison sentences of up to five years for violation of the trading prohibition."
Inside a Creepy Global Body Parts Business
"According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, more than a million bone parts are used in transplants every year. In no other country is it possible to make so much money with body parts. If a body were disassembled into its individual parts, then processed and sold, the total proceeds could amount to $250,000 (€176,000). For a single corpse! The US tissue industry generates total revenues of about $1 billion a year, says journalist Martina Keller, a co-author of this article and the author of the German book, "Cannibalized: The Human Corpse as a Resource." "
...
Even if it is unrealistic to expect that all commercialization of the body could be ruled out in modern medicine, says Schneider, it is important to set boundaries. For that reason, she insists that human tissue ought to be used sparingly -- that is, only when such use is medically necessary and clearly superior to other forms of treatment.
The conviction that the body is much more than an object has also shaped the policies of the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Parliament and the European Council, the EU's body representing the leaders and ministers of the 27-member bloc. All of these bodies condemn the practice of trading in human body parts to turn a profit.
In Germany, the country's organ transplant act regulates the removal of tissue. Only those who have consented to organ and tissue harvesting are considered as donors. If a person dies and is not already a donor, his or her closest relatives can consent to donation. Paragraph 17 of the transplant act explicitly states: "Trading in organs or tissue intended for use in the medical treatment of others is prohibited." Physicians who remove tissue can only be paid suitable compensation for their efforts. The law calls for prison sentences of up to five years for violation of the trading prohibition."
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Right to die in England
There has been some interim resolution of the continued debate in England about whether those who assist a terminally ill relative who wishes to commit suicide, in particular by accompanying them to a clinic in Switzerland, will face prosecution. The current resolution is, it's still illegal, but guidelines have been issued to give some legal safety.
Campaigners win the fight to legalise assisted suicide
Assisted suicide investigations will focus on who stood to benefit
"People who stand to benefit financially from a person’s death are likely to be the ones prosecuted for assisting a suicide, under guidelines to be issued this week. "...
"The policy...will aim to clarify when individuals are more likely to be prosecuted or more likely not to be, he said.
Mr Starmer told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that such factors will include whether the person has a clear and settled intention to commit suicide, whether they have been encouraged or just assisted to do so, and whether those helping them have anything to gain from their death."
..."As many as 115 people from Britain have gone to Dignitas, the Swiss clinic, to die, but no one has been prosecuted so far. Last month Mr Starmer said that the landmark guidelines would apply in the UK as well as overseas.
Under current legislation, those who “aid, abet, counsel or procure” someone else’s suicide can be prosecuted and jailed for up to 14 years. Ms Purdy, from Undercliffe in Bradford, West Yorkshire, wants to know what would happen to her Cuban husband, Omar Puente, if he helped her to travel abroad to end her life. She took her case to the Lords after the High Court and Court of Appeal held that it was for Parliament, not the courts, to change the law.
The Lords agreed that changes were a matter for Parliament, but upheld Ms Purdy’s argument that the DPP should put in writing the factors he regarded as relevant in deciding whether or not to prosecute."
The guidelines, which were issued on schedule, drew a predictably wide range of reactions, some of which can be found at the end of this story in the Times: Assisted suicide guidelines do not give immunity against prosecution, says DPP
Campaigners win the fight to legalise assisted suicide
Assisted suicide investigations will focus on who stood to benefit
"People who stand to benefit financially from a person’s death are likely to be the ones prosecuted for assisting a suicide, under guidelines to be issued this week. "...
"The policy...will aim to clarify when individuals are more likely to be prosecuted or more likely not to be, he said.
Mr Starmer told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that such factors will include whether the person has a clear and settled intention to commit suicide, whether they have been encouraged or just assisted to do so, and whether those helping them have anything to gain from their death."
..."As many as 115 people from Britain have gone to Dignitas, the Swiss clinic, to die, but no one has been prosecuted so far. Last month Mr Starmer said that the landmark guidelines would apply in the UK as well as overseas.
Under current legislation, those who “aid, abet, counsel or procure” someone else’s suicide can be prosecuted and jailed for up to 14 years. Ms Purdy, from Undercliffe in Bradford, West Yorkshire, wants to know what would happen to her Cuban husband, Omar Puente, if he helped her to travel abroad to end her life. She took her case to the Lords after the High Court and Court of Appeal held that it was for Parliament, not the courts, to change the law.
The Lords agreed that changes were a matter for Parliament, but upheld Ms Purdy’s argument that the DPP should put in writing the factors he regarded as relevant in deciding whether or not to prosecute."
The guidelines, which were issued on schedule, drew a predictably wide range of reactions, some of which can be found at the end of this story in the Times: Assisted suicide guidelines do not give immunity against prosecution, says DPP
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