A new report, Treatment of End-Stage Organ Failure in Canada; 2000 to 2009 draws on data from CIHI's Canadian Organ Replacement Register (CORR). (The report can be accessed directly here.) A news report focusing on kidney transplantation is here: Kidney transplants can save millions in dialysis costs: organ transplant report.
From the news summary:
"The number of people living with kidney failure more than tripled in Canada in the last 20 years, new statistics show, but experts hope to save lives and millions of dollars in dialysis costs by expanding organ donor programs.
"A report released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that at the end of 2009, there were 37,744 people being treated for end-stage renal disease, with 59 per cent of them on dialysis and 41 per cent living with a functioning kidney transplant.
"Kidney failure rates appear to be stabilizing, but the supply of organs available for transplant has not kept pace with growing demand.
About 3,000 people were on waiting lists for a transplant in 2009. If they all received a transplant, it could result in annual savings of $150 million, the institute estimated.
...
"As for transplants, Nickerson said deceased donation tends to be better than average in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, at between 16 and 19 donors per million population.
"If you look at the U.S., the average donation rate is around 26 to 28 donors per million; if you look at Spain, it's up in the 30 donors per million range," Nickerson said.
"Donation rates can be significantly higher than what they are currently in Canada. And we've been stuck at this sort of 14 to 15 national average for a number of years now."
...
"CIHI estimated the annual cost of hemodialysis treatment at $60,000 per patient, compared to a one-time cost of $23,000 for a transplant plus $6,000 per year for medication.
Nickerson said savings are about $250,000 over five years.
"Sixteen to 20 years is the average expectancy of a living donor kidney transplant," he said, adding that deceased donor transplants would probably last 10 to 12 years.
Between 2000 and 2009, there were 10,641 kidney transplant procedures registered in the Canadian Organ Replacement Registry. Of these, 11 per cent were re-transplants. Of the 9,430 kidney-only first transplants, 61 per cent used deceased donor kidneys.
Since 2006, the number of living donor kidney transplants has been stable, fluctuating between 440 and 461 transplants per year.
...
"Canadian Blood Services recently launched a paired kidney exchange registry, which allows pairs to receive and donate a kidney from among other registered pairs even if they're not matches for each other.
Nickerson said 185 pairs are registered, and 65 kidney transplants have been done that otherwise wouldn't have occurred.
"And we know that this is only the beginning," he said.
"We estimate that we should have on an annual basis another 200 to 250 pairs joining annually and that we can facilitate about half of them finding transplants on a yearly basis."
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Swiss parliament proposes to decriminalize incest
Switzerland considers repealing incest laws
"The upper house of the Swiss parliament has drafted a law decriminalising sex between consenting family members which must now be considered by the government.
"There have been only three cases of incest since 1984.
"...children within families will continue to be protected by laws governing abuse and paedophilia.
"Daniel Vischer, a Green party MP, said he saw nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, even if they were related.
"Incest is a difficult moral question, but not one that is answered by penal law," he said.
"Barbara Schmid Federer of The Christian People's Party of Switzerland said the proposal from the upper house was "completely repugnant."
"I for one could not countenance painting out such a law from the statute books."
The Protestant People's Party is also opposed to decriminalising the offence which at present carries a maximum three year jail term.
A spokesman for the party said: "Murder is also quite rare in Switzerland but no one suggests that we remove that as an office from the statutes."
See also Wen schützt das Inzestverbot? ("Who is protected by the prohibition against incest?")
HT: Sven Seuken
My previous posts on incest as a repugnant transaction are here, including this one which concerned a similar repeal in Romania: ''Not everything that is immoral has to be illegal'
.
"The upper house of the Swiss parliament has drafted a law decriminalising sex between consenting family members which must now be considered by the government.
"There have been only three cases of incest since 1984.
"...children within families will continue to be protected by laws governing abuse and paedophilia.
"Daniel Vischer, a Green party MP, said he saw nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, even if they were related.
"Incest is a difficult moral question, but not one that is answered by penal law," he said.
"Barbara Schmid Federer of The Christian People's Party of Switzerland said the proposal from the upper house was "completely repugnant."
"I for one could not countenance painting out such a law from the statute books."
The Protestant People's Party is also opposed to decriminalising the offence which at present carries a maximum three year jail term.
A spokesman for the party said: "Murder is also quite rare in Switzerland but no one suggests that we remove that as an office from the statutes."
See also Wen schützt das Inzestverbot? ("Who is protected by the prohibition against incest?")
HT: Sven Seuken
My previous posts on incest as a repugnant transaction are here, including this one which concerned a similar repeal in Romania: ''Not everything that is immoral has to be illegal'
.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sniping on eBay, in Australia (radio interview)
Apparently eBay users in Australia are concerned about sniping (last minute bidding). I was interviewed for a radio report on the subject by Hagar Cohen, which you can hear here (in Australian): Snipe bidding: the dark side of online shopping.
My papers on the subject, with Axel Ockenfels and Dan Ariely are here.
My papers on the subject, with Axel Ockenfels and Dan Ariely are here.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Colbert on school choice in Wake County
Stephen Colbert explains the logic behind returning to a system of local schools (video, funny).
HT: Tim Gray
HT: Tim Gray
Friday, January 21, 2011
Jobs in kidney exchange
Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital in San Antonio is advertising for a Vice President, Transplant Services
In their ad they highlight their active kidney exchange program:
"Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital Recognition
"•# 1 SWAP Program in the country
"•# 1 kidney exchange program and 3-way paired kidney exchange program. Most recently performed the world’s largest kidney exchange transplant chain at a single center on November 11-13, 2010 with 16 recipients and 17 Donors involved and the transplant.
"•Performed 25 heart transplants year to date with a 95% success rate and completed 13 ventricular assist devices.
"•For additional information about the transplant program visit: www.texastransplant.com “METHODIST SPECIALTY AND TRANSPLANT HOSPITAL”
In their ad they highlight their active kidney exchange program:
"Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital Recognition
"•# 1 SWAP Program in the country
"•# 1 kidney exchange program and 3-way paired kidney exchange program. Most recently performed the world’s largest kidney exchange transplant chain at a single center on November 11-13, 2010 with 16 recipients and 17 Donors involved and the transplant.
"•Performed 25 heart transplants year to date with a 95% success rate and completed 13 ventricular assist devices.
"•For additional information about the transplant program visit: www.texastransplant.com “METHODIST SPECIALTY AND TRANSPLANT HOSPITAL”
Homophobia: gay sex remains a repugnant transaction for many
If a repugnant transaction is one that some people want to engage in and others don't want them to, then sex is surely the most ancient. Some of this comes from the desire to control procreation (and be able to identify the father of each child), but that doesn't account for the repugnance of homosexual sex.
Elsewhere I've posted how this ancient repugnance seems to be crumbling, as same sex marriage slowly becomes legal in more places (and as the U.S. armed services have been slowly pushed to more clearly welcome the service of gay soldiers). But two recent articles make the point that homosexual sex is still a widely repugnant transaction.
Gays in Africa face growing persecution, human rights activists say
"In Uganda, a bill introduced in parliament last year would impose the death penalty for repeated same-sex relations and life imprisonment for other homosexual acts. Local newspapers are outing gays, potentially inciting the public to attack them, activists say."
"In Uganda, we look at homosexuality as an abomination. It is not normal," said Nsaba Butoro, Uganda's minister on ethics and integrity and a vocal supporter of the bill. "You are talking about a clash of cultures. The question is: Which culture is superior, the African one or the Western one?"
"More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalizing homosexuality. In May, a judge in Malawi imposed a maximum prison sentence of 14 years with hard labor on a gay couple convicted of "unnatural acts" for holding an engagement ceremony. Malawi's president pardoned the couple after international condemnation, particularly from Britain, Malawi's largest donor.
"Gays have also been attacked this year in Zimbabwe, and in Senegal their graves have been desecrated. Gays in Cameroon have been attacked by police and targeted in the media. In Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh has vowed to expel gays from the country and urged citizens not to rent homes to them.
"One exception is South Africa, whose constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and is among a few countries in the world that have legalized same-sex marriages."
And here's an article closer to home: Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian, about an artwork removed from the exhibit by the National Portrait Gallery recently.
Elsewhere I've posted how this ancient repugnance seems to be crumbling, as same sex marriage slowly becomes legal in more places (and as the U.S. armed services have been slowly pushed to more clearly welcome the service of gay soldiers). But two recent articles make the point that homosexual sex is still a widely repugnant transaction.
Gays in Africa face growing persecution, human rights activists say
"In Uganda, a bill introduced in parliament last year would impose the death penalty for repeated same-sex relations and life imprisonment for other homosexual acts. Local newspapers are outing gays, potentially inciting the public to attack them, activists say."
"In Uganda, we look at homosexuality as an abomination. It is not normal," said Nsaba Butoro, Uganda's minister on ethics and integrity and a vocal supporter of the bill. "You are talking about a clash of cultures. The question is: Which culture is superior, the African one or the Western one?"
"More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalizing homosexuality. In May, a judge in Malawi imposed a maximum prison sentence of 14 years with hard labor on a gay couple convicted of "unnatural acts" for holding an engagement ceremony. Malawi's president pardoned the couple after international condemnation, particularly from Britain, Malawi's largest donor.
"Gays have also been attacked this year in Zimbabwe, and in Senegal their graves have been desecrated. Gays in Cameroon have been attacked by police and targeted in the media. In Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh has vowed to expel gays from the country and urged citizens not to rent homes to them.
"One exception is South Africa, whose constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and is among a few countries in the world that have legalized same-sex marriages."
And here's an article closer to home: Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian, about an artwork removed from the exhibit by the National Portrait Gallery recently.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
European carbon markets suspended
The suspension of trading on European carbon emissions markets has been covered fairly widely, with the most interesting (and critical) story I've seen being this one from the Telegraph. European carbon market suspended over fraud fears: "The European carbon market has been thrown into turmoil after the scandal-hit scheme was suspended for a week over suspicions of fraud."
"More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26.
"The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace."
...
"This is not the first challenge to the credibility of the €90bn annual market in carbon allowances
"Under the flagship scheme, companies need permits to emit carbon dioxide as part of the global fight against climate change and polluters are granted a certain number of emissions allowances that can be traded.
"But it has been plagued by fraud, with Europol estimating that carbon trading criminals trying to play the system may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries during 2009. Fraudulent traders mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketed an estimated €5bn. Carbon allowances are particularly susceptible to fraud because they are high value, intangible and easily moved between different countries."
"More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26.
"The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace."
...
"This is not the first challenge to the credibility of the €90bn annual market in carbon allowances
"Under the flagship scheme, companies need permits to emit carbon dioxide as part of the global fight against climate change and polluters are granted a certain number of emissions allowances that can be traded.
"But it has been plagued by fraud, with Europol estimating that carbon trading criminals trying to play the system may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries during 2009. Fraudulent traders mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketed an estimated €5bn. Carbon allowances are particularly susceptible to fraud because they are high value, intangible and easily moved between different countries."
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Kidney chains in India, and a millionaire nondirected donor
Kidney chains are coming to India, and one of the first (maybe the first) non-directed donors is a millionaire businessman: Kidney donation chain bank set up in Trichur
"19 January 2011 TRIVANDRUM — A leading industrialist in Kerala has set into motion a novel kidney donation chain by deciding to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger.
"Kochouseph Chittilapally, owner of V-Guard group of companies, signed the papers to donate his kidney to 48-year-old Joy from Palai on the occasion of the launch of a kidney bank at Trichur on Monday.
"The bank was set up by the Kidney Federation of India (KFI), founded by Fr Davis Chiramel, who had shown the way by donating one of his kidneys to a stranger one-and-half-years ago. The kidney chain — the first of its kind in India — is possible because of a new type of organ donation called a paired donation, in which a person who needs a kidney can get one by bringing up a donor.
"Joy became eligible to get the kidney after his wife, Jolly, agreed to donate her kidney to one Shamsuddin. His wife, Sainaba, will give her kidney to one John, and whose mother in turn will donate her kidney to Baiju.
"The chain ended here as Baiju could not get a donor among his close relatives. Fr Chiramel is not disappointed. He said he will be able to launch another chain shortly as there were people willing to donate their kidneys. “I was flooded with calls after the kidney bank was launched. Out of 150 callers I had till Tuesday afternoon, 10 were willing to donate their kidneys. We will get them medically examined and put them in the chain if they are fit to donate their kidneys,” the priest said."
Here's another story: Crorepati’s kidney in donor chain
HT: Nikhil Agarwal
"19 January 2011 TRIVANDRUM — A leading industrialist in Kerala has set into motion a novel kidney donation chain by deciding to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger.
"Kochouseph Chittilapally, owner of V-Guard group of companies, signed the papers to donate his kidney to 48-year-old Joy from Palai on the occasion of the launch of a kidney bank at Trichur on Monday.
"The bank was set up by the Kidney Federation of India (KFI), founded by Fr Davis Chiramel, who had shown the way by donating one of his kidneys to a stranger one-and-half-years ago. The kidney chain — the first of its kind in India — is possible because of a new type of organ donation called a paired donation, in which a person who needs a kidney can get one by bringing up a donor.
"Joy became eligible to get the kidney after his wife, Jolly, agreed to donate her kidney to one Shamsuddin. His wife, Sainaba, will give her kidney to one John, and whose mother in turn will donate her kidney to Baiju.
"The chain ended here as Baiju could not get a donor among his close relatives. Fr Chiramel is not disappointed. He said he will be able to launch another chain shortly as there were people willing to donate their kidneys. “I was flooded with calls after the kidney bank was launched. Out of 150 callers I had till Tuesday afternoon, 10 were willing to donate their kidneys. We will get them medically examined and put them in the chain if they are fit to donate their kidneys,” the priest said."
Here's another story: Crorepati’s kidney in donor chain
HT: Nikhil Agarwal
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Barter in a recession
In a Tight Holiday Season, Some Turn to Barter
"The proliferation of Web sites with names like Swap.com and SwapMamas have moved swaps from the home and the community center to online bazaars with millions of users. No industry figures exist on the number of for-profit startups, but officials at one of the largest, Swap.com, said they have over a million registered users and an inventory of 15 million items at any given time.
"ThredUP opened business in April as a clothing exchange site and expanded this month to toys. Mrs. Spitzer signed up as a member in August.
She said that she used to buy new clothes for her three children, all under age 7, every couple of months and then give them away as her children outgrew them. But after she joined ThredUP, she began viewing her children’s hand-me-downs as currency."
Swap.com and ThredUP charge a small fee for each trade ($1 and $5). I didn't see such a fee on SwapMamas, which also encourages people to offer their used goods as gifts when they don't find a coincidence of wants, and has a reputation system that is intended to make frequent givers also favored recipients of gifts.
"The proliferation of Web sites with names like Swap.com and SwapMamas have moved swaps from the home and the community center to online bazaars with millions of users. No industry figures exist on the number of for-profit startups, but officials at one of the largest, Swap.com, said they have over a million registered users and an inventory of 15 million items at any given time.
"ThredUP opened business in April as a clothing exchange site and expanded this month to toys. Mrs. Spitzer signed up as a member in August.
She said that she used to buy new clothes for her three children, all under age 7, every couple of months and then give them away as her children outgrew them. But after she joined ThredUP, she began viewing her children’s hand-me-downs as currency."
Swap.com and ThredUP charge a small fee for each trade ($1 and $5). I didn't see such a fee on SwapMamas, which also encourages people to offer their used goods as gifts when they don't find a coincidence of wants, and has a reputation system that is intended to make frequent givers also favored recipients of gifts.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Greg Lewis' market design course at Harvard
My colleague Greg Lewis will be teaching a market design course this semester, and sends this email:
"I just wanted to advertise the market design course I'm teaching this semester (Econ 2056b). The syllabus can be found here. It's designed to be a complement to both Al and Peter's class (Econ 2056) and Ariel's IO class (Econ 2610), and it's a mix of theory and structural empirical techniques.
I've mixed up the style of the course a bit from past years: from pretty much the second week on, we'll be alternating between lecture and discussion --- which means the students will have to work a little harder and participate more, and hopefully get more out in the end.
Hope to see you there!
Cheers
Greg"
I've mixed up the style of the course a bit from past years: from pretty much the second week on, we'll be alternating between lecture and discussion --- which means the students will have to work a little harder and participate more, and hopefully get more out in the end.
Hope to see you there!
Cheers
Greg"
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Organ donation in Tucson tragedy
9-year-old shooting victim's organs help save child
"Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in Saturday's shootings in Tucson, donated her organs.
"She was one of six people killed in the shooting that targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords outside a Safeway store northwest of Tucson. Giffords remains in critical condition.
...
"And a friend helping the Green family said they received a call yesterday from the organ donation network, telling them that Christina-Taylor's donation had already saved the life of a child on the East Coast."
HT: Bernie Keller
"Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in Saturday's shootings in Tucson, donated her organs.
"She was one of six people killed in the shooting that targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords outside a Safeway store northwest of Tucson. Giffords remains in critical condition.
...
"And a friend helping the Green family said they received a call yesterday from the organ donation network, telling them that Christina-Taylor's donation had already saved the life of a child on the East Coast."
HT: Bernie Keller
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Economics job market in Europe
The big marketplace for new Ph.D. economists is the one that takes place in North America each year in early January (see this recent paper), but in recent years the Royal Economic Society has attempted to get one going in Europe.
The 6th PhD Presentation Meeting of the Royal Economic Society is going on this weekend, on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th January 2011 at City University London.
"The aim of the event is to provide a service both for UK and European university economics departments wishing to recruit lecturers, and for PhD students seeking academic jobs in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. This annual meeting has grown to be an extremely successful event, well supported by both students and potential employers. The event consists of two days of students’ presentations and poster sessions. Participating institutions (pdf) attend these presentations and are also allocated a room at the conference site in order to arrange individual appointments with participating PhD candidates (pdf) during the course of the conference. "
Good luck to all those on the market.
(For departments interested in the theory of matching, I notice that one of the new Ph.D.s in attendance is Alex Nichifor, who is a coauthor of a very good paper: Stability and Competitive Equilibrium in Trading Networks . (His coauthors are John Hatfield, Scott Kominers, Mike Ostrovsky, and Alex Westkamp, and his Ph.D. advisor is Bettina Klaus.))
The 6th PhD Presentation Meeting of the Royal Economic Society is going on this weekend, on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th January 2011 at City University London.
"The aim of the event is to provide a service both for UK and European university economics departments wishing to recruit lecturers, and for PhD students seeking academic jobs in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. This annual meeting has grown to be an extremely successful event, well supported by both students and potential employers. The event consists of two days of students’ presentations and poster sessions. Participating institutions (pdf) attend these presentations and are also allocated a room at the conference site in order to arrange individual appointments with participating PhD candidates (pdf) during the course of the conference. "
Good luck to all those on the market.
(For departments interested in the theory of matching, I notice that one of the new Ph.D.s in attendance is Alex Nichifor, who is a coauthor of a very good paper: Stability and Competitive Equilibrium in Trading Networks . (His coauthors are John Hatfield, Scott Kominers, Mike Ostrovsky, and Alex Westkamp, and his Ph.D. advisor is Bettina Klaus.))
Tribal customs of academic disciplines
Some of the different ways that different academic disciplines organize their scholarship, and the signals they send about it, are discussed in a recent column in the Chronicle of Higher Education about tenure reviews.
"A fair analysis of a tenure candidate requires that the committee members know (or learn) about the culture of the relevant academic discipline, particularly with respect to norms of publication numbers, venues, authorship order, conference presentations, invited talks, and student or postdoctoral advising.
"Considerable variation in those features exists across academe, even within science and engineering fields. Whereas one academic discipline might value short publications in highly selective conference proceedings over peer-reviewed journal articles, another requires peer-reviewed journal articles (in high-impact journals) as the primary indicator of productivity. Similarly, one discipline might alphabetize author order, another always has the "brains behind the project" as the last author, and another considers the first author listed to be the most important. Some fields expect assistant professors to have advised one or more Ph.D. students through to the completion of their degree, but in other fields that would be considered unusual."
The different customs of publication order present some opportunities in interdisciplinary collaborations of the kind that arise in market design, particularly since the authors publishing outside of their disciplinary journals are freed from the burden of sending signals.
"A fair analysis of a tenure candidate requires that the committee members know (or learn) about the culture of the relevant academic discipline, particularly with respect to norms of publication numbers, venues, authorship order, conference presentations, invited talks, and student or postdoctoral advising.
"Considerable variation in those features exists across academe, even within science and engineering fields. Whereas one academic discipline might value short publications in highly selective conference proceedings over peer-reviewed journal articles, another requires peer-reviewed journal articles (in high-impact journals) as the primary indicator of productivity. Similarly, one discipline might alphabetize author order, another always has the "brains behind the project" as the last author, and another considers the first author listed to be the most important. Some fields expect assistant professors to have advised one or more Ph.D. students through to the completion of their degree, but in other fields that would be considered unusual."
The different customs of publication order present some opportunities in interdisciplinary collaborations of the kind that arise in market design, particularly since the authors publishing outside of their disciplinary journals are freed from the burden of sending signals.
Friday, January 14, 2011
In France, civil unions aren't just for same sex couples
A pacte civil de solidarité in France is a civil union, something like a civil marriage, originally intended to help same-sex couples formalize their relationship, without expanding the official scope of marriage. But these civil unions are easier to dissolve than formal marriages, and (the NY Times reports), opposite sex couples are also finding this less formal kind of union attractive: In France, Civil Unions Gain Favor Over Marriage
"French couples are increasingly shunning traditional marriages and opting instead for civil unions, to the point that there are now two civil unions for every three marriages.
"When France created its system of civil unions in 1999, it was heralded as a revolution in gay rights, a relationship almost like marriage, but not quite. No one, though, anticipated how many couples would make use of the new law. Nor was it predicted that by 2009, the overwhelming majority of civil unions would be between straight couples.
"It remains unclear whether the idea of a civil union, called a pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, has responded to a shift in social attitudes or caused one. But it has proved remarkably well suited to France and its particularities about marriage, divorce, religion and taxes — and it can be dissolved with just a registered letter."
Meanwhile, in Britain, which also has civil partnerships, a lawsuit is underway to change the fact that both same sex marriage and different sex civil partnerships are illegal:
"Eight British couples will argue that the twin bans on same-sex marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships are unlawful and should be reversed.
"French couples are increasingly shunning traditional marriages and opting instead for civil unions, to the point that there are now two civil unions for every three marriages.
"When France created its system of civil unions in 1999, it was heralded as a revolution in gay rights, a relationship almost like marriage, but not quite. No one, though, anticipated how many couples would make use of the new law. Nor was it predicted that by 2009, the overwhelming majority of civil unions would be between straight couples.
"It remains unclear whether the idea of a civil union, called a pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, has responded to a shift in social attitudes or caused one. But it has proved remarkably well suited to France and its particularities about marriage, divorce, religion and taxes — and it can be dissolved with just a registered letter."
Meanwhile, in Britain, which also has civil partnerships, a lawsuit is underway to change the fact that both same sex marriage and different sex civil partnerships are illegal:
"Eight British couples will argue that the twin bans on same-sex marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships are unlawful and should be reversed.
"Over the last two months four homosexual couples have all been refused marriage licenses at register offices across England, while four heterosexual couples were turned away when they applied for civil partnership status.
"The couples will file a joint application to the court today, which is the fifth anniversary of the first civil partnership ceremonies in England."
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Pictures from a matching conference (and a new matching paper)
I returned from Milan to the following cheerful message from Atila Abdulkadiroglu:
Dear all,
I hope you have had a cheerful holiday season, happy new year to you all.
I thought it would be better late than never, so here are also some photos from the "Roth and Sotomayor: Twenty Years After" conference: http://duke.edu/~aa88/RothandSotomayorTwentyYearsAfter/
This is all of the photos I got from our media relations person, I hope she got all of us at least in the first photo.
I would also like bring your attention a recent paper of mine:
"Generalized Matching for School Choice" ( http://duke.edu/~aa88/articles/GeneralizedMatching.pdf )
This paper makes the case that neither a one-sided matching model nor a two-sided matching model is adequate enough to capture some salient features of the school choice problem. It introduces a natural generalization to the matching models, and a natural extension of the stability notion. It characterizes student optimal stable matchings and introduces a new matching algorithm, Stable Transfer Cycles, that reduces to TTC when the problem is one-sided and becomes equivalent to Gale-Shapley's student optimal stable matching mechanism when the problem is two-sided.
Comments would be most welcome."
And here's the conference website to which the pictures refer:Roth and Sotomayor: Twenty Years After, May 7-9, 2010, and the first picture...
Dear all,
I hope you have had a cheerful holiday season, happy new year to you all.
I thought it would be better late than never, so here are also some photos from the "Roth and Sotomayor: Twenty Years After" conference: http://duke.edu/~aa88/RothandSotomayorTwentyYearsAfter/
This is all of the photos I got from our media relations person, I hope she got all of us at least in the first photo.
I would also like bring your attention a recent paper of mine:
"Generalized Matching for School Choice" ( http://duke.edu/~aa88/articles/GeneralizedMatching.pdf )
This paper makes the case that neither a one-sided matching model nor a two-sided matching model is adequate enough to capture some salient features of the school choice problem. It introduces a natural generalization to the matching models, and a natural extension of the stability notion. It characterizes student optimal stable matchings and introduces a new matching algorithm, Stable Transfer Cycles, that reduces to TTC when the problem is one-sided and becomes equivalent to Gale-Shapley's student optimal stable matching mechanism when the problem is two-sided.
Comments would be most welcome."
And here's the conference website to which the pictures refer:Roth and Sotomayor: Twenty Years After, May 7-9, 2010, and the first picture...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Specialized dating sites for the disabled
Searching for a mate is hard work, and it can be hard to find a match if you have special needs. So there's a demand for specialized dating sites: Difference Is the Norm on These Dating Sites
"Several dating Web sites for singles with health problems have started up in the last few years. Ms. Nevius joined Dating 4 Disabled, a site for people with an array of disabilities, including paralysis and multiple sclerosis. Other sites include NoLongerLonely, for adults with mental illness, and POZ Personals, for people who are H.I.V-positive."
...
"He said the worst part of dating was the anxiety over disclosing his H.I.V. status. Getting to know someone in an online community of people with H.I.V. allows relationships to form without the burden of the big reveal hovering overhead.
“Here everyone knows you have H.I.V.,” he said, “so it gets that barrier out of the way.”
"Another site, Prescription4Love, has communities dedicated to sexually transmitted diseases and physical disabilities, but also to other diseases that don’t conjure images of romance and intimacy, like diabetes and Parkinson’s. The site was created by Ricky Durham, whose late brother suffered from Crohn’s disease — a condition that came with literal baggage.
“He was a good-looking boy,” Mr. Durham said. “But when do you tell a girl that you have a colostomy bag? The first date? The third? There’s no good time.”
"Awkward issues that come with an illness can be discussed frankly and openly in an online space in which everyone is dealing with something out of the ordinary.
“Sexuality, travel, mobility, pain: Everything takes on a different dimension,” said Merryl Kaplan, who is in charge of member services for Dating 4 Disabled.
"The anonymity of the Internet allows people to be forthcoming and honest about what they are truly looking for in a companion. Among the almost 12,000 members of Dating 4 Disabled, for example, many specify the types of disabilities they would be open to dealing with in a long-term relationship.
“Like anyone else, people with disabilities have different preferences,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Someone with good mobility may prefer someone also mobile; others don’t limit at all.”
"Several dating Web sites for singles with health problems have started up in the last few years. Ms. Nevius joined Dating 4 Disabled, a site for people with an array of disabilities, including paralysis and multiple sclerosis. Other sites include NoLongerLonely, for adults with mental illness, and POZ Personals, for people who are H.I.V-positive."
...
"He said the worst part of dating was the anxiety over disclosing his H.I.V. status. Getting to know someone in an online community of people with H.I.V. allows relationships to form without the burden of the big reveal hovering overhead.
“Here everyone knows you have H.I.V.,” he said, “so it gets that barrier out of the way.”
"Another site, Prescription4Love, has communities dedicated to sexually transmitted diseases and physical disabilities, but also to other diseases that don’t conjure images of romance and intimacy, like diabetes and Parkinson’s. The site was created by Ricky Durham, whose late brother suffered from Crohn’s disease — a condition that came with literal baggage.
“He was a good-looking boy,” Mr. Durham said. “But when do you tell a girl that you have a colostomy bag? The first date? The third? There’s no good time.”
"Awkward issues that come with an illness can be discussed frankly and openly in an online space in which everyone is dealing with something out of the ordinary.
“Sexuality, travel, mobility, pain: Everything takes on a different dimension,” said Merryl Kaplan, who is in charge of member services for Dating 4 Disabled.
"The anonymity of the Internet allows people to be forthcoming and honest about what they are truly looking for in a companion. Among the almost 12,000 members of Dating 4 Disabled, for example, many specify the types of disabilities they would be open to dealing with in a long-term relationship.
“Like anyone else, people with disabilities have different preferences,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Someone with good mobility may prefer someone also mobile; others don’t limit at all.”
Monday, January 10, 2011
Tips, Tip Pooling, and Tip Credits
Restaurant wait-staff in the United States make a significant part of their incomes in tips left by satisfied or habit-driven or social-norm-conscious patrons (but this isn't a post about the large behavioral literature on restaurant tipping, e.g. here). A consequence of this is that restaurants and certain other employers can receive "tip credits" that release them from the obligation to pay the minimum wage, since their employees will be having part of their wage paid by their customers.
There's a body of law about what employers can and cannot do with tips (e.g. require them to be pooled, shared with non wait-staff, etc.), and about what constitutes a tip (e.g. not all "service charges" go to the server): see e.g. NoLo.com's Tips, Tip Pooling, and Tip Credits: What Service Employees Need to Know
There are presently a number of lawsuits going through the courts about this, and some new legislation, discussed in an op-ed in the NY Times by Tim and Nina Zagat of Zagat's fame: Adding Fairness to the Tip
With the new year have come some new regulations in NY: New Rules Impose Systems for Sharing of Tips
"The new regulations apply to workers in restaurants and hotels and cover a number of issues, including who should pay for laundering “wash-and-wear” uniforms, like special T-shirts. The rules also raise the minimum wage for tipped employees, to $5 from $4.65 an hour for food service workers and to $5.65 from $4.90 an hour for service workers, a category that includes coat check workers in a restaurant or porters in hotels. (There is a separate minimum for workers at resort hotels.)
"The new rules also define the job categories that are eligible for shares in tips from the dining room: food service workers only, including waiters, bartenders and bussers, as well as sommeliers and hosts, provided they are not managers.
"The new rules allow restaurants to dictate both the system and the percentage allocated to each job category. Gratuities can be combined in a pool, to be divided by all the staff members who have helped a team effort. Or, individual servers can collect their own tips and give portions, or shares, to members of the team.
"The Labor Department will require that employers keep records of tip pools and shares; the records could be examined during investigations undertaken by the department on its own or in response to complaints.
...
"Higher-end, full-service restaurants tend to favor the pooling of tips, because it breeds less squabbling over stations and shift assignments, provides an incentive for teamwork and encourages the servers to police their own performance.
"The new regulations generally limit the pool to service workers in the dining room who interact with customers directly — like waiters — or indirectly, like servers who ferry plates from the kitchen to a station where another server picks them up and delivers them to the table. But bartenders, who prepare beverages for the dining room in a role analogous to that of a cook, can also share in the tip pool, even though kitchen staff members cannot.
“A lot of this arises from custom and tradition,” Ms. Lindholm said. “If you’re looking for perfect logic in this, it isn’t there.”
There's a body of law about what employers can and cannot do with tips (e.g. require them to be pooled, shared with non wait-staff, etc.), and about what constitutes a tip (e.g. not all "service charges" go to the server): see e.g. NoLo.com's Tips, Tip Pooling, and Tip Credits: What Service Employees Need to Know
There are presently a number of lawsuits going through the courts about this, and some new legislation, discussed in an op-ed in the NY Times by Tim and Nina Zagat of Zagat's fame: Adding Fairness to the Tip
With the new year have come some new regulations in NY: New Rules Impose Systems for Sharing of Tips
"The new regulations apply to workers in restaurants and hotels and cover a number of issues, including who should pay for laundering “wash-and-wear” uniforms, like special T-shirts. The rules also raise the minimum wage for tipped employees, to $5 from $4.65 an hour for food service workers and to $5.65 from $4.90 an hour for service workers, a category that includes coat check workers in a restaurant or porters in hotels. (There is a separate minimum for workers at resort hotels.)
"The new rules also define the job categories that are eligible for shares in tips from the dining room: food service workers only, including waiters, bartenders and bussers, as well as sommeliers and hosts, provided they are not managers.
"The new rules allow restaurants to dictate both the system and the percentage allocated to each job category. Gratuities can be combined in a pool, to be divided by all the staff members who have helped a team effort. Or, individual servers can collect their own tips and give portions, or shares, to members of the team.
"The Labor Department will require that employers keep records of tip pools and shares; the records could be examined during investigations undertaken by the department on its own or in response to complaints.
...
"Higher-end, full-service restaurants tend to favor the pooling of tips, because it breeds less squabbling over stations and shift assignments, provides an incentive for teamwork and encourages the servers to police their own performance.
"The new regulations generally limit the pool to service workers in the dining room who interact with customers directly — like waiters — or indirectly, like servers who ferry plates from the kitchen to a station where another server picks them up and delivers them to the table. But bartenders, who prepare beverages for the dining room in a role analogous to that of a cook, can also share in the tip pool, even though kitchen staff members cannot.
“A lot of this arises from custom and tradition,” Ms. Lindholm said. “If you’re looking for perfect logic in this, it isn’t there.”
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Wikipedia fundraising, randomized experiments
You know those fundraising appeals that appear at the top of Wikipedia pages? They are randomized so that reliable information can be collected about which ones attract donations.
The Wikimedia team writes:
"Since August, the Fundraising Committee has been running banner & landing page tests. These have evolved from weekly Thursday afternoon tests, which helped us get all of our systems in order and determined which messages would best motivate our donors before the launch of the fundraiser - to almost daily tests introducing new banners and landing pages as we continue to tweak our current campaign.
"Check out the Fundraising Updates page where we discuss what we've learned so far and upcoming tests and challenges."
The Wikimedia team writes:
"Since August, the Fundraising Committee has been running banner & landing page tests. These have evolved from weekly Thursday afternoon tests, which helped us get all of our systems in order and determined which messages would best motivate our donors before the launch of the fundraiser - to almost daily tests introducing new banners and landing pages as we continue to tweak our current campaign.
"Check out the Fundraising Updates page where we discuss what we've learned so far and upcoming tests and challenges."
Game theory for college teachers at the AEA continuing education program
Preliminary reading list for an introduction to Game Theory at the AEA Continuing Education Program January 2011 taught by Avinash Dixit and David Reiley.
Meant for college teaching at all levels, starting with freshmen and going up to writers of senior theses,
it includes sections taught by Reiley that include mateial that will be familiar to readers of this blog, on VI. MARKET DESIGN AND ALGORITHMS
IV. AUCTIONS AND FIELD EXPERIMENTS
It also includes the first draft of a new book by Michael Suk-Young Chwe,
Folk Game Theory: Strategic Analysis in Austen, Hammerstein, and African American Folktales
Meant for college teaching at all levels, starting with freshmen and going up to writers of senior theses,
it includes sections taught by Reiley that include mateial that will be familiar to readers of this blog, on VI. MARKET DESIGN AND ALGORITHMS
IV. AUCTIONS AND FIELD EXPERIMENTS
It also includes the first draft of a new book by Michael Suk-Young Chwe,
Folk Game Theory: Strategic Analysis in Austen, Hammerstein, and African American Folktales
Friday, January 7, 2011
Slavery in the U.S.
At the conference I'm attending in Finland, there's been a good deal of discussion (with more to come) of repugnant transactions, with an undercurrent of concern that globalization and other kinds of encroachment of markets on traditionally non-market ways of allocating resources will inevitably cause things presently regarded with repugnance to become more customary.
It's good to remember that our repugnance at certain transactions doesn't have to diminish over time (as does happen with many formerly repugnant transactions like same sex marriage). Slavery (and indentured servitude, and other forms of servitude) were once regarded with much less repugnance--certainly much less nearly universal repugnance--than they are today.
The NY Times recently published a Civil War era map of where slaves were in the United States in 1860:
Visualizing Slavery
"South Carolina, which led the rebellion, was one of two states which enslaved a majority of its population, a fact starkly represented on the map."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/10/opinion/20101210_Disunion_SlaveryMap.html
It's good to remember that our repugnance at certain transactions doesn't have to diminish over time (as does happen with many formerly repugnant transactions like same sex marriage). Slavery (and indentured servitude, and other forms of servitude) were once regarded with much less repugnance--certainly much less nearly universal repugnance--than they are today.
The NY Times recently published a Civil War era map of where slaves were in the United States in 1860:
Visualizing Slavery
"South Carolina, which led the rebellion, was one of two states which enslaved a majority of its population, a fact starkly represented on the map."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/10/opinion/20101210_Disunion_SlaveryMap.html
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Markets, broadly defined
I'm in Helsinki, participating in the second workshop of the Markets & Marketization program, that will bring together philosophers and philosophers of science with economists, sociologists, political scientists and others interested in markets very broadly defined.
Workshop II Friday-Saturday, 7-8 January, 2011; Tentative program
Friday 7.1.
10.00 - 11.00 Alvin Roth (Harvard): "What does market design teach us about markets?"
11.10 - 11.30 Comment: Patrik Aspers
11.30 - 11.50 Comment: Emrah Aydinonat
11.50 - 12.30 Discussion
14.00 - 15.00 Ronald Noë: On biological markets (title TBA)
15.00 - 16.00 Risto Heiskala: "Coordination of human interaction: the BTCIEMP scheme"
(’BTCIEMP’ stands for: biology, traditions, cultural categorization, ideology, economy, military power and political power)
16.30 - 17.30 Jens Beckert: On the sociology of markets (title TBA)
Saturday 8.1.
10.00 - 11.00 Debra Satz (Stanford): The Moral Limits of Markets
11.10 - 11.30 Comment: Adrian Walsh
11.30 - 11.50 Comment: John O’Neill
11.50 - 12.30 Discussion
Workshop II Friday-Saturday, 7-8 January, 2011; Tentative program
Friday 7.1.
10.00 - 11.00 Alvin Roth (Harvard): "What does market design teach us about markets?"
11.10 - 11.30 Comment: Patrik Aspers
11.30 - 11.50 Comment: Emrah Aydinonat
11.50 - 12.30 Discussion
14.00 - 15.00 Ronald Noë: On biological markets (title TBA)
15.00 - 16.00 Risto Heiskala: "Coordination of human interaction: the BTCIEMP scheme"
(’BTCIEMP’ stands for: biology, traditions, cultural categorization, ideology, economy, military power and political power)
16.30 - 17.30 Jens Beckert: On the sociology of markets (title TBA)
Saturday 8.1.
10.00 - 11.00 Debra Satz (Stanford): The Moral Limits of Markets
11.10 - 11.30 Comment: Adrian Walsh
11.30 - 11.50 Comment: John O’Neill
11.50 - 12.30 Discussion
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Blasphemy law in Pakistan
One of the oldest repugnant transactions, different worship, is as repugnant as ever in Pakistan: Pakistanis Rally in Support of Blasphemy Law
"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.
...
"In fiery speeches across all major cities and towns, religious leaders warned the government on Friday against altering the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.
...
"The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests."
It turns out that the accusation of being against the blasphemy law isn't good for you either: Salman Taseer assassination points to Pakistani extremists' mounting power
"Taseer's apparent killer cited his boss's stance against a controversial anti-blasphemy law in justifying his actions. As the embattled, pro-U.S. PPP sought in recent days to win back defecting allies that also include a small Islamic party, it had already said it would not support a proposal to change the blasphemy statutes. That left Taseer one of the few vocal champions of the move, which hard-line religious organizations had labeled a Western conspiracy.
"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.
...
"In fiery speeches across all major cities and towns, religious leaders warned the government on Friday against altering the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.
...
"The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests."
It turns out that the accusation of being against the blasphemy law isn't good for you either: Salman Taseer assassination points to Pakistani extremists' mounting power
"Taseer's apparent killer cited his boss's stance against a controversial anti-blasphemy law in justifying his actions. As the embattled, pro-U.S. PPP sought in recent days to win back defecting allies that also include a small Islamic party, it had already said it would not support a proposal to change the blasphemy statutes. That left Taseer one of the few vocal champions of the move, which hard-line religious organizations had labeled a Western conspiracy.
The laws have drawn scrutiny since a Christian woman was sentenced to death in November for allegedly criticizing the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Taseer had called for her pardon, leading religious groups to denounce him as an "apostate" and burn effigies of him during a nationwide strike last week in support of the law. One Muslim cleric has offered $6,000 to anyone who kills the woman, who remains in jail."
More on the debate over kidney sales: transcript of interview
In my earlier post, Dubner interviews me about kidney sales, I promised to link to a transcript when it became available, and now it has: there's a link at the bottom of the Freakonomics post You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let’s Do It!
Dubner interviewed me for about an hour and a half, so he and his producer Chris Neary had to do lots of editing to produce the half hour or so podcast. I recall a pair of questions, one of which made it into the show and one of which was left on the cutting room floor (or wherever unused electronic files are left). The question that made it in was about what makes many people view kidney sales as repugnant. The question that didn't make it was, if I were asked to help design a market in which kidneys could be sold, what would be my primary concerns.
Regarding what is behind the repugnance of kidney sales, here's the text of my reply included in the transcript:
"Al Roth: The late Pope John Paul wrote about this and he objects strongly to the sale of kidneys but thinks the donation of kidneys is a very good thing, though if we do it for money is a very bad thing...I think his feeling is that it turns people from ends into means which is a bad thing in itself. So that’s one nature of objection.
Another kind of objection is that it might be OK if I offered to buy your kidney because you’d be a hard guy to exploit, you’re a successful, financially solvent person, but pretty soon we’d start seeing the desperately poor and maybe they would in some sense be acting against their self interest, they would be being exploited or coerced even, by the temptation of the money in ways that if they could use their better judgement they wouldn’t want to be. So that’s sort of a coercion argument.
And then there’s a slippery slope argument that says if we started allowing people to sell their kidneys, it would be primarily poor people who would sell their kidneys, and pretty soon we would start hearing political discussion that said, ‘you know, we don’t really need unemployment benefits, we don’t really need aid to families with dependent children because after all, everyone’s got two kidneys and they can take care of themselves by selling a kidney if they need to’...and that makes us a much less desirable society to live in."
I don't have a transcript to consult about what I said when they asked what I would do if asked to help design a kidney market, but as I recall, my answer went something like this.
The first thing I'd want to think about is what kind of review we would want to use to judge if the market had been a success ten years (or longer) after it had been started. The criteria we'd surely want the market to be evaluated on would include:
How had the donor/vendors fared?: were they healthy and well treated, and respected, and did they encourage new potential donor/vendors to make the same choices they had?
How had patients with kidney disease fared?: were they receiving healthy kidneys, had the waiting list for transplants largely disappeared, were kidneys being allocated in ways that were widely seen as equitable?
To focus thoughts for future debate, we might want to think about a system in which only the federal government could legally pay for a live kidney, and would have a mandate to set the price (and associated benefits like follow-up medical care) high enough so that there would be a waiting list of donor/vendors, who could e.g. be expected to undergo regular health and suitability tests (suitability being a broad term meant to include physical and mental health, deeply informed consent, etc.) for a year before being accepted as donor/vendors, and that the kidneys obtained in this way would be allocated anonymously through some regulated procedure that might resemble the current procedures for allocating deceased-donor organs.
In terms of how I've interpreted the ongoing debate between those in favor of sales and those against, I think that a good deal of the coercion concern can be addressed by an appropriately designed one year waiting period, although I say that without having recently talked to someone who makes that argument with conviction.
I don't see any easy way to bridge the gap between those who think that selling kidneys is a bad thing in and of itself, not to be traded off with possible benefits of other sorts (e.g. to patients and perhaps to donor/vendors), and those who don't see it that way, or who feel that the current dire circumstances of many thousands of those with kidney disease gives legitimate counterweight to this concern.
And the slippery slope concern is the one that personally gives me the most pause. I can see how appropriate legislation would prevent e.g. your bank from asking for a kidney as collateral, but I can't see any way to be sure that making kidneys a potential financial asset wouldn't make us a less sympathetic society (even though a one year waiting period and other qualification tests would limit how much kidney sales could be used as a justification for cutting unemployment insurance in particular).
My work on kidney exchange has largely avoided being enmeshed in this debate, since the "in kind" kidney exchange doesn't seem to arouse repugnance. Thus for example Debra Satz' recent book Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, Oxford University Press, 2010, finds little to object to about kidney exchange, but largely disapproves of kidney sales. (I expect to meet Professor Satz for the first time this weekend, at a philosophy of economics conference in Helsinki...)
Dubner interviewed me for about an hour and a half, so he and his producer Chris Neary had to do lots of editing to produce the half hour or so podcast. I recall a pair of questions, one of which made it into the show and one of which was left on the cutting room floor (or wherever unused electronic files are left). The question that made it in was about what makes many people view kidney sales as repugnant. The question that didn't make it was, if I were asked to help design a market in which kidneys could be sold, what would be my primary concerns.
Regarding what is behind the repugnance of kidney sales, here's the text of my reply included in the transcript:
"Al Roth: The late Pope John Paul wrote about this and he objects strongly to the sale of kidneys but thinks the donation of kidneys is a very good thing, though if we do it for money is a very bad thing...I think his feeling is that it turns people from ends into means which is a bad thing in itself. So that’s one nature of objection.
Another kind of objection is that it might be OK if I offered to buy your kidney because you’d be a hard guy to exploit, you’re a successful, financially solvent person, but pretty soon we’d start seeing the desperately poor and maybe they would in some sense be acting against their self interest, they would be being exploited or coerced even, by the temptation of the money in ways that if they could use their better judgement they wouldn’t want to be. So that’s sort of a coercion argument.
And then there’s a slippery slope argument that says if we started allowing people to sell their kidneys, it would be primarily poor people who would sell their kidneys, and pretty soon we would start hearing political discussion that said, ‘you know, we don’t really need unemployment benefits, we don’t really need aid to families with dependent children because after all, everyone’s got two kidneys and they can take care of themselves by selling a kidney if they need to’...and that makes us a much less desirable society to live in."
I don't have a transcript to consult about what I said when they asked what I would do if asked to help design a kidney market, but as I recall, my answer went something like this.
The first thing I'd want to think about is what kind of review we would want to use to judge if the market had been a success ten years (or longer) after it had been started. The criteria we'd surely want the market to be evaluated on would include:
How had the donor/vendors fared?: were they healthy and well treated, and respected, and did they encourage new potential donor/vendors to make the same choices they had?
How had patients with kidney disease fared?: were they receiving healthy kidneys, had the waiting list for transplants largely disappeared, were kidneys being allocated in ways that were widely seen as equitable?
To focus thoughts for future debate, we might want to think about a system in which only the federal government could legally pay for a live kidney, and would have a mandate to set the price (and associated benefits like follow-up medical care) high enough so that there would be a waiting list of donor/vendors, who could e.g. be expected to undergo regular health and suitability tests (suitability being a broad term meant to include physical and mental health, deeply informed consent, etc.) for a year before being accepted as donor/vendors, and that the kidneys obtained in this way would be allocated anonymously through some regulated procedure that might resemble the current procedures for allocating deceased-donor organs.
In terms of how I've interpreted the ongoing debate between those in favor of sales and those against, I think that a good deal of the coercion concern can be addressed by an appropriately designed one year waiting period, although I say that without having recently talked to someone who makes that argument with conviction.
I don't see any easy way to bridge the gap between those who think that selling kidneys is a bad thing in and of itself, not to be traded off with possible benefits of other sorts (e.g. to patients and perhaps to donor/vendors), and those who don't see it that way, or who feel that the current dire circumstances of many thousands of those with kidney disease gives legitimate counterweight to this concern.
And the slippery slope concern is the one that personally gives me the most pause. I can see how appropriate legislation would prevent e.g. your bank from asking for a kidney as collateral, but I can't see any way to be sure that making kidneys a potential financial asset wouldn't make us a less sympathetic society (even though a one year waiting period and other qualification tests would limit how much kidney sales could be used as a justification for cutting unemployment insurance in particular).
My work on kidney exchange has largely avoided being enmeshed in this debate, since the "in kind" kidney exchange doesn't seem to arouse repugnance. Thus for example Debra Satz' recent book Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, Oxford University Press, 2010, finds little to object to about kidney exchange, but largely disapproves of kidney sales. (I expect to meet Professor Satz for the first time this weekend, at a philosophy of economics conference in Helsinki...)
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Polygamy in the Negev
Haaretz highlights some ads that have been appearing in the Negev:
Over 30 and single? Try polygamy
"Local Bedouin newspaper sparks calls on single Bedouin women who are over 30 to consider polygamous marriages, saying 'it's the Sharia solution'"
A related story concerns underage marriages ("Barely sixteen and married"), and includes this observation
"The girls themselves, explains ElKranawi, are willingly marrying at such a young age: "Girls only 15 years old dream of getting married, because they understand it to be the way to independence. After all, if you are 20 or older, you may be married as a second wife. Even if a woman has obtained an education, she will not be independent. Her parents will continue to make decisions for her."
Over 30 and single? Try polygamy
"Local Bedouin newspaper sparks calls on single Bedouin women who are over 30 to consider polygamous marriages, saying 'it's the Sharia solution'"
A related story concerns underage marriages ("Barely sixteen and married"), and includes this observation
"The girls themselves, explains ElKranawi, are willingly marrying at such a young age: "Girls only 15 years old dream of getting married, because they understand it to be the way to independence. After all, if you are 20 or older, you may be married as a second wife. Even if a woman has obtained an education, she will not be independent. Her parents will continue to make decisions for her."
Monday, January 3, 2011
Unraveling of loan maturities: inefficiency in borrowing and lending
The Maturity Rat Race by Markus K. Brunnermeier and Martin Oehmke
Abstract: "We develop a model of endogenous maturity structure for financial institutions that borrow from multiple creditors. We show that a maturity rat race can occur: an individual creditor can have an incentive to shorten the maturity of his own loan to the institution, allowing him to adjust his financing terms or pull out before other creditors can. This, in turn, causes all other lenders to shorten their maturity as well, leading to excessively short-term financing. This rat race occurs when interim information is mostly about the probability of default rather than the recovery in default, and is most pronounced during volatile periods and crises. Overall, firms are exposed to unnecessary rollover risk."
The paper goes on to note:
"The maturity rat race is inefficient. It leads to excessive rollover risk and causes inefficient liquidation of the long-term investment project after negative interim information. Moreover, because creditors anticipate the costly liquidations that occur when rolling over short-term debt is not possible, some positive NPV projects do not get started in the first place. This inefficiency stands in contrast to some of the leading existing theories of maturity mismatch.
Abstract: "We develop a model of endogenous maturity structure for financial institutions that borrow from multiple creditors. We show that a maturity rat race can occur: an individual creditor can have an incentive to shorten the maturity of his own loan to the institution, allowing him to adjust his financing terms or pull out before other creditors can. This, in turn, causes all other lenders to shorten their maturity as well, leading to excessively short-term financing. This rat race occurs when interim information is mostly about the probability of default rather than the recovery in default, and is most pronounced during volatile periods and crises. Overall, firms are exposed to unnecessary rollover risk."
The paper goes on to note:
"The maturity rat race is inefficient. It leads to excessive rollover risk and causes inefficient liquidation of the long-term investment project after negative interim information. Moreover, because creditors anticipate the costly liquidations that occur when rolling over short-term debt is not possible, some positive NPV projects do not get started in the first place. This inefficiency stands in contrast to some of the leading existing theories of maturity mismatch.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Baroque kidney donation story from Mississippi
Sister's kidney donation condition of Miss. parole
"JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney.
"Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis.
"The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets — making off with only $11, court records said.
"Jamie and Gladys Scott were each convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences."
And here's the unsurprising reaction to linking parole to kidney donation: Mississippi Gov "unethical" over jail release: surgeon
"Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour acted unethically when he suspended a woman's life sentence on condition she donate a kidney to her sister, a prominent transplant surgeon said on Thursday.
...
"A condition of Gladys Scott's release is that she donate a kidney to her sister in an operation that should be performed urgently, Barbour said in a statement on Wednesday. She had agreed to be a donor for her sister, who requires dialysis.
...
"Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, criticized the decision to impose a condition for the release.
"While Governor Barbour probably meant nothing nefarious by this decision, what he did was unethical and possibly illegal. He is unaware of the procedures of transplantation that include making sure donors are not coerced," Shapiro said.
"There were also medical reasons why such a condition was inappropriate, not least that Barbour may not know whether Jamie Scott is suitable or healthy enough for a transplant, said Shapiro, chair of the ethics committee of the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing.
"Shapiro also questioned whether Barbour ordered Scott released because her treatment was a financial burden on the state.
"If either party could be turned down for medical concerns, the transplant team would feel pressured to continue with the transplant or send them back to prison. It is a position they should not be put in," he said."
HT: Mike Ostrovsky
"JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney.
"Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis.
"The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets — making off with only $11, court records said.
"Jamie and Gladys Scott were each convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences."
And here's the unsurprising reaction to linking parole to kidney donation: Mississippi Gov "unethical" over jail release: surgeon
"Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour acted unethically when he suspended a woman's life sentence on condition she donate a kidney to her sister, a prominent transplant surgeon said on Thursday.
...
"A condition of Gladys Scott's release is that she donate a kidney to her sister in an operation that should be performed urgently, Barbour said in a statement on Wednesday. She had agreed to be a donor for her sister, who requires dialysis.
...
"Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, criticized the decision to impose a condition for the release.
"While Governor Barbour probably meant nothing nefarious by this decision, what he did was unethical and possibly illegal. He is unaware of the procedures of transplantation that include making sure donors are not coerced," Shapiro said.
"There were also medical reasons why such a condition was inappropriate, not least that Barbour may not know whether Jamie Scott is suitable or healthy enough for a transplant, said Shapiro, chair of the ethics committee of the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing.
"Shapiro also questioned whether Barbour ordered Scott released because her treatment was a financial burden on the state.
"If either party could be turned down for medical concerns, the transplant team would feel pressured to continue with the transplant or send them back to prison. It is a position they should not be put in," he said."
HT: Mike Ostrovsky
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Peter Cramton's Market Design blog
Welcome to fellow market designer and now fellow blogger Peter Cramton, who has just initiated his Market Design blog.
Experiments by psychologists and economists (on happiness)
From The Economist: an article on happiness leads indirectly to a very important conclusion about experiments (see below):The U-bend of life: Why, beyond middle age, people get happier as they get older
"Happiness doesn’t just make people happy—it also makes them healthier. John Weinman, professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, monitored the stress levels of a group of volunteers and then inflicted small wounds on them. The wounds of the least stressed healed twice as fast as those of the most stressed. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Sheldon Cohen infected people with cold and flu viruses. He found that happier types were less likely to catch the virus, and showed fewer symptoms of illness when they did. So although old people tend to be less healthy than younger ones, their cheerfulness may help counteract their crumbliness.
"Happier people are more productive, too. Mr Oswald and two colleagues, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi, cheered up a bunch of volunteers by showing them a funny film, then set them mental tests and compared their performance to groups that had seen a neutral film, or no film at all. The ones who had seen the funny film performed 12% better. This leads to two conclusions. First, if you are going to volunteer for a study, choose the economists’ experiment rather than the psychologists’ or psychiatrists’. Second, the cheerfulness of the old should help counteract their loss of productivity through declining cognitive skills—a point worth remembering as the world works out how to deal with an ageing workforce.
"Happiness doesn’t just make people happy—it also makes them healthier. John Weinman, professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, monitored the stress levels of a group of volunteers and then inflicted small wounds on them. The wounds of the least stressed healed twice as fast as those of the most stressed. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Sheldon Cohen infected people with cold and flu viruses. He found that happier types were less likely to catch the virus, and showed fewer symptoms of illness when they did. So although old people tend to be less healthy than younger ones, their cheerfulness may help counteract their crumbliness.
"Happier people are more productive, too. Mr Oswald and two colleagues, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi, cheered up a bunch of volunteers by showing them a funny film, then set them mental tests and compared their performance to groups that had seen a neutral film, or no film at all. The ones who had seen the funny film performed 12% better. This leads to two conclusions. First, if you are going to volunteer for a study, choose the economists’ experiment rather than the psychologists’ or psychiatrists’. Second, the cheerfulness of the old should help counteract their loss of productivity through declining cognitive skills—a point worth remembering as the world works out how to deal with an ageing workforce.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Top 2010 stories about repugnant transactions (and all time top repugnant transactions)
Repugnant transactions are those that some people don't want other people to engage in. They have had a big effect on which transactions we see, and which we don't. They change over time, sometimes quickly when they start to change, but they persist for a long time. How about these?
Top 5 in 2010
Top 5 of all time
Top 5 in 2010
- Same sex marriage
- Don’t ask, don’t tell in military..
- In-vitro fertilization (Nobel prize in 2010)
- Other reproduction related transactions: surrogacy, eggs
- Body parts for transplantation—compensation for donors (Kidneys, bone marrow, deceased donation…)
- Assisted suicide
- Marijuana (in CA…and lots of crime in Mexico) or Finance(? E.g. securitized mortgages…)
Top 5 of all time
- Sex (outside of marriage, same sex marriage, pornography prostitution…)
- Servitude: Slavery and serfdom and indentured servitude, women’s (lack of) rights (wasn’t so repugnant, now very much so)
- Worship (Inquisition, expulsions, heresy, religious wars)
- Interest on loans (was repugnant, no longer so much)
- Alcohol and mind-altering and addictive drugs (makes the list because of all the associated crime)
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Dubner interviews me about kidney sales and such
Repugnance radio* turns out to have two parts, and the second part is a Freakonomics blog post with a link to a podcast (which you can also download free at itunes), in which my voice is heard. Organ transplants are the main subject, from various angles.
Remind me to figure out how to have mood music come on when I speak, as I do in the podcast... (I might choose different mood music...)
If there's a transcript on the web at some point, I'll link to that for those of you who don't have a half hour to listen.
*The Levitt quote about economists in my earlier post about the NPR broadcast also made it into the podcast...
Remind me to figure out how to have mood music come on when I speak, as I do in the podcast... (I might choose different mood music...)
If there's a transcript on the web at some point, I'll link to that for those of you who don't have a half hour to listen.
*The Levitt quote about economists in my earlier post about the NPR broadcast also made it into the podcast...
Repugnance radio
Freakonomics Radio on NPR's Marketplace had a short segment called It's repugnant, but hey, it's efficient!, in which they speak about organ sales, among other things.
In it, Steve Levitt says
"One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society is to test them with repugnant ideas. Because economists, either by birth or by training, have their mind open, or skewed in just such a way that instead of thinking about whether something is right or wrong, they think about it in terms of whether it's efficient, whether it makes sense. And many of the things that are most repugnant are the things which are indeed quite efficient, but for other reasons -- subtle reasons, sometimes, reasons that are hard for people to understand -- are completely and utterly unacceptable."
In the comments, they get the following crack:
"There is one organ that nobody will ever need: The brain of an economist."
In it, Steve Levitt says
"One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society is to test them with repugnant ideas. Because economists, either by birth or by training, have their mind open, or skewed in just such a way that instead of thinking about whether something is right or wrong, they think about it in terms of whether it's efficient, whether it makes sense. And many of the things that are most repugnant are the things which are indeed quite efficient, but for other reasons -- subtle reasons, sometimes, reasons that are hard for people to understand -- are completely and utterly unacceptable."
In the comments, they get the following crack:
"There is one organ that nobody will ever need: The brain of an economist."
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
First live kidney donor dies at 79 (56 years after donating to his twin)
Ronald Lee Herrick became the first live kidney donor when, as a college freshman, he donated a kidney to his twin.
Here's the Globe obit: World's first organ donor dies at 79
"On Dec. 23, 1954, Dr. Joseph Murray removed a kidney from Ronald and implanted it in Richard. Years later, Murray shared a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work. For the Herrick twins, the results were more immediate and personal. Ronald gave Richard about eight more years of life.
"The older and more serious of the twins, Ronald Herrick didn't talk about his key role in opening a new venue in medicine unless someone asked, and even then he had to be drawn out if the conversation lasted more than a few sentences. Unassuming and modest, he taught math for decades in high school, junior high, and college. On the side, he kept his hand in farming because he grew up on a family farm and loved the physical work of agriculture.
"Mr. Herrick, who suffered from heart ailments that prompted him to retire from teaching and farming in 1997, died Monday in the Augusta Rehabilitation Center in Augusta, Maine, where he was recuperating from heart surgery in October. He was 79 and lived in Belgrade, Maine."
Here's another account: First successful organ donor dies
"Ronald Lee Herrick, who became a medical pioneer in 1954 when he donated a kidney to his twin brother in what is considered the world’s first successful organ transplant, has died at the age of 79.
"The native of Rutland, Mass., died in Augusta, Maine, on Monday, while recovering from heart surgery. A retired math teacher in Northborough before moving to Maine, he was quiet about his role in the groundbreaking operation at the former Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. His gift created a new field of medicine, as this Globe story says.
"I didn't think too much about it," Herrick said during an interview when the 50th anniversary of the operation was celebrated in 2004. "We had all kinds of meetings beforehand. I agreed, and there was no real problem."
"When the identical twins were 23 years old, Ronald’s brother Richard was dying of chronic kidney inflammation.
"Organ transplants had been attempted before, but they had failed. Kidney specialists at the Brigham believed taking a kidney from an identical twin would avoid the recently recognized problem of rejection, in which the recipient's immune system attacks the transplanted organ as foreign.
"The doctors -- including Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who later won the Nobel Prize in medicine -- were right. The operation was a success and Richard, a Coast Guard veteran who had been failing while on an early form of dialysis, recovered, married his recovery room nurse, and became the father of two children. He died of a heart attack eight years later.
"Here was a person who was near death and was able to return to normal life," Dr. Michael J. Zinner, chief of surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the successor to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, said in 2004. "This ushered in a new era, when surgery would no longer simply be used to treat acute illnesses like appendicitis or a traffic accident (injury) but now could be used to treat a chronic illness and make patients better."
HT: Steve Leider
Here's the Globe obit: World's first organ donor dies at 79
"On Dec. 23, 1954, Dr. Joseph Murray removed a kidney from Ronald and implanted it in Richard. Years later, Murray shared a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work. For the Herrick twins, the results were more immediate and personal. Ronald gave Richard about eight more years of life.
"The older and more serious of the twins, Ronald Herrick didn't talk about his key role in opening a new venue in medicine unless someone asked, and even then he had to be drawn out if the conversation lasted more than a few sentences. Unassuming and modest, he taught math for decades in high school, junior high, and college. On the side, he kept his hand in farming because he grew up on a family farm and loved the physical work of agriculture.
"Mr. Herrick, who suffered from heart ailments that prompted him to retire from teaching and farming in 1997, died Monday in the Augusta Rehabilitation Center in Augusta, Maine, where he was recuperating from heart surgery in October. He was 79 and lived in Belgrade, Maine."
Here's another account: First successful organ donor dies
"Ronald Lee Herrick, who became a medical pioneer in 1954 when he donated a kidney to his twin brother in what is considered the world’s first successful organ transplant, has died at the age of 79.
"The native of Rutland, Mass., died in Augusta, Maine, on Monday, while recovering from heart surgery. A retired math teacher in Northborough before moving to Maine, he was quiet about his role in the groundbreaking operation at the former Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. His gift created a new field of medicine, as this Globe story says.
"I didn't think too much about it," Herrick said during an interview when the 50th anniversary of the operation was celebrated in 2004. "We had all kinds of meetings beforehand. I agreed, and there was no real problem."
"When the identical twins were 23 years old, Ronald’s brother Richard was dying of chronic kidney inflammation.
"Organ transplants had been attempted before, but they had failed. Kidney specialists at the Brigham believed taking a kidney from an identical twin would avoid the recently recognized problem of rejection, in which the recipient's immune system attacks the transplanted organ as foreign.
"The doctors -- including Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who later won the Nobel Prize in medicine -- were right. The operation was a success and Richard, a Coast Guard veteran who had been failing while on an early form of dialysis, recovered, married his recovery room nurse, and became the father of two children. He died of a heart attack eight years later.
"Here was a person who was near death and was able to return to normal life," Dr. Michael J. Zinner, chief of surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the successor to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, said in 2004. "This ushered in a new era, when surgery would no longer simply be used to treat acute illnesses like appendicitis or a traffic accident (injury) but now could be used to treat a chronic illness and make patients better."
HT: Steve Leider
Elton John and husband have a son by a surrogate mom
Lots of formerly repugnant transactions get mentioned in this brief, happy story: Elton John, Husband Welcome New Son
"Elton John must have been really nice this past year. The legendary singer and songwriter and his husband welcomed a new child into their lives on Christmas Day.
"The "Benny and the Jets" singer and filmmaker David Furnish are the parents to a 7-pound, 15-ounce boy named Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John. The baby was delivered through an unidentified surrogate mother.
"The child is the first for John, 63. Us Weekly confirmed the adoption on Monday.
"...In the past, the British native attempted to adopt an HIV-positive child from the Ukraine with Furnish, but was forbidden to by government officials due to both John's age and marital status."
"Elton John must have been really nice this past year. The legendary singer and songwriter and his husband welcomed a new child into their lives on Christmas Day.
"The "Benny and the Jets" singer and filmmaker David Furnish are the parents to a 7-pound, 15-ounce boy named Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John. The baby was delivered through an unidentified surrogate mother.
"The child is the first for John, 63. Us Weekly confirmed the adoption on Monday.
"...In the past, the British native attempted to adopt an HIV-positive child from the Ukraine with Furnish, but was forbidden to by government officials due to both John's age and marital status."
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Medical marijuana in NJ
Marijuana--an herb whose recreational properties became well known before its medicinal ones--continues to be regarded as a repugnant transaction even in places where laws are being adapted to make marijuana available as a prescription drug.
Democrats Shape Marijuana Law: A Challenge to Gov. Christie's Approach
"New Jersey Senate Democrats are pushing ahead with a challenge to the Christie administration's rules for the state's new medical marijuana program, despite a supposedly bipartisan compromise the governor announced earlier this month.
"Democrats are unhappy with regulations to implement the program, saying it falls short of a law already described as the most restrictive in the country. The rules would limit the potency of marijuana, among other specifications contrary to the law signed in January just before Mr. Christie took office.
"In putting his own stamp on the program, Mr. Christie says he is trying to make sure New Jersey doesn't become another California or Colorado, where critics say it is too easy for healthy people to buy pot intended for those with medical problems."
Democrats Shape Marijuana Law: A Challenge to Gov. Christie's Approach
"New Jersey Senate Democrats are pushing ahead with a challenge to the Christie administration's rules for the state's new medical marijuana program, despite a supposedly bipartisan compromise the governor announced earlier this month.
"Democrats are unhappy with regulations to implement the program, saying it falls short of a law already described as the most restrictive in the country. The rules would limit the potency of marijuana, among other specifications contrary to the law signed in January just before Mr. Christie took office.
"In putting his own stamp on the program, Mr. Christie says he is trying to make sure New Jersey doesn't become another California or Colorado, where critics say it is too easy for healthy people to buy pot intended for those with medical problems."
Monday, December 27, 2010
Joel Klein steps down as NYC school chancellor
In an interview in the NY Times about his tenure as chancellor (Departing Schools Chief: ‘We Weren’t Bold Enough’), Klein says this about school choice:
"There are schools in this city that I would send my children to without a moment’s hesitation, and others that I wouldn’t. Schools have to turn around from within. There’s not somebody at a central office who waves a wand on this stuff. That’s why I want to give people choices."
Here are my papers on school choice in NYC.
"There are schools in this city that I would send my children to without a moment’s hesitation, and others that I wouldn’t. Schools have to turn around from within. There’s not somebody at a central office who waves a wand on this stuff. That’s why I want to give people choices."
Here are my papers on school choice in NYC.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Repugnance by residence: only Dutch can buy marijuana in Maastricht now
It's official:
The prohibition on the admission of non-residents to Netherlands ‘coffee-shops’ complies with European Union law "Around 2.7 million tourists a year who visited Maastricht’s 14 coffee shops will have to look elsewhere for their cannabis, as the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a ruling that prohibits non-Dutch residents from entering those venues.
“The rules are intended to put an end to the public nuisance caused by the large number of tourists wanting to purchase or consume cannabis in the coffee-shops in the municipality of Maastricht,” the court ruled, according to a press release published on its website."
HT: Bettina Klaus
The prohibition on the admission of non-residents to Netherlands ‘coffee-shops’ complies with European Union law "Around 2.7 million tourists a year who visited Maastricht’s 14 coffee shops will have to look elsewhere for their cannabis, as the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a ruling that prohibits non-Dutch residents from entering those venues.
“The rules are intended to put an end to the public nuisance caused by the large number of tourists wanting to purchase or consume cannabis in the coffee-shops in the municipality of Maastricht,” the court ruled, according to a press release published on its website."
HT: Bettina Klaus
Saturday, December 25, 2010
'tis the season to exchange gift cards
Cardpool is making a market in gift cards, offering to buy yours, and sell you those cashed in by others.
"You are always buying directly from us and selling directly to us. Cardpool buys our gift cards directly from our customers, verifies the authenticity and balance of each gift card, and holds on to them until a buyer is found. Even though we may never find a buyer for a given gift card, we pay sellers within 24 hours of receiving their gift card."
Here's how they address the trust problem involved with putting a gift card in the mail to them:
"How do I know I'll receive payment after sending you my gift cards?"
"Great question! Although there is a bit of a leap of faith here, we've received glowing reviews from CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other highly reputable publications. In addition, we're backed by the same founders, CEOs, and investors responsible for many of the brands we've come to love including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Zappos, StubHub, Twitter, Skype, Slide, Lotus, Mint, and many others. We were only able to do this by putting our customers first.
If you'd like to learn more, read about us in the news and learn more about our investors."
Unlike the original-issue market for gift cards, exchanged gift cards come in discrete amounts (sometimes they are the unused credit from the originally issued amount, or sometimes they are merchandise credit for goods that were returned). For example, when I looked there were four cards from the retailer Ann Taylor, in face value amounts $197.53, $212.17, $235.44, and $257.09, all being offered at a 15% discount...
HT: Joshua Gans
"You are always buying directly from us and selling directly to us. Cardpool buys our gift cards directly from our customers, verifies the authenticity and balance of each gift card, and holds on to them until a buyer is found. Even though we may never find a buyer for a given gift card, we pay sellers within 24 hours of receiving their gift card."
Here's how they address the trust problem involved with putting a gift card in the mail to them:
"How do I know I'll receive payment after sending you my gift cards?"
"Great question! Although there is a bit of a leap of faith here, we've received glowing reviews from CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other highly reputable publications. In addition, we're backed by the same founders, CEOs, and investors responsible for many of the brands we've come to love including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Zappos, StubHub, Twitter, Skype, Slide, Lotus, Mint, and many others. We were only able to do this by putting our customers first.
If you'd like to learn more, read about us in the news and learn more about our investors."
Unlike the original-issue market for gift cards, exchanged gift cards come in discrete amounts (sometimes they are the unused credit from the originally issued amount, or sometimes they are merchandise credit for goods that were returned). For example, when I looked there were four cards from the retailer Ann Taylor, in face value amounts $197.53, $212.17, $235.44, and $257.09, all being offered at a 15% discount...
HT: Joshua Gans
Friday, December 24, 2010
The market for clinical rotations for medical students
After studying in classrooms for two years, medical students head to hospitals for medical roations or clerkships. Some of the Carribean medical schools that serve primarily American students pay American hospitals to supervise their students, which is upsetting some existing relationships, the Chronicle reports: Students From Caribbean Med Schools Head for New York, Angering Some Local Programs --The trend angers some medical educators, who say their trainees are being crowded out of clinical rotations
"Thousands of students from offshore medical schools flock to teaching hospitals in the United States each year to complete the clinical portion of their education. In New York, the number of students performing third- and fourth-year hospital rotations from these offshore programs now almost equals the number of students from the state's own medical schools.
"That is making a number of medical educators in the state angry. They say their students are being crowded out of opportunities, in part because the offshore medical schools are paying hospitals to secure the spots—something they say their budgets prohibit them from doing. Some also say many offshore students have been poorly supervised and are inadequately prepared to practice medicine."
And here is the NY Times on the subject: Medical Schools in Region Fight Caribbean Flow
"The dispute also has far-reaching implications for medical education and the licensing of physicians across the country. More than 42,000 students apply to medical schools in the United States every year, and only about 18,600 matriculate, leaving some of those who are rejected to look to foreign schools. Graduates of foreign medical schools in the Caribbean and elsewhere constitute more than a quarter of the residents in United States hospitals.
"With experts predicting a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the United States by 2020, the defenders of these schools say that they fill a need because their graduates are more likely than their American-trained peers to go into primary and family care, rather than into higher-paying specialties like surgery.
"New York has been particularly affected by the influx because it trains more medical students and residents — fledgling doctors who have just graduated from medical school — than any other state. The New York medical school deans say that they want to expand their own enrollment to fill the looming shortage, but that their ability to do so is impeded by competition with the Caribbean schools for clinical training slots in New York hospitals."
HT: Muriel Niederle
"Thousands of students from offshore medical schools flock to teaching hospitals in the United States each year to complete the clinical portion of their education. In New York, the number of students performing third- and fourth-year hospital rotations from these offshore programs now almost equals the number of students from the state's own medical schools.
"That is making a number of medical educators in the state angry. They say their students are being crowded out of opportunities, in part because the offshore medical schools are paying hospitals to secure the spots—something they say their budgets prohibit them from doing. Some also say many offshore students have been poorly supervised and are inadequately prepared to practice medicine."
And here is the NY Times on the subject: Medical Schools in Region Fight Caribbean Flow
"The dispute also has far-reaching implications for medical education and the licensing of physicians across the country. More than 42,000 students apply to medical schools in the United States every year, and only about 18,600 matriculate, leaving some of those who are rejected to look to foreign schools. Graduates of foreign medical schools in the Caribbean and elsewhere constitute more than a quarter of the residents in United States hospitals.
"With experts predicting a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the United States by 2020, the defenders of these schools say that they fill a need because their graduates are more likely than their American-trained peers to go into primary and family care, rather than into higher-paying specialties like surgery.
"New York has been particularly affected by the influx because it trains more medical students and residents — fledgling doctors who have just graduated from medical school — than any other state. The New York medical school deans say that they want to expand their own enrollment to fill the looming shortage, but that their ability to do so is impeded by competition with the Caribbean schools for clinical training slots in New York hospitals."
HT: Muriel Niederle
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Internet poker
Internet poker has gotten awfully popular without yet getting correspondingly legal: Legalizing Internet poker gets push from Harry Reid in lame-duck session
"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is pushing a bill that would give official government approval to Texas hold-'em, five-card stud and other Internet poker games, which currently exist in a legal twilight zone dominated by companies operating from the Isle of Man and other exotic foreign locales.
"The idea is to lure some of that multibillion-dollar business into the United States - and give the federal government up to $3 billion in annual revenues in the process.
"The measure would be a boon for Las Vegas-based casinos, which supported Reid in his hard-fought reelection campaign and are eager to enter the lucrative world of online gaming. Many states and localities, including the District, have started thinking about legalizing Internet gaming on their own, giving federal lawmakers even more incentive to act.
"Under the status quo, Internet poker is played by millions of Americans every day in an essentially unregulated environment," Reid said in a statement this week. "The legislation I am working on would get our collective heads out of the sand and create a strict regulatory environment to protect U.S. consumers, prevent underage gambling and respect the decisions of states that don't allow gambling."
"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is pushing a bill that would give official government approval to Texas hold-'em, five-card stud and other Internet poker games, which currently exist in a legal twilight zone dominated by companies operating from the Isle of Man and other exotic foreign locales.
"The idea is to lure some of that multibillion-dollar business into the United States - and give the federal government up to $3 billion in annual revenues in the process.
"The measure would be a boon for Las Vegas-based casinos, which supported Reid in his hard-fought reelection campaign and are eager to enter the lucrative world of online gaming. Many states and localities, including the District, have started thinking about legalizing Internet gaming on their own, giving federal lawmakers even more incentive to act.
"Under the status quo, Internet poker is played by millions of Americans every day in an essentially unregulated environment," Reid said in a statement this week. "The legislation I am working on would get our collective heads out of the sand and create a strict regulatory environment to protect U.S. consumers, prevent underage gambling and respect the decisions of states that don't allow gambling."
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Incest is still a repugnant transaction
Professor charged with incest with his daughter
"Political science professor xxx, 46, was charged Thursday with having a sexual relationship with his daughter, 24.
"He was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with one count of incest in the third degree at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. According to police, the relationship appears to have been consensual."
According to NY State Law:
"255.25 Incest.
A person is guilty of incest when he or she marries or engages in sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse with a person whom he or she knows to be related to him or her, either legitimately or out of wedlock, as an ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of either the whole or the half blood, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece. Incest is a class E felony."
Over at Slate, there's an argument by William Saletan that even if incest is of a sort that can't lead to children (e.g. "deviate sexual intercourse"), it is repugnant because of its destruction of family relationship. His article has a particularly chilling quote:
"Read... what Woody Allen's son says about his dad: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father …"
"Political science professor xxx, 46, was charged Thursday with having a sexual relationship with his daughter, 24.
"He was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with one count of incest in the third degree at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. According to police, the relationship appears to have been consensual."
According to NY State Law:
"255.25 Incest.
A person is guilty of incest when he or she marries or engages in sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse with a person whom he or she knows to be related to him or her, either legitimately or out of wedlock, as an ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of either the whole or the half blood, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece. Incest is a class E felony."
Over at Slate, there's an argument by William Saletan that even if incest is of a sort that can't lead to children (e.g. "deviate sexual intercourse"), it is repugnant because of its destruction of family relationship. His article has a particularly chilling quote:
"Read... what Woody Allen's son says about his dad: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father …"
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Surrogate births, payments, and legal rights in Britain, continued
The Telegraph reports Childless couples win the right to pay surrogate mothers: Childless couples will be able to pay surrogate mothers large sums of money to have babies for them, following a landmark High Court ruling.
"A senior family court judge allowed a British couple to keep a newborn child even though they had technically broken the law by giving more than “reasonable expenses” to the American natural mother.
"Mr Justice Hedley said the existing rules on payments were unclear, and that the baby’s welfare must be the main consideration. Only in the “clearest case” of surrogacy for profit would a couple be refused the necessary court order to keep the baby.
"His comments, among the first in recent years on the subject by a senior legal figure, will be taken by many infertile couples as a welcome sign that they can now pay women to bear children for them without fear of breaking the law, and so be denied a family.
"Mr Justice Hedley warned that the courts would continue to consider the amount of money paid in each individual case, to ensure that a market is not established.
...
"Surrogacy was regulated in Britain in 1985, after Kim Cotton was paid £6,500 to carry a child conceived using her own egg but the sperm of a man whose wife was infertile, in what is known as “straight surrogacy”. In “host surrogacy”, embryos are created through IVF using the eggs and sperm of both intended parents are transferred to the surrogate mother.
"Under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, companies were banned from brokering deals between couples and potential mothers for profit. All arrangements have to be based on trust rather than money, and are not legally binding. Only “reasonable expenses”, which now can average £15,000, are allowed and must be agreed upon by the parties.
"In 1990, another law introduced the system of Parental Orders which couples must obtain following the birth in order to be regarded as the surrogate baby’s legal parents, rather than the natural mother.
...
"It is estimated that each year just 70 women in Britain have surrogate babies, but many more couples desperate to start a family now travel to countries such as India where the “reasonable expenses” will be far lower.
"In the current case, the unnamed British couple had made contact with a woman in Illinois, where no restrictions on payments to surrogate mothers apply. Her baby had been allowed to enter Britain on temporarily on a US passport, but the judge granted a Parental Order so it can now stay in the country with its new parents.
"Mr Justice Hedley agreed that the criteria, which also require that the surrogate acted of her own free will and that one of the couple must be a biological parent of the baby, had been “fully met” by the “most careful and conscientious parents”.
"However some have criticised the implications of his comments that payments above “reasonable expenses” were acceptable.
"Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: “Children are not commodities to be bought and sold. It is not the case that everybody has the right to a child, whatever the cost.
“The regulations that we have in this place regarding surrogacy are supposed to ensure that there is no element of profit in the whole process."
Here is my earlier post on this matter: Surrogacy, payments, and parental rights in Britain: Couples who pay surrogate mothers could lose right to raise the child.
"A senior family court judge allowed a British couple to keep a newborn child even though they had technically broken the law by giving more than “reasonable expenses” to the American natural mother.
"Mr Justice Hedley said the existing rules on payments were unclear, and that the baby’s welfare must be the main consideration. Only in the “clearest case” of surrogacy for profit would a couple be refused the necessary court order to keep the baby.
"His comments, among the first in recent years on the subject by a senior legal figure, will be taken by many infertile couples as a welcome sign that they can now pay women to bear children for them without fear of breaking the law, and so be denied a family.
"Mr Justice Hedley warned that the courts would continue to consider the amount of money paid in each individual case, to ensure that a market is not established.
...
"Surrogacy was regulated in Britain in 1985, after Kim Cotton was paid £6,500 to carry a child conceived using her own egg but the sperm of a man whose wife was infertile, in what is known as “straight surrogacy”. In “host surrogacy”, embryos are created through IVF using the eggs and sperm of both intended parents are transferred to the surrogate mother.
"Under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, companies were banned from brokering deals between couples and potential mothers for profit. All arrangements have to be based on trust rather than money, and are not legally binding. Only “reasonable expenses”, which now can average £15,000, are allowed and must be agreed upon by the parties.
"In 1990, another law introduced the system of Parental Orders which couples must obtain following the birth in order to be regarded as the surrogate baby’s legal parents, rather than the natural mother.
...
"It is estimated that each year just 70 women in Britain have surrogate babies, but many more couples desperate to start a family now travel to countries such as India where the “reasonable expenses” will be far lower.
"In the current case, the unnamed British couple had made contact with a woman in Illinois, where no restrictions on payments to surrogate mothers apply. Her baby had been allowed to enter Britain on temporarily on a US passport, but the judge granted a Parental Order so it can now stay in the country with its new parents.
"Mr Justice Hedley agreed that the criteria, which also require that the surrogate acted of her own free will and that one of the couple must be a biological parent of the baby, had been “fully met” by the “most careful and conscientious parents”.
"However some have criticised the implications of his comments that payments above “reasonable expenses” were acceptable.
"Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: “Children are not commodities to be bought and sold. It is not the case that everybody has the right to a child, whatever the cost.
“The regulations that we have in this place regarding surrogacy are supposed to ensure that there is no element of profit in the whole process."
Here is my earlier post on this matter: Surrogacy, payments, and parental rights in Britain: Couples who pay surrogate mothers could lose right to raise the child.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Mathematics and medicine: a cautionary tale
Mathematics is valuable in many areas of application, including medicine, but there are hazards to having doctors diagnose their own mathematical needs. A hilarious example was just brought to my attention; a well-cited medical paper that reinvents one of the first lessons of high school calculus (which the author goes on to name after himself):
A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves. by M M Tai, Diabetes Care February 1994 vol. 17 no. 2 152-154 .
Here's the abstract in its entirety:
"OBJECTIVE--To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS--In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. Validity of the model is established by comparing total areas obtained from this model to these same areas obtained from graphic method (less than +/- 0.4%). Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin. RESULTS--Tai's model proves to be able to 1) determine total area under a curve with precision; 2) calculate area with varied shapes that may or may not intercept on one or both X/Y axes; 3) estimate total area under a curve plotted against varied time intervals (abscissas), whereas other formulas only allow the same time interval; and 4) compare total areas of metabolic curves produced by different studies. CONCLUSIONS--The Tai model allows flexibility in experimental conditions, which means, in the case of the glucose-response curve, samples can be taken with differing time intervals and total area under the curve can still be determined with precision. "
Google Scholar reveals that this paper is Cited by 137, most of which appear to be un-ironic.
Incidentally, while scholars like to properly reference things, who knows if the world would be better if the author had cited a calculus textbook, and pointed out that this method had been well known for hundreds of years. Very likely the medical journal would have declined to publish it if they had realized it wasn't new. (It says something about the difficulty a medical journal faces in evaluating mathematical ideas that none of the referees recognized this.) And the citations the paper has received suggest that at least to some subsequent researchers, this elementary calculus lesson, delivered in a medical journal, filled a gap in their education and proved useful. On the other hand, if the paper had instead pointed out that there is lots of widely available software to do numerical integration, it might have been even more useful to docs who needed to find areas under curves.
One of the delights of interdisciplinary work is how fruitful it can be. This is particularly true in market design, which almost always involves work between economists and experts in other things who are directly involved in some market.
One of the frustrations of interdisciplinary work is that it involves translation between different cultures. For example, parts of market design are fairly mathematical, or involve ideas from economics (e.g. about incentives) that may be unfamiliar to non-economists.
My work on kidney exchange has had more than its share of both the delights and the frustrations, in part because the non-economist experts involved--kidney surgeons--are so very expert at what they do. I've had the good fortune to be part of teams of market designers and surgeons who work really well together.
But the translation barrier to the rest of the medical profession is formidable, particularly because matching for kidney exchange is quite mathematical, and doctors are mostly selected for their talents in other things. This makes for great complementarities when you find the right docs, but it's always hard for the medical journals to evaluate contributions that have an element of mathematics, and things can go badly wrong when a doctor overestimates the breadth of his competency, which is an occupational hazard for people whose daily work involves giving advice to patients whose lives depend on it.
HT: Assaf Romm
A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves. by M M Tai, Diabetes Care February 1994 vol. 17 no. 2 152-154 .
Here's the abstract in its entirety:
"OBJECTIVE--To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS--In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. Validity of the model is established by comparing total areas obtained from this model to these same areas obtained from graphic method (less than +/- 0.4%). Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin. RESULTS--Tai's model proves to be able to 1) determine total area under a curve with precision; 2) calculate area with varied shapes that may or may not intercept on one or both X/Y axes; 3) estimate total area under a curve plotted against varied time intervals (abscissas), whereas other formulas only allow the same time interval; and 4) compare total areas of metabolic curves produced by different studies. CONCLUSIONS--The Tai model allows flexibility in experimental conditions, which means, in the case of the glucose-response curve, samples can be taken with differing time intervals and total area under the curve can still be determined with precision. "
Google Scholar reveals that this paper is Cited by 137, most of which appear to be un-ironic.
Incidentally, while scholars like to properly reference things, who knows if the world would be better if the author had cited a calculus textbook, and pointed out that this method had been well known for hundreds of years. Very likely the medical journal would have declined to publish it if they had realized it wasn't new. (It says something about the difficulty a medical journal faces in evaluating mathematical ideas that none of the referees recognized this.) And the citations the paper has received suggest that at least to some subsequent researchers, this elementary calculus lesson, delivered in a medical journal, filled a gap in their education and proved useful. On the other hand, if the paper had instead pointed out that there is lots of widely available software to do numerical integration, it might have been even more useful to docs who needed to find areas under curves.
One of the delights of interdisciplinary work is how fruitful it can be. This is particularly true in market design, which almost always involves work between economists and experts in other things who are directly involved in some market.
One of the frustrations of interdisciplinary work is that it involves translation between different cultures. For example, parts of market design are fairly mathematical, or involve ideas from economics (e.g. about incentives) that may be unfamiliar to non-economists.
My work on kidney exchange has had more than its share of both the delights and the frustrations, in part because the non-economist experts involved--kidney surgeons--are so very expert at what they do. I've had the good fortune to be part of teams of market designers and surgeons who work really well together.
But the translation barrier to the rest of the medical profession is formidable, particularly because matching for kidney exchange is quite mathematical, and doctors are mostly selected for their talents in other things. This makes for great complementarities when you find the right docs, but it's always hard for the medical journals to evaluate contributions that have an element of mathematics, and things can go badly wrong when a doctor overestimates the breadth of his competency, which is an occupational hazard for people whose daily work involves giving advice to patients whose lives depend on it.
HT: Assaf Romm
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Prizes for solutions to problems
An Australian firm, Kaggle, hosts problem solving and prediction competitions, and describes itself this way: "Kaggle is an innovative solution for statistical/analytics outsourcing. ...Companies, governments and researchers present datasets and problems - the world's best data scientists then compete to produce the best solutions. At the end of a competition, the competition host pays prize money in exchange for the intellectual property behind the winning model."
One of their current competitions requires participants to predict travel time on Sydney's M4 freeway from past travel time observations.
Other approaches for eliciting solutions to problems by offering prizes are found at Innocentive, and Challenge.gov, both of which list problems for which people can offer solutions for evaluation.
One of their current competitions requires participants to predict travel time on Sydney's M4 freeway from past travel time observations.
Other approaches for eliciting solutions to problems by offering prizes are found at Innocentive, and Challenge.gov, both of which list problems for which people can offer solutions for evaluation.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The World Bank goes all in on carbon markets
The NY Times reports: World Bank Will Help Finance Carbon Markets
"As the United Nations climate change talks in Cancún lurch slowly toward an uncertain conclusion, the World Bank is stepping in to help developing countries set up pollution credit markets to help pay for clean development programs.
"Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank president, will appear before delegates here on Wednesday to announce the creation of a multimillion-dollar program to create trading mechanisms to stimulate clean energy projects and to slow the destruction of tropical forests, one of the primary sources of global warming emissions. ...
...
"The list of countries that will take part in the carbon market initiative was not announced, but they are expected to include China, Mexico, Indonesia and Chile. Other countries are expected to join as more funds become available, bank officials said.
"The European Union already has a carbon market, known as the Emissions Trading System, which barters pollution credits for European industries for climate-friendly projects, mainly in the developing world. Legislation to create a similar national trading system in the United States stalled in Congress this year.
"Such programs are controversial because they have been at times poorly monitored and the price for carbon credits has fluctuated wildly. Many poorer nations also complain that their natural resources have been turned into commodities traded on exchanges in wealthy countries.
“Carbon markets are an irreparably flawed means of addressing climate change,” Karen Orenstein of the environmental group Friends of the Earth told Reuters. “They are unreliable and subject to fraud, and they open the door to offset loopholes that undermine environmental integrity.”
"The World Bank hopes to devote as much as $100 million to provide technical support and other aid to help developing countries establish carbon exchanges and other ways of raising private funds to help reduce emissions and adapt to climate changes."
"As the United Nations climate change talks in Cancún lurch slowly toward an uncertain conclusion, the World Bank is stepping in to help developing countries set up pollution credit markets to help pay for clean development programs.
"Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank president, will appear before delegates here on Wednesday to announce the creation of a multimillion-dollar program to create trading mechanisms to stimulate clean energy projects and to slow the destruction of tropical forests, one of the primary sources of global warming emissions. ...
...
"The list of countries that will take part in the carbon market initiative was not announced, but they are expected to include China, Mexico, Indonesia and Chile. Other countries are expected to join as more funds become available, bank officials said.
"The European Union already has a carbon market, known as the Emissions Trading System, which barters pollution credits for European industries for climate-friendly projects, mainly in the developing world. Legislation to create a similar national trading system in the United States stalled in Congress this year.
"Such programs are controversial because they have been at times poorly monitored and the price for carbon credits has fluctuated wildly. Many poorer nations also complain that their natural resources have been turned into commodities traded on exchanges in wealthy countries.
“Carbon markets are an irreparably flawed means of addressing climate change,” Karen Orenstein of the environmental group Friends of the Earth told Reuters. “They are unreliable and subject to fraud, and they open the door to offset loopholes that undermine environmental integrity.”
"The World Bank hopes to devote as much as $100 million to provide technical support and other aid to help developing countries establish carbon exchanges and other ways of raising private funds to help reduce emissions and adapt to climate changes."
Friday, December 17, 2010
Bone marrow donor scam
I've blogged before about bone marrow donation, but recent news stories report what appears to be a financial scam by a bone marrow registry.
Officials rip health chain’s aggressive bone-marrow campaign
"Condemning the practice as a scam involving “suspect marketing and billing practices,’’ New Hampshire Attorney General Michael A. Delany yesterday announced a major probe of shopping-mall bone marrow donor recruitment drives by UMass Memorial and its subsidiary, the Caitlin Raymond International Registry.
Officials rip health chain’s aggressive bone-marrow campaign
"Condemning the practice as a scam involving “suspect marketing and billing practices,’’ New Hampshire Attorney General Michael A. Delany yesterday announced a major probe of shopping-mall bone marrow donor recruitment drives by UMass Memorial and its subsidiary, the Caitlin Raymond International Registry.
James T. Boffetti, New Hampshire senior assistant attorney general, said in a telephone interview yesterday afternoon that his office will investigate potential criminal violations of New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Act as part of a joint probe with the state’s Insurance Department.
Caitlin Raymond staff and the models from a Boston agency, which charged UMass Memorial between $40,000 and $50,000 a week for about a year and a half, told potential donors that the DNA test required to join the registry did not cost anything, Boffetti said.
However, UMass Memorial billed the potential donors’ insurance companies as much as $4,300 per test, far more than the roughly $100 charged by most labs, according to Boffetti."
Update: here's a more sympathetic story: Surge in marrow testing probed
Update: here's a more sympathetic story: Surge in marrow testing probed
The job market for assistant professors in marketing
That's the title of a new paper by César Zamudio, Yu Wang, and Ernan Haruvy, which looks at the market for marketers as a two sided matching problem.
Here's the abstract:
"We measure the value of different types of matches between job candidates and marketing departments by applying a structural two-sided matching model to a dataset of placements in the entry-level marketing professor job market in 1997 – 2005. Our results show that a match between a candidate trained in a particular field and a department with comparable faculty is not always the most valuable match. We find evidence for publications serving as quality signals for job candidates, especially publications in top marketing journals. Author positions close to the first and a large number of co-authors seem to be valuable signals of job candidates’ research productivity. Finally, matches between candidates who graduated from top ranked departments and top ranked hiring departments generate especially high matching values."
They write about the somewhat complicated unraveling they see in the market:
"The expertise structure of the marketing arena has caused the hiring process within each field to unravel differently. This is a consequence of the way research productivity is judged by marketing faculty from different fields. As of today, most candidates have defended their dissertation proposals by the time they participate in the market. CB [consumer behavior] and strategy job candidates are often expected to have multiple finished projects in their research pipeline, preferably submitted to top journals, by the time they participate in the market. This expectation requires that the candidate be involved in projects which are in advanced planning stages, and pursue active collaborations with senior faculty members. Modeling candidates, however, are only expected to have constructed a plan for their dissertation, along with preliminary results. This is because modeling articles often have a longer time to submission and the review process is considerably slower. Thus, modeling departments hire based on the promise of each candidate’s research proposal. To summarize, depending on the candidate’s field, he or she may be evaluated based on a promise of a planned project, or based on a rich portfolio of finished projects in which the candidate’s relative contribution is unknown.
Here's the abstract:
"We measure the value of different types of matches between job candidates and marketing departments by applying a structural two-sided matching model to a dataset of placements in the entry-level marketing professor job market in 1997 – 2005. Our results show that a match between a candidate trained in a particular field and a department with comparable faculty is not always the most valuable match. We find evidence for publications serving as quality signals for job candidates, especially publications in top marketing journals. Author positions close to the first and a large number of co-authors seem to be valuable signals of job candidates’ research productivity. Finally, matches between candidates who graduated from top ranked departments and top ranked hiring departments generate especially high matching values."
They write about the somewhat complicated unraveling they see in the market:
"The expertise structure of the marketing arena has caused the hiring process within each field to unravel differently. This is a consequence of the way research productivity is judged by marketing faculty from different fields. As of today, most candidates have defended their dissertation proposals by the time they participate in the market. CB [consumer behavior] and strategy job candidates are often expected to have multiple finished projects in their research pipeline, preferably submitted to top journals, by the time they participate in the market. This expectation requires that the candidate be involved in projects which are in advanced planning stages, and pursue active collaborations with senior faculty members. Modeling candidates, however, are only expected to have constructed a plan for their dissertation, along with preliminary results. This is because modeling articles often have a longer time to submission and the review process is considerably slower. Thus, modeling departments hire based on the promise of each candidate’s research proposal. To summarize, depending on the candidate’s field, he or she may be evaluated based on a promise of a planned project, or based on a rich portfolio of finished projects in which the candidate’s relative contribution is unknown.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Transplantable organs: the worst and best systems
A grim story is playing out as European investigators finish an investigation: The NY Times reports
"A two-year international inquiry has concluded that the prime minister of Kosovo led a clan of criminal entrepreneurs whose activities included trafficking in organs extracted from Serbian prisoners executed during the Kosovo conflict in 1999."
This story is the takeoff point for another, much more hopeful story at Slate, pointed out to me by Benjamin Kay of UCSD: The Kidney Trade: Can economists make the system for organ transplants more humane and efficient?
It touches on kidney exchange, and compensation for donors, among other things.
"A two-year international inquiry has concluded that the prime minister of Kosovo led a clan of criminal entrepreneurs whose activities included trafficking in organs extracted from Serbian prisoners executed during the Kosovo conflict in 1999."
This story is the takeoff point for another, much more hopeful story at Slate, pointed out to me by Benjamin Kay of UCSD: The Kidney Trade: Can economists make the system for organ transplants more humane and efficient?
It touches on kidney exchange, and compensation for donors, among other things.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Outsourcing reproduction
The WSJ has an article on Assembling the Global Baby
"With an international network of surrogate mothers and egg and sperm donors, a new industry is emerging to produce children on the cheap and outside the reach of restrictive laws."
"In a hospital room on the Greek island of Crete with views of a sapphire sea lapping at ancient fortress walls, a Bulgarian woman plans to deliver a baby whose biological mother is an anonymous European egg donor, whose father is Italian, and whose birth is being orchestrated from Los Angeles.
"She won't be keeping the child. The parents-to-be—an infertile Italian woman and her husband (who provided the sperm)—will take custody of the baby this summer, on the day of birth.
"The birth mother is Katia Antonova, a surrogate. She emigrated to Greece from Bulgaria and is a waitress with a husband and three children of her own. She will use the money from her surrogacy to send at least one of her own children to university.
"The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com LLC, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies.
"Mr. Rupak is a pioneer in a controversial field at the crossroads of reproductive technology and international adoption. Prospective parents put off by the rigor of traditional adoptions are bypassing that system by producing babies of their own—often using an egg donor from one country, a sperm donor from another, and a surrogate who will deliver in a third country to make what some industry participants call "a world baby."
"They turn to PlanetHospital and a handful of other companies. "We take care of all aspects of the process, like a concierge service," says Mr. Rupak, a 41-year-old Canadian.
...
"PlanetHospital's most affordable package, the "India bundle," buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby.
"Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child's gender.
...
"Greek surrogacy is regulated by a 2005 law, but the business takes advantage of a legal loophole. Surrogate mothers are not supposed to act for profit. However, they can accept money for pregnancy-related expenses. Typically, the expenses are set at up to $50,000.
"The judge never asks" about the money, says Maria Kouloumprakis, a surrogacy lawyer in Greece. Ms. Kouloumprakis calls the situation "an emptiness in the law."
"Egg donors often come from the U.S. or Eastern European countries since white parents tend to prefer fair-skinned children. Those countries allow donor anonymity. Parents on tighter budgets might opt for a donor from India or Latin America. Sperm is often provided by the fathers-to-be, though it's also available from a network of sperm banks in the U.S. and Europe.
...
"Many factors drive surrogacy's global spread. China and other big adoption destinations have toughened their rules in recent years. Some developed countries, including Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy and France, outlaw or severely restrict surrogacy at home. The United Kingdom prohibits surrogacy for pay, and in 2005 banned donor anonymity. Some U.S. states prohibit surrogacy for pay, and in recent years some have outlawed gay adoption.
...
"[In India, a] couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic.
...
"No country has become a greater magnet for the business than India, which made surrogacy legal in 2002. It has an ample supply of inexpensive surrogates and egg donors. There is little regulation beyond guidelines that set age limits for surrogates and prohibit a woman from acting as a surrogate more than three times.
...
"Surrogacy's complexity can give rise to extraordinarily difficult decisions, such as whether or not to abort. This can happen because clinics sometimes implant multiple embryos into multiple surrogates to improve the odds: If one miscarries, there are still viable pregnancies. However, if several implants successfully lead to pregnancy, clients face ending up with not just one or two children, but many."
And here is the PlanetHospital website--they are involved in all sorts of "medical tourism," not just reproductive services.
"With an international network of surrogate mothers and egg and sperm donors, a new industry is emerging to produce children on the cheap and outside the reach of restrictive laws."
"In a hospital room on the Greek island of Crete with views of a sapphire sea lapping at ancient fortress walls, a Bulgarian woman plans to deliver a baby whose biological mother is an anonymous European egg donor, whose father is Italian, and whose birth is being orchestrated from Los Angeles.
"She won't be keeping the child. The parents-to-be—an infertile Italian woman and her husband (who provided the sperm)—will take custody of the baby this summer, on the day of birth.
"The birth mother is Katia Antonova, a surrogate. She emigrated to Greece from Bulgaria and is a waitress with a husband and three children of her own. She will use the money from her surrogacy to send at least one of her own children to university.
"The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com LLC, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies.
"Mr. Rupak is a pioneer in a controversial field at the crossroads of reproductive technology and international adoption. Prospective parents put off by the rigor of traditional adoptions are bypassing that system by producing babies of their own—often using an egg donor from one country, a sperm donor from another, and a surrogate who will deliver in a third country to make what some industry participants call "a world baby."
"They turn to PlanetHospital and a handful of other companies. "We take care of all aspects of the process, like a concierge service," says Mr. Rupak, a 41-year-old Canadian.
...
"PlanetHospital's most affordable package, the "India bundle," buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby.
"Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child's gender.
...
"Greek surrogacy is regulated by a 2005 law, but the business takes advantage of a legal loophole. Surrogate mothers are not supposed to act for profit. However, they can accept money for pregnancy-related expenses. Typically, the expenses are set at up to $50,000.
"The judge never asks" about the money, says Maria Kouloumprakis, a surrogacy lawyer in Greece. Ms. Kouloumprakis calls the situation "an emptiness in the law."
"Egg donors often come from the U.S. or Eastern European countries since white parents tend to prefer fair-skinned children. Those countries allow donor anonymity. Parents on tighter budgets might opt for a donor from India or Latin America. Sperm is often provided by the fathers-to-be, though it's also available from a network of sperm banks in the U.S. and Europe.
...
"Many factors drive surrogacy's global spread. China and other big adoption destinations have toughened their rules in recent years. Some developed countries, including Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy and France, outlaw or severely restrict surrogacy at home. The United Kingdom prohibits surrogacy for pay, and in 2005 banned donor anonymity. Some U.S. states prohibit surrogacy for pay, and in recent years some have outlawed gay adoption.
...
"[In India, a] couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic.
...
"No country has become a greater magnet for the business than India, which made surrogacy legal in 2002. It has an ample supply of inexpensive surrogates and egg donors. There is little regulation beyond guidelines that set age limits for surrogates and prohibit a woman from acting as a surrogate more than three times.
...
"Surrogacy's complexity can give rise to extraordinarily difficult decisions, such as whether or not to abort. This can happen because clinics sometimes implant multiple embryos into multiple surrogates to improve the odds: If one miscarries, there are still viable pregnancies. However, if several implants successfully lead to pregnancy, clients face ending up with not just one or two children, but many."
And here is the PlanetHospital website--they are involved in all sorts of "medical tourism," not just reproductive services.
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