Videos of the Simons Institute lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory and Practice

The archived videos from Algorithmic Game Theory and Practice Workshop at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing can be found by clicking on the titles of individual talks on the schedule (below) or on the Simons Institute YouTube channel.

9:30 am – 10:10 am		Kidney Exchange: Algorithms and Incentives Alvin Roth, Stanford University
10:10 am – 10:40 am		Break
10:40 am – 11:20 am		Designing Online Advertising Markets Susan Athey, Stanford University
11:20 am – 12:00 pm		Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Chiara Farronato, Harvard University
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm		Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:10 pm		Business Model Analysis Kamal Jain, Faira.com
2:10 pm – 2:50 pm		The Limits of Reputation in Platform Markets Steve Tadelis, UC Berkeley
2:50 pm – 3:20 pm		Break
3:20 pm – 4:00 pm		Dynamic Labor Supply in the Sharing Economy Chris Nosko, University of Chicago
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm		Reception

Tuesday, November 17th, 2015

9:00 am – 9:30 am		Coffee & Check-In
9:30 am – 10:10 am		Adverse Selection and Auction Design for Internet Display Advertising Paul Milgrom, Stanford University
10:10 am – 10:40 am		Break
10:40 am – 11:20 am		Machine Learning in an Exchange Environment R. Preston McAfee, Microsoft
11:20 am – 12:00 pm		From Theory to Practice in Auction Modeling Hal Varian, Google, Inc.
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm		Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:10 pm		Online Advertisements and Online Algorithms Nikhil Devanur, Microsoft Research
2:10 pm – 2:40 pm		Break
2:40 pm – 4:00 pm		On How Machine Learning and Auction Theory Power Facebook Advertising Eric Sodomka, Facebook

Wednesday, November 18th, 2015

9:00 am – 9:30 am		Coffee & Check-In
9:30 am – 10:10 am		On-Line Systems with Long-Range Goals Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
10:10 am – 10:40 am		Break
10:40 am – 11:20 am		Decision Making at Scale: Platforms and Problems Ashish Goel, Stanford University
11:20 am – 12:00 pm		Strong Truthfulness in Multi-signal Peer Prediction with Overlapping Tasks David Parkes, Harvard University
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm		Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:10 pm		The State of Techniques for Solving Large Imperfect-Information Games Tuomas Sandholm, Carnegie Mellon University
2:10 pm – 2:50 pm		Security Games: Key Algorithmic Principles, Deployed Applications and Research Challenges(*) Milind Tambe, University of Southern California
2:50 pm – 3:20 pm		Break
3:20 pm – 4:00 pm		Robust Inference for Games via Theoretical Guarantees Denis Nekipelov, University of Virginia

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

9:00 am – 9:30 am		Coffee & Check-In
9:30 am – 10:10 am		An Evolutionary Model of Economic Behavior, Bounded Rationality, and Intelligence Andrew Lo, MIT
10:10 am – 10:40 am		Break
10:40 am – 11:20 am		The Design of Financial Exchanges: Some Open Questions at the Intersection of Econ and CS Eric Budish, University of Chicago
11:20 am – 12:00 pm		Algorithmic Trading and Machine Learning Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm		Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:10 pm		Incentive Auctions and Spectrum Repacking Kevin Leyton-Brown, University of British Columbia
2:10 pm – 2:50 pm		Informational Substitutes and Complements for Prediction Yiling Chen, Harvard University
2:50 pm – 3:20 pm		Break
3:20 pm – 4:20 pm		Open Directions Session

Friday, November 20th, 2015

9:00 am – 9:30 am		Coffee & Check-In
9:30 am – 10:10 am		AGT and Machine Learning Christos Papadimitriou, UC Berkeley
10:10 am – 10:40 am		Break
10:40 am – 11:20 am		Bitcoin's Incentive Structure Aviv Zohar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
11:20 am – 12:00 pm		Dynamic Pricing in Ride-Sharing Platforms Ramesh Johari, Stanford University

Recap of the Sonnenschein celebration at Chicago (with a video)

Here's a recap from the Becker Friedman Institute: The Path Ahead for Economic Theory

Here's the video of a panel discussion on the future of economic theory, in which I get to talk about the work of Eric Budish, among other things, as an example of economic engineering. .(I speak for about 10 minutes after the introduction by Nancy Stokey, then Roger Myerson, Ariel Rubinstein and Lars Hansen speak)

From Bolivia, where the legal working age is now 10 years old

Nico Lacetera points me to this NY Times video on the differing views about child labor in Bolivia, where the legal working age has been lowered to 10, and there is some sentiment for lowering it further (and, of course, opposition as well):
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000003982850/in-bolivia-legitimizing-child-labor.html

Voluntary deceased organ donation in China

It's always hard to parse the Chinese organ data, and know what is going on in the military hospitals, but here's an encouraging story

Chinese Organ Donation on the Rise
   2015-12-06 21:11:39    Xinhua      Web Editor: Guan Chao

"Chinese organ donation has been on the rise after the country banned the use of prisoners' organs for transplant starting Jan. 1 this year, a top medical expert said Sunday.

As of Nov. 9, China has recorded 5,384 voluntary organ donors, who donated 14,721 various organs, said Huang Jiefu, head of a national human organ donation and transplant committee and former vice health minister.

China is expected to top the world in terms of organ donation in several years, said Huang at a forum in the central city of Changsha.

"As long as the donation system is transparent, most of citizens will be willing to join the program," he said.

The shortage of qualified transplant doctors is a major bottleneck. There are only 169 hospitals across the country eligible for organ transplant, with some 100 doctors able to do the operation, said Huang.

Huang called for speedy training of medical talent and expanding the number of hospitals eligible for organ transplant to 300 and the number of doctors to 400 to meet the public demand.

China began a voluntary organ donation trial in 2010 and promoted the practice across the country in 2013. Now, it tops Asia in the number of organ donations."

A skeptical look at "nudges" in the Atlantic (which reminds me of Loewenstein's 2010 op-ed in the NY Times)

In the Atlantic, a recent complaint about the tendency to over-promote the efficacy of"nudges" as inexpensive solutions to big problems:

Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help by Frank Pasquale

"...the nudge is really a fudge—a way of avoiding the thornier issues at stake..."
**********

I think the promises and perils of relying on nudges as primary tools of policy were set forth elegantly in a 2010 NY Times op-ed by George Loewenstein and Peter Ubel, who spoke of the relative magnitudes of the effects of nudges compared to e.g. changes in price:

Economics Behaving Badly

 "Behavioral economics should complement, not substitute for, more substantive economic interventions. If traditional economics suggests that we should have a larger price difference between sugar-free and sugared drinks, behavioral economics could suggest whether consumers would respond better to a subsidy on unsweetened drinks or a tax on sugary drinks."

Loewenstein, of course, is one of the founding giants of behavioral economics.

American Medical Association adopts resolution calling for increased incentives for organ donation

I'm not completely clear on the parliamentary procedures of the American Medical Association's House of Delegates, but Frank McCormick draws my attention to a recently passed resolution:
RESOLUTION 007 - REMOVING DISINCENTIVES AND  STUDYING THE USE OF INCENTIVES TO INCREASE  THE NATIONAL ORGAN DONOR POOL

The AMA site itself requires a login, but here's an ungated site with an account of the resolution:

Report from the Section Council on Emergency Medicine: Highlights of the AMA Interim Meeting, Nov 2015, Atlanta, GA

"Unanimous testimony was offered in support of the medical student resolution* to remove disincentives and study the use of incentives to increase the national organ donor pool. Misery and disability due to lack of organs is evidenced every day in our practices. The HOD voted first to support a study on use of incentives, including valuable consideration, second to eliminate disincentives and third to remove legal barriers to research investigating the use of incentives."

*Here's the draft of the resolution as initially submitted: 

***********

But don't get too excited,  the working group on The Delivery System reporting in The Surgeon General's Workshop on Increasing Organ Donation held in. July 1991  also recommended removing disincentives and studying the possible use of incentives to increase organ donation.

p59: "RECOMMENDATIONS

II-A.1 Maintain the current approach of organ and tissue donation based on

voluntary, altruistic choice and family participation, but continue to explore the

potential impact of possible alternative approaches, such as financial incentives and presumed consent.

II-A.l.Str.1: DHHS should support the collection and further analysis of

existing data on the attitudes of the public as well as those involved in the

donation process regarding the issues of financial incentives and presumed

consent. "

Amsterdam school choice: next year will be single tie-breaking deferred acceptance (instead of multiple tie-breaking)

In Amsterdam, the school choice debates have been resolved for now. Next year, there will be a deferred acceptance algorithm with single tie-breaking, which replaces deferred acceptance with multiple tie breaking. The reason is to avoid inefficiencies that could leave students wanting to trade places.
 Hessel Oosterbeek forwards the following press release:

Nu toch matching voor toewijzing van scholen aan nieuwe brugklassers
Osvo herziet besluit plaatsingsprocedure en volgt Amsterdamse gemeenteraad in wens tot matching
Datum: 27 november 2015


Google translate renders it into English like this:

Now surely matching for allocation of new schools graders
Osvo revises decision placement procedure and following Amsterdam city council in desire to matching
Date: November 27, 2015

The Amsterdam secondary schools united in Osvo match yet again to bring out high school students in a school of choice. In matching children fill a preferred list of several schools, and the computer most favorable and fairest possible distribution calculates. Last year was also matched, but according to a different algorithm. With the currently chosen variant will be more students in the school of their first choice, but there will be more children who are considerably lower on their preferred list. In any case, there is not the problem afterwards between students can be exchanged for a better result.

Osvo still goes first consult with the alderman of education Simone Kukenheim the practical assistance that will get the schools of the municipality for the implementation of the matching. Concrete will be requested from the municipality together with Osvo a central project, the information to parents and children and to take complaints to themselves.

A broad majority in the city council gave to know the alderman of education for this variant of matching. The alderman asked Osvo thereafter published the decision on October 29 to return to draw, to reconsider. With the amended decision in favor of the matching variant Osvo hopes for this year to be able to count on political and social support in the implementation, but also for the results of the placement.

The selected system is also preferred by a large group of parents who made ​​their wish to keep matching known through a petition, in a variant they call matching 2.0. This variant is referred to as DA STB or RSD. DA STB earlier this year in a scientific analysis for the evaluation Osvo compared with DA MTB, which was used in the 2015 matching. DA STB recently came second in the bus in the quest of Osvo to a procurement procedure for 2016. For the pros and cons refer to 
http://www.verenigingosvo.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Evaluatie_Matching_simulaties.pdf

Osvo has always its decision to match last year defended by pointing to the starting point of an optimal and fair distribution of the few places in schools where more children enroll than there are places. After a storm of protest about the system, its implementation and information about Osvo selected after extensive review and in consultation with the municipality for a combination of items and match. It would be students in a first-round no preferred list can draw for their school of choice, followed by a relatively small group of about 500 children would be placed on matching the schools still places available. The second round would be conducted according to the system which now is put the whole group of students.


See previous posts:

Friday, June 26, 2015

School choice in Amsterdam goes to court over tie-breaking

Thursday, July 2, 2015

The Amsterdam court rules on school choice

Curious Minds interviews me about matching, market design, and a phone call that set me on my path (podcast)

CM 014: Alvin Roth on the Secrets of Market Design

By Gayle | December 14, 2015 | 0 

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Nobel-prize-winning economist Alvin Roth explores the markets that shape our lives, particularly our work, our health care and our schools. He also explains how key technologies enable companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Google to thrive. His insights extend beyond products, services, and features to include how successful companies attract and hire the most talented employees.

Alvin Roth is a Stanford University Professor, and bestselling author of Who Gets What – and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design. In this episode you will learn:

• how one phone call and a pivotal decision ultimately led to a Nobel Prize
• the important differences between markets
• the role of markets when it comes to marriage, loans, and more
• the role of social support in markets
• the ways the Internet and mobile technology shape market possibilities
• the three key factors that influence the success of companies like Airbnb and Uber
• the ways Smartphones are influencing markets
• how labor market findings influenced the market designs of today
• what game theory can teach us about getting into college and getting a job
• how market designers are applying their skills to the growing global refugee crisis

Alvin also shares what got him interested in the economics of market design and the potential this new field holds for helping us rethink what markets are and can do.

Climate change agreement, on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning

I discussed this weekend's climate change agreement on Bloomberg Surveillance from minute 33 to 41, which you can listen to hereDownload
or here: http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/News/Surveillance/vDuJ6SlgV5gs.mp3

More or less I said that the Paris deal, which may be all that was politically available, is complex and aspirational—it will be hard for each country to devise ways to cut emissions, it will be hard to measure what was cut, it will be hard to decide what it cost (and so to determine rich to poor country subsidies).

A simpler plan, but not politically feasible (not in the US and not in the world at large) would have been to agree to, say, double the price of carbon over the next few years, by taxing it, and giving back the money to individuals (by reducing other taxes, or by lump sum tax deductions), so that they would still have reason to economize on how much they drive, how they heat their houses, etc.  This would also give a boost to companies that want to produce clean energy and energy saving tech

Technology watch: does Crispr create a new class of repugnant transactions?

The NY Times has the story:
Scientists Seek Moratorium on Edits to Human Genome That Could Be Inherited

"An international group of scientists meeting in Washington called on Thursday for what would, in effect, be a moratorium on making inheritable changes to the human genome.

"The group said it would be “irresponsible to proceed” until the risks could be better assessed and until there was “broad societal consensus about the appropriateness” of any proposed change. The group also held open the possibility for such work to proceed in the future by saying that as knowledge advances, the issue of making permanent changes to the human genome “should be revisited on a regular basis.”
...
“The overriding question is when, if ever, we will want to use gene editing to change human inheritance,” David Baltimore said in opening the conference this week.
...
"The meeting was prompted by a new genetic technique, invented three years ago, that enables DNA to be edited with unprecedented ease and precision. The technique, known as Crispr-Cas9 and now widely accessible, would allow physicians to alter the human germline, which includes the eggs and the sperm, to cure genetic disease or even enhance desirable physical or mental traits.
...
"“If we are going to view certain applications of human genome editing as permissible, can we draw a line and not throw out legitimate medical applications in order to stave off those that are less palatable to most of us?” Dr. Daley asked.

"Other scientists suggested that the possible risks of human genome editing would be rapidly reduced as the techniques were refined. “Many of these technologies are improving so fast it’s hard to measure,” said George Church, a professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School. Erroneous cuts made by Crispr-Cas9 can now be reduced to less than one per three trillion base pairs of DNA; the human genome is three billion base pairs in length.

“The concept of a ban on gene editing does not make sense,” Dr. Church wrote in the current issue of the journal Nature. “Banning human germline editing could put a damper on the best medical research and instead drive the practice underground to black markets and uncontrolled medical tourism.”

How do Uber drivers get home at the end of the day?

Uber's matching algorithm takes drivers' destinations into account at the end of their working day: here's Uber's announcement of the change in their matching algorithm (published in November).  Helping Drivers Reach Their Destinations

"For our partners, driving with Uber means having the freedom to set their own schedules. The reasons people drive are as diverse as the individuals themselves. Some drive to supplement existing income, others drive to save up for a vacation or to pay off a student loan–-and when and where drivers choose to log onto to the Uber platform varies just as much.

"That’s why we’re introducing a new feature that enables drivers to tell Uber where they’re heading so that we can find trips on their way.

"Starting this week in the Bay Area, drivers will be able to set their destination twice a day when they want to be matched only with riders traveling in a similar direction. Whether it’s commuting to the areas where rides are needed most, driving back home at the end of the day, or running errands around town, drivers can set their destination to earn fares that are along their route."

Sandro Ambuehl in the Washington Post: How incentives can change the way you evaluate options (and not just the choices you make)

Jeff Guo at the Washington Post has written a nice account of Sandro Ambuehl's jobmarket paper. Here's the WashPo story: The secret to why money is so good at changing people’s minds

Here are the first lines:
"It is illegal in the United States, and most other countries, to pay people for their organs.

It is not illegal, though, to pay people to eat bugs. So that is what Sandro Ambuehl, a doctoral candidate in economics at Stanford, recently did, to show how money can make you a little crazy."

Is "program hiring" a new name for unraveling?

The WSJ has the story: When a Job Offer Comes Without a Job

"Some companies are hiring first and figuring out jobs for these recruits much later.

"Amid a fierce market for college recruits, companies like Facebook Inc. and Intuit Inc. are making offers to dozens of hires without having a particular job waiting—or even, sometimes, a starting salary.

"Recruiters say so-called “program hiring” helps companies scoop up promising talent ahead of competitors and ensures their newest workers can stand a little uncertainty. College career officers say more students are getting offers this way.
...
"Entry-level hires are locked in more quickly, since recruiters arrive on campus armed with approval to make hires on the spot as they see fit, she said.

"This is important as employers press onto university campuses earlier and earlier in the school year.

"A candidate who accepts Intuit’s offer sets in motion a complex matchmaking process that includes salary discussions.

"Each new hire is assigned a recruiter who coordinates a series of matching conversations between the hire and various Intuit managers over the course of several months.

"The conversations are designed to align the hire’s interests and talents with an available position—and teams that help with campus recruiting often get first dibs on new hires—Ms. Carter said.

"Hires are given their assignments shortly before starting work, having received information about pay some time before that."

New market designers: class photos at Stanford and Harvard

Two end of class photos, for market design classes at Stanford and Harvard (where it hasn't been taught for a while, and was taught this year by Scott Kominers). The pipeline of market designers is looking good.