Is it repugnant to give money to poor people?

Chris Blattman's weekly report includes a guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action containing this interesting section on whether cash transfers to the poor are starting to be regarded as repugnant...

"Seema Jayachandran did a very popular Reddit Ask Me Anything about her Science paper on cash transfers for not cutting down trees (the AMA landed her on the front page of Reddit for the second time). In answering questions from the public, she was struck by how many people people had a moral objection to paying people not to do something (as opposed to traditional conditional cash transfers which reward people for doing something, like enrolling their children in school).

• Similarly, NPR reports that despite an evaluation showing massive benefits to giving poor people cash in Zambia, moral objections from the public to giving “lazy” people free money limited the program eventually to just the “deserving” poor, such as the elderly, and people who can’t work.
• Rich countries aren’t immune to this kind of thinking. A Vox The Weeds podcast (and parallel article) on the legacy of welfare reform from last year talks about how U.S. social safety net policy changed based on the public’s image of a single mother. At first, the U.S. image of a single mother was a widow trying to raise her children by herself. At that time it was seen as virtuous to help her stay home and raise her kids. When the public image of a single mother changed to a poor minority woman, programs began to see her as someone who should be out working and the design of the benefits changed.
• Those of us who work in the world of evaluating the economics of anti-poverty programs are used to thinking about effectiveness and cost as the primary determinants policymakers need to know, but these are good reminders that the moral view of the design of the program may be just as important in determining whether a program gets implemented or gathers dust on a shelf."

HT: Benjamin Roth

Is it repugnant to write books for children and young adults that deal explicitly with sex?

Is it repugnant to write books for teenagers that deal explicitly with sex?  How about for four year olds?

From the NY Times:
Want Teenage Boys to Read? Easy. Give Them Books About Sex.
By DANIEL HANDLER
"I write books for children under the pen name Lemony Snicket, and I’ve noticed that when I go to Lemony Snicket events, the crowds are about evenly split between boys and girls. But I also write young adult books, and if more than one boy shows up at one of my teen book club events, it’s notable, if not a miracle. Something happens once a young man hits puberty.
...
"It is a gross generalization, of course, to say that what young men want to read about is sex — or to imply that the rest of us aren’t as interested — but it’s also offensive to pretend, when we’re ostensibly wondering how to get more young men to read, that they’re not interested in the thing we all know they’re interested in. There’s hardly any real sex in young adult books, and when it happens, it’s largely couched in the utopian dreams or the finger-wagging object lessons of the world we hope for, rather than the messy, risky, delicious and heartbreaking one we live in."
************
And from Haaretz:
Israelis debate: Is it okay for a children’s book to say sex is pleasurable?
The latest work by celebrated Israeli children's author Alona Frankel tells preschoolers how their parents do it. Israeli lawmakers are worried

"About two weeks ago the Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child held a discussion on sex education for preschool children. The reason was the Hebrew-language book by the author and illustrator Alona Frankel: “A Book Full of Love – How Naftali Came Into the World.”
In the book, Frankel describes how people meet, fall in love and have sex – in one case leading to the birth of Naftali, the curly-haired protagonist of her stories whom every Israeli knows from her popular book published 40 years ago and since translated, “Once Upon a Potty.”
But MK Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu), who heads the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said "How Naftali Came Into the World" raised many questions for her, including whether its descriptions were “a little too much for 3- and 4-year-olds.” Shasha-Biton objects mainly to the description of the sex act in the book, which was published two years ago by the Steimatzky publishing house.
As Naftali’s mother puts it in the book, “When people love each other, they want to be very close. We embraced, we caressed, we kissed, and it was sweet and pleasant. We were wrapped around each other and very close, when the penis on the body of Naftali’s father slipped into my vagina. And inside my body it was warm, enjoyable and exciting. A flood of sperm was ejected from him and became attached to a tiny egg that was waiting in the uterus, a special place inside my tummy.”
During the discussion, Frankel was attacked by the committee’s chairwoman, Shasha-Biton, who although she did not deny the importance of sex education for children, worried about the way it was being presented to preschoolers."

Organ transplants in China: an optimistic assessment

There are optimistic statements about China's progress on developing a system of voluntary organ donation (to replace the prior system of obtaining organs for transplant from executed prisoners.)   Some of these statements originate with the Chinese press. The Vatican is also optimistic.  The Vatican also has wide ranging diplomacy with China concerning quite different issues.  The stories below collectively reflect each of these things.

Here's a story in the SF Chronicle
China to lead in organ transplants by 2020

"China is on track to lead the world in organ transplant surgeries by 2020 following its abandonment of the much-criticized practice of using organs from executed prisoners, the architect of the country’s transplant program said Wednesday.
Chairman of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee Huang Jiefu said the voluntary civilian organ donations had risen from just 30 in 2010, the first year of a pilot program, to more than 5,500 this year.
That will allow around 15,000 people to receive transplants this year, Huang said. The U.S. currently leads the world in organ transplants, with about 28,000 people receiving them each year.
“We anticipate according to the speed of the development of the organ donation in China, the momentum, in the year 2020, China will become the No. 1 country in the world to perform organ transplantation in an ethical way,” Huang said in an interview at his office in an ancient courtyard house inside Beijing’s old city.
China is seeking to expand the number of willing organ donors, but it has run up against some cultural barriers: Family members are still able to block a donation, even if the giver is willing, and Chinese are averse to registering as donors by ticking a box on their drivers’ licenses, considering it to be tempting fate.
Instead, authorities are partnering with AliBaba, China’s virtually ubiquitous online shopping and payment platform, to allow people to register in just 10 seconds, Huang said. Huang said more than 210,000 Chinese have expressed their willingness to become donors, although that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the country’s population of 1.37 billion.
...
"Huang said China has adhered to a complete ban on the use of organs from executed prisoners that went into effect in 2015, although some in the field outside China have called for the country to allow independent scrutiny to ensure it is keeping to its pledge.
Critics have questioned China’s claims of reform and suggested that the World Health Organization should be allowed to conduct surprise investigations and interview donor relatives. The U.N. health agency has no authority to enter countries without their permission.
Chinese officials say China shouldn’t be singled out for such treatment while other countries are not.
Further moving on from the days when foreigners could fly to China with briefcases of cash to receive often risky, no-questions-asked transplant surgeries, China has also taken measures to stamp out organ trafficking and so-called “transplant tourism,” including by limiting transplants to Chinese citizens."
*********
China’s organ transplantation reform hailed by international community

"By CGTN’s Yang Jinghao

A sensitive issue just a decade ago, organ donation and transplantation in China has seen a remarkable shift during the past few years. A total of 7,000 organs were voluntarily donated between January and July this year, according to a conference on organ transplantation held in China over the weekend.

Comparatively, the number in 2010 was just 34 for the whole year.

The conference, held in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, gathered top organ transplant professionals from major international organizations. They reviewed the achievements China has made and discussed how to strengthen international cooperation."
**********

And here's a story from Crux (whose subhead is "Taking the Catholic Pulse")
Chinese state media highlights Vatican official at organ trafficking conference in Beijing

"In a sign of the slow thawing of relations between China and the Vatican, a Chinese state newspaper reported positively on a Vatican official’s remarks at an organ trafficking conference taking place in Beijing.
Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, attended the conference on Thursday, part of China’s ongoing efforts to convince the world it has reformed its organ donation procedures.
In 2015, the communist country announced it was stopping the practice of using organs from executed prisoners. In 2016, official statistics stated surgeons in China had harvested organs from 4,080 donors and performed 13,263 transplant surgeries, the second highest in the world. Officials said all donors were through a registered volunteer donor system. By 2020, China is expected to surpass the United States to take the top spot.
Last month the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization , the Transplantation Society (TTS), and the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG) - four of the most influential societies in promoting global ethical practices in organ transplantation - sent a letter expressing their appreciation for China’s efforts in organ donation and transplantation reform.
Despite the assurances of the government, many human rights activists are skeptical such numbers could be achieved through an exclusively voluntary system, especially after decades of reliance on the organs of prisoners."
*************

Here are comments from Chancellor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo commending the development of the China Model

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

And here's a story about another realm in which China and the Vatican are simultaneously engaged.

Vatican official hints at unofficial agreement with China on bishops
"HONG KONG (CNS) -- A senior Vatican official has hinted there is an unofficial agreement between the Holy See and Beijing on the appointment of bishops, even as negotiations to formalize arrangements continue to hit roadblocks, reported ucanews.com.

Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, who attended a conference on the sensitive topic of organ donation and transplants in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, offered the hint during an interview with state-run Global Times Aug. 4.
**************
Here are my earlier posts on the positions taken by the Pontifical Academy regarding transplantation.

"Demonstrated interest" as costly signaling in college admissions

Costly signals are valuable as signals because they are costly to send. But of course they may be more costly for some to send than others.


"Demonstrated interest: Signaling behavior in college admissions" (by James Dearden, Suhui Li, Chad Meyerhoefer, and Muzhe Yang) Contemporary Economic Policy (2017)

Abstract

In college admission decisions, important and possibly competing goals include increasing the quality of the freshman class and making the school more selective while attaining the targeted size of the incoming class. Especially for high-quality applicants who receive multiple competing offers, colleges are concerned about the probability that these students accept the offers of admission. As a result, applicants' contacts with admissions offices, such as campus visits, can be viewed positively by the officers as demonstrated interest in the colleges. We provide empirical evidence on the effects of demonstrated interest on admission outcomes. Specifically, we use unique and comprehensive administrative data, which include all contacts made by each applicant to the admissions office of a medium-sized highly selective university during two admission cycles. We find that an applicant who contacts the university is more likely to be admitted, and that the effect of the contact on the probability of admission is increasing in the applicant's Scholastic Assessment Test score, particularly when the contact is costly to make. We also use a numerical example to explore policies to reduce the inequity associated with the use of demonstrated interest in admission decisions, examining in particular the subsidization of costly demonstrated interest by low-income students.

Here's an article about the paper in Inside Higher Ed...
Another Edge for the Wealthy
"Many colleges favor applicants who show "demonstrated interest" -- and the way they measure it puts those without money at a disadvantage, study finds."

More on compensation for donors

It's hard for anyone to say anything new in the long (and long-running) debate about whether we should try to increase the supply of kidneys by crafting some form of ethical, non-coercive compensation for donors, or whether this should remain illegal.
Frank McCormick points me to this recent article, which ends with what I hope is a fairly noncontroversial link to the deceased donor registries:

It May Sound Awful, but We Really Do Need to Pay for Human Organs
by Mark Joffe

It concludes:
"While there is little support for an Iranian-style organ market in the United States, there is an increasing realization that finding more live donors will involve offering them incentives to give up a kidney. A reform that compensates donors without allowing recipients to pay for organs is a viable middle ground. The government could fund such a program with cost savings on dialysis. One estimate puts the potential savings at as much as $12 billion a year.

Last year, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.) introduced the Organ Donation Clarification Act, which would have allowed state and local governments to implement pilot programs offering non-cash benefits to live organ donors. These in-kind benefits might include a tuition voucher, loan forgiveness or a contribution to the organ donor’s designated charity. In addition, Cartwright’s legislation would have clarified language in NOTA to establish that cash reimbursement for donor travel expenses, medical costs and lost wages is permissible. The bill attracted 11 bipartisan cosponsors but did not move out of committee.

Cartwright’s office told me that he plans to reintroduce the legislation in the current Congress. Once he does, he will have the support of a group of D.C. policy wonks who have created the Organ Reform Group and Network. One of the group’s members, economist Kurt Schuler, donated a kidney to a stranger in 2014 under the current system, but believes that incentives are needed to end the nation’s kidney shortage.

Whether or not you agree that live donors should be compensated for their kidneys, I hope we can all agree that donating our organs at death is no sacrifice. While this issue is on your mind, consider signing up for the organ registry at https://organdonor.gov/register.html."

Trump Administration Withdraws Proposed Ban on Compensation for Bone Marrow

After the Ninth Circuit ruled that compensation for blood stem cells (sometimes simply referred to as bone marrow) could be compensated in some cases, the department of Health and Human Services moved to reinstate the ban.  (I coauthored one of many of the public comments they received "in opposition to the proposed rule changes by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that would ban compensation for bone marrow donations.")

On August 1 the new administration (which hasn't done much else that I approve of)  withdrew the proposed rule change (which I gather should leave the Ninth Circuit decision as the law of the land).

Here's a news story and an editorial (the only reports I've seen so far).

First the story (which seems to incorrectly attribute the administrative agency behind the move to the Office of Management and the Budget instead of to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):

Trump Administration Withdraws Proposed Obama Ban on Compensation for Bone Marrow

"The Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn a proposed rule banning compensation for hematopoietic stem cells. In other words, you can get paid when someone harvests stem cells from your bone marrow.

Bone marrow transplantation is used to treat a variety of ailments, including aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia, bone marrow damage during chemotherapy, and blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. In 1984, Congress passed the National Organ and Transplant Act, which outlawed compensation to the donors of solid organs like kidneys and livers. Oddly, the act also defined renewable bone marrow as a solid organ.

Originally, hematopoietic stem cells were obtained from bone marrow obtained by inserting a needle into donors' hip bones. Researchers later developed a technique in which donors are treated with substance that overstimulates the production of hematopoietic stem cells, which then circulate in their bloodstreams. In a process similar to blood donation, the hematopoietic stem cells are then filtered from the donors' blood. The red blood cells and plasma are returned to the donors.

More Marrow Donors, a California-based nonprofit, wanted to set up a system to encourage hematopoietic stem cell donations with $3,000 awards, in the form of scholarships, housing allowances, or gifts to charity. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, brought suit on their behalf, and in 2012 a federal appeals court sensibly ruled that the law's ban on compensation for solid organ donations did not apply to stem cells obtained from donors' bloodstreams. The Obama administration reacted by proposing a regulation defining stem cells obtained from blood as the equivalent of a solid organ.

Now the new administration has withdrawn the proposal."

************
Here's the editorial, from yesterday's WSJ:
Money for Marrow, Finally

"last week the Department of Health and Human Services withdrew a proposed Obama -era regulation that would have prohibited compensation for bone-marrow donation. About 11,000 ailing Americans are currently searching the national marrow registry, hoping to find a compatible donor. This year at least 3,000 people will die waiting for a transplant."

***************
Here are my previous posts on bone marrow donation and the compensation controversy.


HT: Philip Held and Frank McCormick

Child marriage in California

The San Francisco Chronicle has the story:

Effort to bar child marriage in California runs into opposition
By Jill Tucker

"A Bay Area legislator was shocked when he learned from a young constituent that while Californians cannot legally consent to sex until they are 18, they can — with the permission of a parent and a judge’s order — get married at any age, even if their spouse is many years older.

“I thought, that can’t be true in California,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat from San Mateo. “We found that it is true in California and true in many states throughout the country.”

But Hill’s resulting proposal to bar juveniles from getting hitched has been watered down after it prompted strong objections from civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

As the emotional fight unfolds in Sacramento, there’s no agreement even about a basic piece of information — how many minors get married each year in California. People who want to limit such marriages say the total is in the thousands, while those who oppose the bill say that’s vastly inflated.

The state doesn’t keep such numbers, and even efforts to change that are running into resistance."
...
"Activists aiming to stop such marriages say they occur across demographic groups, spurred by religious reasons, cultural norms, pregnancy, financial incentives or, in some cases, to protect someone from statutory-rape accusations because marriage circumvents the age-of-consent requirement.

Nationally, about 5 of every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17 were married as of 2014, according to U.S. census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center — figures that don’t specify where the marriages occurred. Activists for age restrictions estimate that California sees about 3,000 marriages per year that include a minor.

The ACLU and other opponents say that estimate is inflated, noting that just 44 petitions for juvenile marriage were filed in Los Angeles County — which has a population just above 10 million — over the past five years.

The focus of efforts should be on abusive and coerced relationships, regardless of marital status, said Phyllida Burlingame of the ACLU’s Northern California chapter.

Referring to current regulations, including the requirement of a court order allowing a juvenile to marry, she said California had “a strong package of both programs and laws that prevent coerced marriage among youth, and a lack of data showing this is a widespread problem.” Hill’s original proposal, she said, “was a solution that wasn’t necessarily going to have the impact on improving young people's health and relationships that we want.”
********

HT: Jen Stack

Polygamy convictions in Canada

The CBC has the story:

Winston Blackmore and James Oler found guilty of polygamy by B.C. judge
Former bishops of Bountiful both have numerous wives and children
CBC

"Two former religious leaders in B.C. have been found guilty of polygamy after marrying more than two dozen women over the course of 25 years.

"Winston Blackmore and James Oler were convicted of practising plural or "celestial" marriage in the fundamentalist community of Bountiful, B.C.

"In B.C. Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Sheri Ann Donegan said Blackmore "subscribed to beliefs and practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," a Mormon sect that believes in plural marriages.

"James Oler, another former leader from the same community, was accused of having five wives and Blackmore 24 wives.

"Both men are former bishops of the sect in the province's southeast. Neither denied having multiple marriages and Blackmore has fathered more than 145 children from his marriages.
...
"Blackmore's lawyer, Blair Suffredine, previously said he'd launch a constitutional challenge to the validity of the polygamy laws if his client were to be found guilty.
...
"The legal fight began in the early '90s when police first investigated allegations that residents of an isolated religious community were practising multiple marriages.

"A lack of clarity around Canada's polygamy laws initially led to failed attempts at prosecuting Blackmore, followed by several efforts to clarify the legislation, including a reference question to the B.C. Supreme Court.

"The court ruled in 2011 that laws banning polygamy were constitutional and did not violate religious freedoms guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, based in Utah, officially renounced polygamy in the late 1800s and disputes any connection to the fundamentalist group's form of Mormonism."
********
Prosecution of polygamy in the U.S. has focused not on polygamy itself, but on the fact that some of the brides are underage.  Here's an AP report of the present case via ABC news, which includes the following:
"Oler was chosen to lead the Canadian community just north of the U.S. state of Idaho following Blackmore's excommunication from the sect in 2002 by Warren Jeffs, considered the prophet and leader of the group.

"Authorities have said Jeffs still leads the sect from a Texas prison, where he is serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides."
*********

See my earlier posts on polygamy

Interview on market design in Mundo Empresarial (in Spanish)

Recent mail brought a copy of the Summer issue (Segudo Trimestre 2017) of Mundo Empresarial to my desk, and it contains a multi-page interview with me that I only dimly remember giving. It may have been a while ago: the link below lists both Saturday, July 22, 2017 and May 14, 2015 as the date of publication. (I'm guessing the web version may have come out long ago, but I missed it.)

Entrevista a Alvin E. Roth, Premio Nobel de Economía 2012

 The last question and answer (with the help of Google Translate):

Por último, además de por haber ganado el Nobel, ¿por qué querría ser recordado Alvin E. Roth?
Me haría muy feliz ser recordado como un buen maestro que ha aprendido mucho de sus alumnos.

Finally, in addition to winning the Nobel Prize, why would Alvin E. Roth want to be remembered? 
It would make me very happy to be remembered as a good teacher who has learned a lot from his students.

Data access makes research on schools (and school choice) hard

Courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, an intrepid reporter lets us in on some of the emails about data access between the Louisiana Department of Education and school choice researchers Parag Pathak and Atila Abdulkadiroglu. These shed light on a controversy and some name calling having to do with a study showing some early problems in Louisiana's school voucher program. The name calling involved accusations that the researchers rushed to publish without waiting for more data. The emails show that they tried unsuccessfully to get more data from the D of E, without success.

Who Gets Access to School Data? A Case Study in How Privacy, Politics & Budget Pressures Can Affect Education Research  by Matt Barnum
"Just who gets access to education data? A case study in La. after a critical early study on school vouchers"

"In the early days of 2016, a study by MIT and Duke University researchers showing the first year of Louisiana’s school voucher program led to marked decreases in student achievement landed in the press and policy worlds with a degree of attention that went beyond the usual wonky provinces of education research.
...
"John White, the state’s high-profile schools superintendent whose pro-school choice policies had long been scrutinized, publicly accused the Duke and MIT researchers of improperly rushing to publish their results and The Wall Street Journal condemned them for similar reasons in an editorial.

The criticism turned on whether the researchers should have waited for additional data before publishing their findings. But even that assertion, it turns out, was complicated. Not long after the headline-grabbing study was released, Louisiana ended its data-sharing relationship with the MIT and Duke researchers, according to emails obtained by The 74 through a public records request.

...

“For a program that’s ongoing, there are real issues of who gets to evaluate the program. Is it open to many teams, which I think is a good model. Or is it restricted to partners?” said MIT professor Parag Pathak, part of the team that studied Louisiana’s voucher program. “There are real broad issues in social science — it’s something that we’re all wrestling with.”

**********

Read it all...you can see why access to data can be hard.

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

Update: the first comment below points to this critical blog post by Professor Jay Greene:
The Chutzpah of Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, and Walters

A comment by Christopher Walters points to  this reply by Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, and Walters:
Statement on Allegations of Academic Fraud by Jay P. Greene
Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke; Parag Pathak, MIT; Christopher Walters, UC Berkeley
August 5, 2017

Kidney exchange in India: legal hurdles, and an app

An interesting story from The Tribune in Chandigarh, about kidney exchange in India, mentions  the legal hurdles that must be overcome to take part in kidney exchange there.  It also mentions that there is an app, for peer to peer kidney matching.

From sufferers to survivors, their tale is touching

The legal hurdles:
"Both Narinder and Pramod said the procedure was not easy. “First, we had to take police clearance from our respective districts. Then, we had to submit an affidavit before the tehsildar. We had to appear before a panel of doctors of the Punjab Government and submitted our case as the transplant was to be performed in a Punjab hospital. The entire exercise took nearly four months,” said the two."

The app:
"On the lines of matrimonial websites, a city-based kidney transplant surgeon has devised a mobile application to help renal failure patients.
“With this app, relatives of a kidney patient can find a right match and get the kidneys swapped with one of family members. Suppose, someone’s father has suffered a kidney failure and his son offers to donate his kidney, but the blood group and tissues do not match, then the person can look for a donor with the same blood group. This app will help needy families contact each other and get the kidney swapped,” said Dr Rajan.
Since 2009, the Paired Kidney Exchange (PKE) has been legalised under the amended Human Organ Transplant Act of India. The Incompatible Kidney App or ikidney will allow all such patients to come under one roof."
***********

Here it is on the apple app store:
iKidney By Pradeep Naangal

Open iTunes to buy and download apps.
 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ikidney/id1071816293?mt=8 

AlphaBay dark marketplace shut down, and others spring up

Here's the Telegraph:
AlphaBay: World's largest dark web site is shut down

"The US Government has shut down two of the world's largest markets on the dark web, a hidden corner of the internet often associated with the sale of illegal weapons and drugs.

"The US Department of Justice confirmed on Thursday that it had shuttered the illicit AlphaBay and Hansa websites following a "landmark" investigation involving law enforcement from around the world.

"AlphaBay and Hansa were associated with the trade of illegal goods such as drugs, guns, personal data stolen in hacks, and computer viruses. There were more than 40,000 sellers on AlphaBay who were advertising around 250,000 items of illegal drugs and chemicals, according to Europol.
 ...
"The operation is reminiscent of the 2013 closure of Silk Road, the first popular dark web marketplace, following the arrest of creator Ross Ulbricht. AlphaBay was created in the void left by Silk Road. "
********
Here's the Economist:
Two of the biggest dark-web markets have been shut down
History suggests that other sites will soon fill the void

 "But governments’ drug tsars are unlikely to be celebrating for long. Numerous dark-web markets have fallen prey to the police before the latest two. And each time, as shown in a paper* by two cyber-security experts, Nicolas Christin and Kyle Soska, new sites have popped up to fill the void. The authors scraped data from the largest dark-web sites between May 2013 and January 2015 to shed light on this shadowy market. During that period, Silk Road, once the largest market on the dark web, was raided and closed by the FBI. Within months, it was replaced by the less-than-imaginatively named Silk Road 2. In late 2014 this successor site met its demise as well, in another law-enforcement sting called Operation Onymous, at which point Evolution and Agora took up the baton. And after they closed down, customers moved to AlphaBay instead. This most recent pair of closures may end up as another mighty thump in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole."

*Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem
Kyle Soska and Nicolas Christin, Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical-sessions/presentation/soska
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity15/sec15-paper-soska-updated.pdf
The paper has some interesting remarks on the difficulties to be overcome in surveying dark markets, and lists the following markets that were investigated:

************
And here's the BBC, with a story dated August 1:
Dark web markets boom after AlphaBay and Hansa busts
By Leo Kelion

"Trade on several of the dark web's illegal markets has boomed since two major players were shut by the authorities last month, according to research carried out for the BBC.
The US and Dutch authorities forced AlphaBay and Hansa offline to prevent the sale of drugs, weapons and malware.
But over the last week of July, other sites saw their number of listings rise by as much as 28%, the study indicates.
...
" Dream Market is now the biggest illegal store with a total of 98,844 listings at the end of the month. The site was launched in late 2013 and is now one of the oldest dark web markets in existence.
Its number of listings rose by 3,818 over the course of the week.
While that was the biggest increase of the surveyed sites in numerical terms, it represented a relatively modest increase of 3.9%.
"There is some interesting buzz around Dream Market potentially being compromised and/or under law enforcement control, which is feeding fear and uncertainty amongst vendors and buyers," said Mr Ben-Meir.
"That is probably why Dream Market has not grown substantially in the wake of the takedowns."
...
 "The next biggest site is TradeRoute, which rose from 14,914 listings to 17,816 over the period - a 16.3% gain.
It includes forged documents and black market tobacco and alcohol among its wares."
************
See earlier posts on the drug market known as Silk Road.
See paper Traveling the Silk Road: A Measurement Analysis of a Large Anonymous Online
Marketplace, by Nicolas Christin

Kidney Exchange Practices in Europe

Here is a new report on kidney exchange in Europe:

Kidney Exchange Practices in Europe: First Handbook of the COST Action CA15210: European Network for Collaboration on Kidney Exchange Programmes (ENCKEP)

Edited by Working Group 1 members (in ABC order): Péter Biró, Lisa Burnapp, Bernadette Haase, Aline Hemke, Rachel Johnson, Joris van de Klundert, David Manlove,

 Descriptions in templates were provided by the following national representatives:
Austria: Georg Böhmig and Gregor Bond
Belgium: Dirk Kuypers,Bart Smeulders and Frits Spieksma
Czech Republic: Jiri Fronek
Finland: Mikko Salonen
France: Christian Jacquelinet and Marie-Alice Macher
Greece: Georgia Menoudakou
Iceland: Eyjólfur Ingi Ásgeirsson
Ireland: Nic Wilson
Italy: Paola Di Ciaccio and Vito Sparacino
Netherlands: Aline Hemke and Bernadette Haase
Poland: Rafal Kieszek
Portugal: Catarina Bolotinha
Slovakia:Tatiana Baltesová and Katarína Cechlárová
Spain: María de la Oliva Valentín Muñoz
Sweden: Tommy Andersson
Switzerland: Karine Hadaya
United Kingdom: Lisa Burnapp and Rachel Johnson
USA (UNOS): Ruthanne Leishman

"This handbook provides information on the current practice of kidney paired exchange programmes in Europe  and  some  countries  outside  Europe.  It  describes  the  incidence  of  active  Kidney  Exchange Programmes (KEPs), including details of country specific schemes and identifies the interest and aims of countries that have yet to develop a KEP."

Medical school seniors are applying to more and more residency positions

Here's an article on the application process that precedes the medical match:

Residency Placement Fever: Is It Time for a Reevaluation?

Gruppuso, Philip A. MD; Adashi, Eli Y. MD, MS

Academic Medicine, 92(7), July 2017, p 923–926

Abstract: The transition from undergraduate medical education to graduate medical education (GME) involves a process rooted in the final year of medical school. Students file applications through the Electronic Residency Application Service platform, interview with residency training (i.e., GME) programs from which they have received invitations, and generate a rank-ordered preference list. The National Resident Matching Program reconciles applicant and program rank lists with an eye towards matching students and GME programs. This process has effectively served generations of graduating medical students. However, the past several decades have seen an intensification of the residency placement process that is exemplified by an inexorable increase in the number of applications filed and number of interviews accepted and attended by each student. The authors contend that this trend has untoward effects on both applicants and departments that are home to GME programs....

"... in 2015, senior U.S. medical students applied, on average, to 73 of the 163 orthopedic surgery programs and 47 of the 105 neurological surgery programs (based on data extracted from the AAMC 8 and the NRMP 9,10). What is more surprising is that even less competitive disciplines may now be seeing an ever-growing flood of applications. This contention is supported in part by recent observations according to which GME programs in nearly all disciplines have seen a marked increase in their application traffic. For example, the percentage of pediatric GME programs to which graduating U.S. medical students have applied on average increased from 9.8% to 13.7% during the five-year interval from 2010 to 2015.10 For internal medicine GME programs, the corresponding figures are 4.9% to 6.0%.8–10 In making these decisions, students appear to be keeping their own counsel against the advice of medical school advisers and mentors advocating moderation.

...

"The increasing number of applications has another important consequence for GME programs. With an expanding burden of reviewing applications, the use of quantitative metrics as “screens,” the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 exam in particular, may assume an increasing role. This trend, one that is viewed by many as a serious problem,15 may further erode emphasis on students’ backgrounds and qualitative indicators of performance, including letters of recommendation and narrative performance evaluations. Should this occur, it could have a detrimental effect on the ability of GME programs to achieve diversity by reducing the selection of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds who may be at risk for underperformance on standardized examinations.

Apart from the preceding considerations, the growing intensity of the residency placement process has been progressively eroding the residual educational value of the fourth and final year of medical school.16–19 This reality, in its own right, would appear to warrant a reevaluation of the extant residency placement construct. Such reassessment may prove all but inescapable before too long if and when the four-year medical school curriculum is ever replaced with a three-year counterpart.20,21 Under these circumstances, the current resident selection paradigm is likely to prove unworkable and in need of redesign.

Nesterly: matching student tenants to empty-nesters

Helping Boomers Find Millennial Roommates
LINDA POON  JUL 1, 2017
In a college town, students and older homeowners have a lot to offer each other. That’s why two urban planners built an app to bring them together.
********

Here's the app: Nesterly.
"On any given night, more than 50 million bedrooms sit empty across the U.S. Many of these spare rooms belong to older homeowners whose large houses have become a burden as they age. At the same time, millions of young renters struggle to afford the high prices in areas near schools and jobs. nesterly targets both of these issues by connecting older people with extra rooms to those seeking affordable rents through unique task-housing arrangements. Renters can now pay part of their rent by helping around the house, and owners gain stability, security, and support to stay in their homes."

Sex workers in Colombia

From The Economist:
Sex workers in Colombia
The Economist; London424.9050 (Jul 22, 2017): 42.

"Some 4,500 Venezuelan prostitutes are thought to be working in Colombia; the trade is legal in both countries. But until recently they were often rounded up by police and deported back to Venezuela by the busload. That changed in April, when Colombia's constitutional court ruled that Venezuelan sex workers are entitled to work visas. Mass deportations violate international human-rights law, it said. "One should weigh up the reasons they decided to come to Colombia...and the specific situation they would face in Venezuela were they to be returned," said the ruling.

The case has its origins in Chinacota, a tiny town an hour's drive from the border city of Cucuta. Last year the town's mayor closed down the Taberna Barlovento, a bar that also serves as a brothel, saying it violated zoning rules. Along with beverages, the bar offers four bedrooms just big enough to fit a mattress or two. Founded in 1935, the bar is a Chinacota institution, says Nelcy Esperanza Delgado, its owner.

When the mayor shut Ms Delgado down, she fought back in court. She and the prostitutes who worked there, including four Venezuelans, had no other income, she said. Closing Taberna Barlovento violated their right to work. The court agreed, and the bar reopened.
...
"Colombians along the border are accustomed to Venezuelans streaming across, but the area's sex workers do not relish the competition. Venezuelans charge the equivalent of $10-13 for a 20-minute session; the Colombian rate is around $13-17. Colombians complain that they are being forced to cut their prices. While Colombia is El Dorado compared with Venezuela, economic growth is slow and the unemployment rate is 9.4%. Colombians haven't forgotten that in 2015 Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, blamed them for the shortages and deported 1,100. Many forded rivers on their way back to Colombia.

While the law is becoming more welcoming to desperate Venezuelans, Colombians are growing increasingly nervous about the influx. Barbara thinks other countries offer bigger opportunities. She is planning to move on to Ecuador, where customers pay in American dollars."

Pro-Renal: a new kidney exchange network in Mexico

There's a new kidney exchange network in Mexico, Pro-Renal, affiliated with the Alliance for Paired Donation:

Programa de donacion renal pareada, del Centro Mexicano, Pro-Renal.
(Paired kidney donaton program of Central Mexico, Pro-Renal)

Here's an announcement: Annuncian hoy el programa para la donacion de riñón

Here are some others (also in Spanish);

http://www.milenio.com/salud/agilizar-trasplantes_renales-mexicanos-arturo_dib-donacion-rinon-pro-renal-milenio_0_992900707.html

Nace el Centro Mexicano pro donación renal A.C.

Intercambio, nueva opción para pacientes que esperan trasplante renal 

Kidney exchange at INFORMS Healthcare 2017 in Rotterdam

 Kidney exchange on Friday at INFORMS Heathcare 2017 in Rotterdam:  here's the whole program.

And here are two sessions that I'd attend if I were there (along with many more):

Spectrum auctions explained (by Scott Kominers in Bloomberg)

Explaining economics is something economists should do more of (especially in light of some of the silly things written about economics in the popular press by people who misunderstand what they are writing about).  Here's a good example of good explanation, written clearly, by an expert:

To Improve Wireless Networks, Auction the Airwaves:
People are watching TV on devices, so mobile companies need more spectrum and broadcasters need less. Here's how to get there.
By Scott Duke Kominers

Sally Satel on EconTalk, talking about organ donation (podcast)

PERMANENT LINK | JULY 24, 2017 Sally Satel on Organ Donation EconTalk Episode with Sally Satel Hosted by Russ Roberts	PRINTEMAIL  SHARE
You Are What You Eat...

Sally Satel, psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenges of increasing the supply of donated organs for transplantation and ways that public policy might increase the supply. Satel, who has received two kidney donations, suggests a federal tax credit as a way to increase the supply of organs while saving the federal government money. She also discusses the ethical issues surrounding various forms of compensation for organ donors.

Play

Time: 1:00:12

How do I listen to a podcast?

Download

Size:27.6 MB

Right-click or Option-click, and select "Save Link/Target As MP3.

Readings and Links related to this podcast episode

Related Readings HIDE READINGS

This week's guest: Sally Satel's Home page Sally Satel on Twitter. This week's focus: "The Kindest (Tax) Cut: A Federal Tax Credit for Organ Donations," by Sally Satel and Alan Viard. Tax Notes, June 12, 2017. PDF file. "A College Tuition Payment for Your Spare Kidney?," by Sally Satel. Slate, September 13, 2016. Additional ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode: "Here's Looking at You, Kidney: How and why I became an organ donor -- and how I kept people from talking me out of it," by Virginia Postrel. Vpostrel.com, Texas Monthly, June 2006. "Desperately Seeking a Kidney," by Sally Satel. The New York Times, December 16, 2007. A few more readings and background resources: National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. Wikipedia. "Life-Saving Incentives: Consequences, Costs and Solutions to the Organ Shortage," by Alex Tabarrok. Library of Economics and Liberty, August 3, 2009. "How Free-Market Kidney Sales Can Save Lives--And Lower the Total Cost of Kidney Transplants," by Kathryn Shelton and Richard B. McKenzie. Library of Economics and Liberty, March 5, 2012. Health Care, by Michael A. Morrisey. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. A few more EconTalk podcast episodes:  Virginia Postrel on Style. EconTalk. November 2006.  Tina Rosenberg on the Kidney Market in Iran. EconTalk. September 2015.  Alvin Roth on Matching Markets. EconTalk. July 2015.  Michael Munger on Exchange, Exploitation and Euvoluntary Transactions. EconTalk. June 2011.  The Economics of Organ Donations with Richard Epstein. EconTalk. June 2006.

Highlights

Time

Podcast Episode Highlights HIDE HIGHLIGHTS

0:33

Intro. [Recording date: July 6, 2017.] Russ Roberts: Sally Satel recently wrote an article with Alan Viard entitled "The Kindest (Tax) Cut: A Federal Tax Credit for Organ Donations," and that's going to be our topic for today.... So, you bring a special perspective to kidney donations. Talk about your personal story. Sally Satel: Yeah. I got a kidney in 2006; and then I got another kidney a year ago, almost a year ago today. And, when I got my first one it was sort of a surprise. A lot of people who know that they're going to need a kidney--well, by definition, they know that they're going to need a kidney. What I meant is that they have certain illnesses--they are either diabetic, or they've got lupus, severe hypertension that's been poorly managed for a while, high blood pressure. People know they are at risk for this, for kidney failure. But my case was sort of a surprise. I just went to the doctor for a regular checkup. This is the part of the story that scares everyone, because I felt completely fine. And during a routine blood draw, found out that I had--well, that I had kidney failure. Which is rather easy to diagnose. It's a test called a creatinine level. But when you go for a regular blood draw, a routine blood draw, that's one of the indexes they measure. So, they tested it again, and that was the same. So, the clock was ticking for me, because I knew from my medical training that if you have kidney failure, you need a new kidney, or you will languish on dialysis for years. And no matter how long you are on dialysis, your life will be prematurely shortened. I mean, people have lived for 20 years, even a little longer, on dialysis. Some people tolerate it better than others. That's a process where your blood is cleansed of toxins about 3 times a week for about 4 hours at a time; you go to a clinic. Most people feel very debilitated by it. The average person on dialysis can't hold a job. But some do. And, some people--it isn't as psychologically devastating to some folks. But others find it so distressing, they are actually--suicide is not that unusual. So, the idea of being tethered to that machine, while, granted, it would keep me alive. Now, if my liver had failed and I didn't get a transplant, that would be it. So, kidney dialysis does keep people alive for awhile. But it just seemed like a really, really half a life. So, I knew I needed a kidney, but I didn't know exactly when I would need dialysis. So, as I said, the clock started ticking. And it turned out I had a good year before the function got to the point where I really was becoming physically debilitated. But it was very hard finding a donor. And that's what kind of galvanized me, this whole issue of the shortage. But, just in terms of finding a donor, as I say, it was extremely difficult. It's not like every day you ask people for a body part. And I didn't have--I have a very tiny family. And, to make a long story short, none of them--I didn't feel I could ask any of them. And in fact I never really asked anyone. I would do it all differently if, heaven forbid, there is yet a third time I have to go through this--see, I'm very nice to my interns. But I would just talk about it with folks and wasn't even being coy. I just sort of thought magically, 'Oh, well some people will think of being a donor, and it will work out.' But it became pretty clear that it wasn't working out. And a lot of people actually said they would do it; and I appreciate that in that I know they wanted to be--I know they felt empathy for my situation; but in the end, basically, a lot of them got cold feet and backed out. And then you're in this terribly awkward position, because you really can't be angry. I mean it's an enormous thing to ask, and it would be incredibly presumptuous to have the expectation that they owed you anything. So, I was really getting very demoralized and about to get ready to go on dialysis. And, Virginia Postrel, who I knew, not very well, had been at a cocktail reception somewhere--this was in November of 2005--and she ran into a mutual friend and asked that friend how I was. And the friend said, 'Not so hot. She needs a kidney.' And, Virginia went--I think the next went to her computer--I remember the subject line; I still have a printout of her email--it said, 'Serious Offer.' And she said, 'So-and-so told me you needed a kidney, and if I match, I will do it.' And I think she followed up a few minutes later with another email: 'I won't back out.' And, so, she went through with it. This was March of 2006. And I'm almost as grateful to Steve, her husband, as to her, because that was one of the reasons that two of my friends, other of my friends who had seriously considered donating did not go through with it--because their spouse basically said, 'It's the kidney or a divorce.' [More to come. 6:48]

Celebrating János Kornai at 90, In Budapest

Here's the Call for Papers:  The importance of János Kornai's research for understanding the changing role of the state in the economy 

"The aim of this conference - organized on the occasion of Kornai's 90^th birthday - is to bring together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines (economists, political economists, political scientists, sociologists and historians), advanced scholars as well as PhD students who build on Kornai’s insights (www.kornai-janos.hu) in their own research."
...
"Important dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: September 15, 2017
Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2017
Payment of conference fees: February 1, 2018
Full paper submission: February 1, 2018
Conference: Feb 21, 2018 

A celebration of Victor Elias, at 80, in Tucuman

Here's a story about and interview with Victor Elias in La Gaceta, complete with testimonials from students whose lives he touched.

 El académico que optó por quedarse en su Tucumán
Acaba de cumplir 80 años y la academia le rendirá un tributo al doctor en Economía por la Universidad de Chicago y director del Magister de la UNT. Sus alumnos recuerdan las enseñanzas que le dejó al profesor que, según confiesa, se retroalimenta con la creatividad de los aspirantes a economistas.

[G translate: The academic who opted to stay in his Tucumán
He has just turned 80 and the academy will pay a tribute to the Doctor of Economics from the University of Chicago and director of the UNT Magister. His students remember the teachings [of] the teacher who, he confesses, is fed by the creativity of aspiring economists.]

Victor Elias and Al Roth, Tucuman, 2016, taken by Ivan Werning

Here's an earlier interview, from 2005
Entrevista a Víctor Jorge Elías
by Juan Carlos De Pablo

Random Matching under Priorities: Stability and No Envy Concepts by Haris Aziz and Bettina Klaus

Here's the preprint of a new paper by Haris Aziz and Bettina Klaus:
Random Matching under Priorities: Stability and No Envy Concepts

Abstract

We consider stability concepts for random matchings where agents have preferences over objects and objects have priorities for the agents. When matchings are deterministic, the standard stability concept also captures the fairness property of no (justified) envy. When matchings can be random, there are a number of natural stability / fairness concepts that coincide with stability / no envy whenever matchings are deterministic. We formalize known stability concepts for random matchings for a general setting that allows weak preferences and weak priorities, unacceptability, and an unequal number of agents and objects. We then present a clear taxonomy of the stability concepts and identify logical relations between them.Furthermore, we provide no envy / claims interpretations for some of the stability concepts that are based on a consumption process interpretation of random matchings. Finally, we present a transformation from the most general setting to the most restricted setting, and show how almost all our stability concepts are preserved by that transformation.