The King and Lloyd (in special issue of Games and Economic Behavior in Honor of Lloyd Shapley)

Games and Economic Behavior has published a

Special Issue in Honor of Lloyd Shapley: Seven Topics in Game Theory

Edited by David K. Levine

Volume 108, Pages 1-614 (March 2018)

The first paper in the special issue is this Introduction

Introduction to the special issue in honor of Lloyd Shapley: Eight topics in game theory

Pages 1-12

David K. Levine

Download PDF

David's introduction concludes with "Some remembrances of Lloyd," by various authors.  Here is mine: 

The King and Lloyd

By Alvin E. Roth

My first long conversation with Lloyd was when I visited him in 1974, having just finished my Ph.D. dissertation. I made what felt like a pilgrimage to see him at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, to tell him about my work.  

My last long conversations with Lloyd were in December, 2012, when we both attended the Nobel Prize celebrations in Stockholm. A careful observer might have noted that we had both aged a little since our first meeting. Lloyd walked with a cane, and that led to a small bit of logistics.

When you receive the Nobel from the King of Sweden, the King presents you with two packages, containing the diploma and the medal, which you hold with your left hand so that the two of you can shake hands. Lloyd was concerned about how he would manage this with his cane, and so we agreed that I would walk with him and hold his cane while he received the packages and shook hands, and return it to him immediately afterwards. Hence the picture below.

A subsequent encounter with the King had a touch of game theory. The night after the awards ceremony (and a very big dinner party in the City Hall) there is another dinner party in the royal palace, followed by a reception. At some point Lloyd was fatigued and ready to return to the hotel. But royal protocol dictates that no one should leave before the King, and that when the King leaves the party is over, and everyone leaves. So if the King had been told that one of his guests of honor was ready to go home, he would have felt obliged to depart and end the party to make this possible. To avoid ending the party prematurely, Lloyd therefore exited through the kitchen with the help of palace staff, without passing by the King and without alerting him and disrupting the party.  I thought it very appropriate that he exited with this small game-theoretic flourish.

How storks became non-kosher

When I speak about repugnant transactions--transactions that some people would like to engage in but others think they shouldn't--I don't normally include dietary restrictions of a religious sort, like those which make food kosher or hallal (or vegetarian or vegan) since those restrictions are normally applied by people to themselves, not to others.  Thus most observant Jews don't think that non-Jews should keep kosher, and many vegetarians think that what you eat is a matter of personal preference.

However, within a religious community, what is allowed can be a matter of public discussion.  Haaretz has a (late breaking) account of the discussion of storks, in medieval Spain.  Perhaps storks aren't kosher because of a translation error?

How Rashi Got the Jews to Stop Eating Storks
A young rabbi in medieval Spain, scandalized by local laxness, sparks a bitter battle over bird on the plate
By Elon Gilad Jul 30, 2018

"During the second half of the 11th century, Rashi labored on his commentary of the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud, which became and still are highly influential. It was in these that Rashi identified the khasida with the stork, apparently for the first time.

Rashi could not read Arabic and was thus cut off from the traditions of the Geonim. He based his commentary of the oral tradition he received from his teachers, and his own power of logic.

With regard to the identity of the 20 unclean birds listed in the Bible, Rashi apparently did not receive a precise identification of each one. He writes in his commentary that the anafa, the bird coming right after the khasida in the list, was a heron - “I think.”

He may have been more certain regarding the khasida, since he doesn’t qualify that its identification was based on conjecture, but it probably was.
...
The influence of Rashi’s commentaries was immense. Once Rashi identified the khasida with the stork, this became the traditional view among European Jews with in just a few generations. Over time this tradition spread throughout the Jewish world, and into Christian vernacular translations of the Bible.

The identification of the khasida with the stork began to spread throughout Spanish Jewry as we have seen with the arrival of Asher ben Jehiel and his family at the turn of the 14th century, and Spanish Jews gradually stopped eating the bird.

When the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492, they took the ban on stork to Jewish communities throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and these communities too stopped eating storks. Eventually all Jews accepted Rashi’s identification of the biblical khasida with the stork and today all Jews accept that storks are not kosher."

Presumed consent: too early to declare failure, but cautions are plentiful

Frank McCormick points out a recent report in the journal Health Policy indicating that the Welsh move from opt-in to opt-out or ('deemed consent') for deceased organ donation has not so far been successful at raising transplant rates:

Welsh 2013 deemed consent legislation falls short of expectations
by Jordan Alexander Parsons

"Abstract: Wales, in 2013, was the first country in the United Kingdom to pass legislation introducing presumed (or deemed) consent for organ donation, and remains the only one. It was introduced in an attempt to increase the number of life-saving transplants taking place in the UK, in a move that policy makers hoped would mirror Spain’s success. More recently, pressure has been mounting for England to follow suit, with a public consultation currently in progress. However, the Welsh system has been far from a success, raising the question of why campaigners are so adamant that it should be replicated. Before the Welsh Government introduced the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act there had been no strong evidence to suggest it would make a difference, with countries boasting both high organ donation rates and presumed consent legislation demonstrating no clear causal relationship between the two facts. In addition, a recent report evaluating the Act has highlighted its failure to improve donation rates, and has even presented some potentially concerning statistics that may suggest a negative impact. This paper first considers presumed consent in other countries – Spain and Brazil – before illustrating the underwhelming progression of Wales’ new system and the need to look to other options."

Here's a paragraph that strikes me as important, because family consent is important in Wales, and automatic inclusion on the deceased donor registry reduces the signal value that the deceased wished to be a donor:

"Under the Welsh system, the deceased is deemed to have consented to donation unless (1) a decision as to donation by the deceased is in force, (2) the deceased had appointed a person or persons to make the decision on their behalf, or (3) a relative of friend of long standing objects on the basis of views held by the deceased and it is reasonable to assume the objection is accurate [2]. It is down to the medical team to determine whether a relative’s objection is their own, or one based on the views of the deceased. Unsurprisingly, doctors have not shown willing to challenge these objections, despite their legal right to; they consider it inappropriate to go against the wishes of the family."
**************

Here is a related article, which raises other potential problems:
Presumed consent will not automatically lead to increased organ donation
Sharif, Adnan
Kidney International , Volume 94 , Issue 2 , 249 - 251

"a review of the latest available data (2016) from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation suggests no significant difference in overall transplantation activity between presumed versus explicit consent countries, with increased deceased organ donor rates balanced by decreased living donor rates among presumed consent countries (Table 1). Whether the consent process is presumed or explicit has no bearing on many inter-related factors that influence organ donation rates. For example, Coppen et al.4 observed a strong correlation between mortality rates and organ donation numbers (Spearman’s r = 0.81, P < 0.01) and that, after controlling for differences in relevant mortality rates, there was no significant influence of presumed versus explicit consent on organ donation rates."

Table 1 Organ donation and transplantation activity

Parameter	Presumed consent (mean ± SD per million population)	Explicit consent (mean ± SD per million population)	P value
Kidney (deceased)	30.9 ± 15.1	22.6 ± 11.1	0.078
Kidney (living)	4.8 ± 2.6	16.9 ± 8.4	<0 .001="" td="">
Liver (deceased)	12.9 ± 8.5	10.1 ± 5.3	0.265
Liver (living)	0.4 ± 0.9	2.7 ± 5.3	0.107
Heart	4.8 ± 3.5	3.1 ± 2.6	0.108
Lung	3.5 ± 4.0	4.2 ± 2.8	0.543
Pancreas	1.6 ± 1.6	1.4 ± 1.0	0.579
Overall transplant activity	59.1 ± 30.7	58.9 ± 23.4	0.982

From the Global Observatory of Donation and Transplantation registry ( www.transplant-observatory.org).
...
"The other concern with presumed consent is the reduced rate of living donation observed in presumed consent countries, a phenomenon repeatedly observed in systematic reviews and apparent in current registry data (Table 1). Many will argue that an increased supply of deceased organ donors with presumed consent overrides the need for living donors. However, it is unlikely switching to presumed consent can ever completely eradicate organ waiting lists, and living donation facilitates transplantation for many high-risk (predominantly kidney) recipients who would otherwise be deemed unsuitable for the transplantation procedure. Altruistic living kidney donors are a valuable resource to facilitate kidney transplantation for some of the most immunologically difficult and long-waiting end-stage kidney failure patients,7 and the risk of these numbers declining, although purely speculative in the setting of a switch to presumed consent, would jeopardize successful national living kidney sharing schemes. Declining living donation rates could therefore be further hampered by switching to presumed consent, with adverse consequences for established kidney transplantation programs."

Blockchains, smart contracts, and incomplete contracts (and Prysm Group, a startup consulting firm on all that)

There's a lot of talk lately about smart contracts, i.e. contracts written in executable code, but less talk about how all contracts are incomplete (and therefore subject to renegotiation, dispute resolution and issues of residual control), a subject for which Oliver Hart won a recent Nobel.

So I was glad to see this article in Forbes:

Nobel Prize Winner Joins Blockchain Startup To Fix Smart Contracts
by Michael del Castillo

"Long before blockchain was cool, Nobel Prize-winning economist Oliver Hart was into contracts. As far back as 1976, the doctor of economics from Princeton University had been exploring how corporations use contracts to interact, and what happens when things go wrong."

The article is sparked by the fact that Oliver and Preston McAfee, who recently retired from being Chief Economist at Microsoft, have become advisors to a startup consulting company called Prysm Group, which aims to advise blockchain companies about contracts, incentives, and economics generally.

Here's the press release:

Prysm Group Adds Nobel Prize-Winning Economist And Former Microsoft Chief Economist To Board Of Senior Advisors

"Prysm Group provides blockchain organizations with counsel in the complex economic fields of contract theory, market design, game theory, and social choice."

The founders of Prysm Group are two economists who I met when they were graduate students at Harvard, Cathy Barrera and Stephanie Hurder (who I've blogged about before, here, and here).

Welfare in a behavioral world

This is a behavioral economics intensive week at Stanford, with the experimental SITE session just ended, and the Psychology and Economics session underway.

There are a lot of hard problems in behavioral economics: in some senses, it's harder to figure out what people may do if we aren't perfectly rational. But a particular problem is how we should take care of each other, if it isn't always clear how to evaluate someone's welfare.

For example, we had two talks in the earlier SITE session on paternalism--under what circumstances can we make people better off by giving someone else the power to make choices for them?  More generally, if people aren't always good at making choices, how can we tell what's good for them, i.e. how can we evaluate welfare?

Doug Bernheim and Dmitry Taubinsky tackle this question in a chapter in the forthcoming

Handbook  of  Behavioral  Economics,  Volume  1, edited by B.  Douglas  Bernheim,  Stefano  DellaVigna,  and  David  Laibson.

You can find it here as an NBER working paper:

Behavioral Public Economics
B. Douglas Bernheim, Dmitry Taubinsky
NBER Working Paper No. 24828
Issued in July 2018


"This chapter surveys work in behavioral public economics, emphasizing the normative implications of non-standard decision making for the design of welfare-improving and/or optimal policies. We highlight combinations of theoretical and empirical approaches that together can produce robust qualitative and quantitative prescriptions for optimal policy under a range of assumptions concerning consumer behavior. The chapter proceeds in four parts. First, we discuss the foundations and methods of behavioral welfare economics, focusing on choice-oriented approaches and the measurement of self-reported well-being. Second, we examine commodity taxes and related policies: we summarize research on optimal corrective taxes, the efficiency costs of sales taxes that are not fully salient, the distributional effects of sin taxes, the use of non-price policies such as nudges, the tax treatment of giving, and luxury taxes. Third, we examine policies affecting saving, including capital income taxation, commitment opportunities, default contribution provisions for pension plans, financial education, and mandatory saving programs. Fourth, we detail the manner in which under-provision of labor supply and misunderstandings of policy instruments impact optimal labor income taxation and social insurance. We close with some recommendations for future work in behavioral public economics."

Repugnant prediction markets on a blockchain (Augur)

Augur is a decentralized (i.e. unmoderated) prediction market, built on a blockchain.  Somewhere there is a fundamental law of internet that says that anonymity leads to bad manners, and for a prediction market, that means death pools.

Here's the story from CCN, a news service that focuses on cryptocurrencies and blockchains:

Assassination Markets Let Augur Users Gamble on Trump Murder

"this market exists, and, though not the most popular bet on Augur, more than 50 shares have been traded on it as of the time of writing. Similar markets, moreover, exist for a number of other public figures, allowing users to gamble on whether 96-year-old actress Betty White and U.S. Senator John McCain — who has been diagnosed with brain cancer — will survive until Jan. 1, 2019."
********

Earlier, see

Monday, September 7, 2009

"Death pools", coming to life again

HT: MR

Deceased donor chains: Market design language is entering transplantation

Here's some more argument in favor of starting kidney chains with deceased donors, from the journal
Clinical Transplantation Volume 32, Issue 7:

Lessons from Uber and Airbnb: Why we should link the deceased and living donor pools

by Avi Baskin  Ariella Maghen  Tom Mone  Jeffrey Veale

"Deceased donor organs are currently underutilized and undervalued, particularly in kidney chains, similar to how parked cars and vacant homes were before Uber and Airbnb. The ride‐sharing company Uber has been hailed for allowing people to drive their cars to generate more benefit from this underutilized resource. Similarly, Airbnb enables people to rent out their unused property, increasing the potential of an otherwise missed opportunity. Together, Uber and Airbnb represent a new era, amplifying the benefit of cars and property that would be otherwise underused.

"Likewise, the world of transplantation should take note as software programs and mathematical algorithms could also be applied to maximize the benefits of available kidneys for transplant."
*********

The authors are all transplant professionals, not an economist among them. We've come a long way from the days when it was hard to convince the transplant community that kidney transplantation, and kidney exchange in particular, could be usefully thought about in connection with markets, marketplaces, and market design.

Experimental economics at Stanford SITE, Aug 6-7

Here's the program:

Session 4: Experimental Economics

SITE Summer Workshops 2018

August 6 - 7, 2018

Organized by:

• Lucas Coffman, Harvard University
• Christine Exley, Harvard  Business School
• Muriel Niederle, Stanford University
• Alvin Roth, Stanford University
• Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh

This session is being held in the Koret Room of the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street (SIEPR) Next to the Economics Building

This workshop will be dedicated to advances in experimental economics combining laboratory and field-experimental methodologies with theoretical and psychological insights on decision-making, strategic interaction and policy. We invite papers in lab experiments, field experiments and their combination that test theory, demonstrate the importance of psychological phenomena, and explore social and policy issues. In addition to senior faculty members, invited presenters will include junior faculty as well as graduate students.

IN THIS SESSION

Aug 6 |

9:20 am to 9:50 am

The Myth of the Male Negotiator: Gender’s Effect on Negotiation Strategies and Outcomes

Presented by: Connie Low, University of Pennsylvania

Co-Author(s): Jennie Huang, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School

Aug 6 |

9:50 am to 10:20 am

Gender Differences in Alternating-Offer Bargaining: An Experimental Study

Download paper

Presented by: Nagore Iriberri, University of the Basque Country

Co-Author(s): Inigo Hernandez-Arenaz, University of Balearic Islands

Aug 6 |

11:00 am to 11:30 am

Beliefs About Behavioral Responses to Taxation

Presented by: Bertil Tungodden, NHH Norwegian School of Economics

Co-Author(s): Alexander W. Cappelen, NHH Norwegian School of Economics; Ingar Haaland, NHH Norwegian School of Economics

Aug 6 |

11:30 am to 12:00 pm

The Welfare Effects of Social Recognition: Theory and Evidence from the YMCA

Presented by: Dmitry Taubinsky, University of California, Berkeley

Co-Author(s): Robert Metcalfe, Boston University; Luigi Butera, University of Chicago

Aug 6 |

12:00 pm to 12:30 pm

Heterogeneity of Experimental Findings: Forecasts and Evidence

Presented by: Stefano DellaVigna, University of California, Berkeley

Co-Author(s): Devin Pope, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Aug 6 |

2:00 pm to 2:30 pm

Why Do Some Clearinghouses Yield Stable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence on Out-of-Equilibrium Truth-Telling

Presented by: Clayton Featherstone, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School

Co-Author(s): Colin Sullivan, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School; Eric Mayefsky, Quora

Aug 6 |

2:30 pm to 3:00 pm

Protective Paternalism

Presented by: Sandro Ambuehl, University of Toronto

Aug 6 |

3:30 pm to 4:00 pm

Paternalism

Presented by: Muriel Niederle

Aug 6 |

4:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Gender Preferences for Competition: Children versus Parents

Presented by: Jonas Tungodden, University of California, Berkeley

Aug 6 |

4:15 pm to 4:30 pm

Revealed Privacy Preferences: Are Privacy Choices Rational?

Presented by: Yi-Shan Lee, University of Zurich

Co-Author(s): Roberto Weber, University of Zurich

Aug 6 |

5:00 pm to 5:15 pm

The Thrill of the Deal: Quantifying the Price of Perceived Discounts and Mark-Ups

Presented by: Jennie Huang, University of Pennsylvania

Aug 6 |

5:15 pm to 5:30 pm

Social Comparisons in Peer Effects

Download paper

Presented by: Seung-Keun Martinez, Univeristy of California, San Diego

Aug 6 |

5:30 pm to 5:45 pm

It Takes Two: Gender Differences in Group Work

Presented by: Siri Isaksson, Harvard University

Aug 7 |

9:20 am to 9:50 am

Can Individuals Satisfice Under Selected Information? an Experimental Investigation

Presented by: Daniel Fragiadakis, Texas A&M University

Co-Author(s): Alex Brown, Texas A&M University

Aug 7 |

9:50 am to 10:20 am

Belief Formation Under Signal Correlation

Download paper

Presented by: Tanjim Hossain, University of Toronto

Co-Author(s): Ryo Okui, New York University, Shanghai

Aug 7 |

11:00 am to 11:30 am

Do People Avoid Morally Relevant Information? Evidence from the Refugee Crisis

Download paper

Presented by: Eleonora Freddi, Tilburg University

Aug 7 |

11:30 am to 12:00 pm

Paying People to Look at How Sausage is Made

Presented by: Daylian Cain, Yale University

Co-Author(s): Jason Dana, Yale University; Bethany Burum, Harvard University

Aug 7 |

12:00 pm to 12:30 pm

Do Markets Undermine Morality?

Presented by: Björn Bartling, University of Zurich

Co-Author(s): Ernst Fehr, University of Zurich; Yagiz Özdemir, University of Zurich

Aug 7 |

2:00 pm to 2:30 pm

Spin Doctors

Presented by: Peter Schwardmann, University of Munich

Co-Author(s): Marvin Deversi, University of Munich; Alessandro Ispano, University of Cergy Pontoise

Aug 7 |

2:30 pm to 3:00 pm

How Do People Choose Between Biased Information Sources? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Presented by: Sevgi Yuksel, University of California, Santa Barbara

Aug 7 |

3:30 pm to 4:00 pm

Heterogeneity of Loss Aversion and Expectations-Based Reference Point

Presented by: Charlie Sprenger, University of California, San Diego

Co-Author(s): Lorenz Goette, University of Bonn; Thomas Graeber, University of Bonn; Alexander Kellog, University of California, San Diego

Aug 7 |

4:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Self-Control, Uncertainty, and Commitment

Presented by: Veena Jeevanandam Blume, University of California, San Diego

Aug 7 |

4:15 pm to 4:30 pm

Preferences for the Resolution of Uncertainty and the Timing of Information

Download paper

Presented by: Kirby Nielsen, Ohio State University

Aug 7 |

5:00 pm to 5:15 pm

Coordination in the Network Minimum Game

Presented by: Johannes Hoelzemann, University of New South Wales Business School

Co-Author(s): Hongyi Li, University of New South Wales Business School

Aug 7 |

5:15 pm to 5:30 pm

New Experimental Evidence on Expectations Formation

Presented by: Yueran Ma, Harvard University

Co-Author(s): Augustin Landier, HEC Paris; David Thesmar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Aug 7 |

5:30 pm to 5:45 pm

Inattentive Inference

Presented by: Thomas Graeber, University of Bonn

Two bills aimed at increasing the number of transplants

The Niskanen Center has a post on two proposed pieces of legislation (together with some thoughts on why incremental policy oriented work is important):

TWO NEW BILLS WILL HELP WITH THE KIDNEY SHORTAGE. BUT PAYING DONORS COULD HELP EVEN MORE.
BY SAMUEL HAMMOND

Here's the  first paragraph of their article, and the  last.


"Last week, the Organ Donation Clarification Act was released by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) with 14 cosponsors. The bill would clarify the National Organ Transplant Act’s (NOTA) definition of “valuable consideration,” making it clear that donors can be compensated for medical expenses and lost wages. It would also permit the U.S. government to run pilot programs to test the viability of noncash rewards to incentivize donors. And now this week, Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) has announced a set of amendments to NOTA that seek to orient the Health Resources and Services Administration toward increasing organ procurement, rather than simply distributing an inadequate supply."

...
"At the same time, the Niskanen Center’s overall mission eschews ideal theories in favor of pragmatic policy change. Thus, as much as I’d love to see someone like Al Roth appointed as the organ transplant czar, with a mandate to design an optimal market in organs, politics is a long game of persuasion and compromise. That’s why the two new bills from Reps. Cartwright and Rice remain immensely important, even if they don’t nearly go far enough."

Interview on market design and repugnance with Yale sophomore Eric Wallach

Here's the transcript of a recent telephone interview I did with ERIC WALLACH, a sophomore at Yale, for The Politic, Yale’s undergraduate journal of politics and culture.

 An Interview with Alvin Roth

Here's the one Q&A he chose as a highlight, at the top of the page:

"How do you approach issues that may be ethically constrained? Do you think there’s a way to minimize the value judgements you make as an economist?

It’s interesting you ask the question that way. For a long time, economists seemed to agree with the implicit assumption of your question that we should minimize the ethical judgements we make. I’m not sure that’s a universal position anymore. Among economists, there’s some discussion that maybe we should be taking ethical positions about some of the markets we see, and especially with repugnant markets."

Transcripts of conversations are a bit disorganized, but this interview covered some issues  different from the ones I normally get asked about (and it's short).

**********

Update: and here's Mr. Wallach's interview with Avinash Dixit:

An Interview with Avinash Dixit, Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University

Nevanlinna Prize winner Constantinos Daskalakis, and the Fields medalists (and one of the Fields medals)

Here's a video that touches on his work on computational complexity of Nash equilibria, and auctioning multiple items.



Here's some more on that from AFT, focusing as well on the Fields medalist Alessio Figalli

THE 2018 FIELDS MEDAL AND ITS SURPRISING CONNECTION TO ECONOMICS!



And here's more still, from Quanta:

2018 Fields Medal And Nevanlinna Prize Winners


And in case less is more, here's a short announcement from Science:
Five superstars win ‘math’s Nobel Prize’

And then there's this, from the prize ceremony in Rio...
Winner of top mathematics prize has medal stolen from him minutes later

Politico summarizes the Backpage story

Here's an article for those who haven't been following this first amendment/prostitution/human trafficking story...

The Sex-Trafficking Case Testing the Limits of the First Amendment
How a couple of crusading journalists made a fortune selling adult escort ads and in the process became unlikely and widely reviled First Amendment advocates.
By PAUL DEMKO July 29, 2018

Many of the people quoted focus on the motivations of the protagonists (get rich, versus defend the First Amendment press freedoms...). I wonder what role if any those questions will play in the legal proceedings.


Here are my other posts about  Backpage and related matters.

How to split the check using social skills or mechanism design

The Washington Post ran a column yesterday that offers advice on
How to split the check without the accusations and awkwardness.

The article points out that restaurants' point of sale software can help if you alert the waiter before you order.

For other fair-division problems, here's a website, Spliddit , that offers tools (and the underlying references to the literature) to help:

• SHARE RENT 
• SPLIT FARE
• ASSIGN CREDIT
• DIVIDE GOODS
• DISTRIBUTE TASKS

If your problem meets the assumptions of the underlying model, you can take it from there.

This seems to be a project of Ariel Procaccia and various colleagues, with Hervé Moulin   as an advisor.

He has another site, RoboVote, which seems more like a general social choice tool for aggregating information or preferences.

A look inside Harvard's admissions process

College admissions is a matching process--you can't just study at an elite university, even if you can afford the tuition--you first have to be admitted.

Harvard's admissions process is the subject of a lawsuit, and the discovery process is shedding some light on the deliberations that go on behind the closed doors of the admissions committee.  Here's an account from the NY Times:

‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions Secrets

Now you know some Harvard admissions jargon: "tips" are aspects of a candidates case that might tip him or her over the bar to admission. "Lops" are people tentatively admitted who get lopped off the admit list as it is trimmed to create a class that is balanced the way the admissions office wants.  And the "Z-List" consist of people admitted at the last minute, and required to defer admission for a year, who often have family connections to Harvard.

Ant financial

When I visited Hangzhou recently I learned a bit about Ant Financial, the offspring of Alibaba and the proprieter of AliPay.  Here's a story from the WSJ about how big they've grown, and the attention it is starting to bring them from Chinese regulators:

Jack Ma’s Giant Financial Startup Is Shaking the Chinese Banking System
Ant Financial is transforming how Chinese run their daily finances, drawing flak from big banks and warning shots from the government

"It handled more payments last year than Mastercard , controls the world’s largest money-market fund and has made loans to tens of millions of people. Its online payments platform completed more than $8 trillion of transactions last year—the equivalent of more than twice Germany’s gross domestic product.

"Ant Financial Services Group, founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, has become the world’s biggest financial-technology firm, driving innovations that let people use their phones for buying insurance as easily as groceries, enabling millions to go weeks at a time without using physical cash.

"That success is also putting a target on the company’s back. China, even more than the U.S., is now under pressure to reckon with the disruptive power of a financial-technology giant."

Compensation for bone marrow/blood stem cells: where are we now?

Here's a paper in the Johns Hopkins series of mostly student papers, Studies in Applied Economics, that brings us up to date on the state of bone marrow compensation in the U.S.

An Examination of the Issue of Bone Marrow Compensation
By Valerie Vilariño

"Although  compensation  for  bone  marrow  is  no  longer  regulated  by  the federal  government, there are many obstacles it must overcome before it becomes commonplace. Citizens who live in states that ban it may not be able to participate in either end of compensation. This is due to grey areas between the laws of the state governments and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. For example, a patient living in a state that bans compensation may not be able to receive bone marrow from a donor who was compensated, even if the donor lives in a state where compensation is allowed, because it breaches the law of the state in which the patient lives. However, this exchange constitutes interstate commerce since the donor and the patient are not in the same state. These types of legal uncertainties often result in cases being heard before the Supreme Court to determine precedents for similar scenarios in the future.36

"Then  there  are  the  practical  difficulties.  At  the  moment,  no  compensatory  bone  marrow registries exist. According to Doug Grant of Hemeos, the main reason for that is that the NMDP opposes  the  compensation  of  bone  marrow.  Both  MoreMarrowDonors.Org  and  Hemeos, despite  having  had  different  business  plans  in  the  way  they  were  planning  on  going  about compensating donors, were forced to close because of procedures indirectly imposed on them by  Be  the  Match.  Grant  told  me  in  an  interview  that  he  closed  Hemeos  in February  2017 because as a startup, the fight against regulation was too much for Hemeos to overcome. By the time that compensation became unquestionably legal, the startup had run out of capital. For compensation to become a reality, there must be registries that are willing to compensate. Because the NMDP so strongly opposes compensation, the experts I talked to agreed that the only option for a compensatory bone marrow registry to exist is for it to be a competitive, parallel registry to that of BE the Match.

"This  presents  other  logistical  difficulties  because  currently  Be  the  Match  is  the  registry  that most,if not all,physicians use when looking for a match for their patient. For a new registry to compete with Be the Match, not only would it, like Hemeos, have to develop its own software to provide transplant centers with, but it would also need to make connections with individual hospitals so that they begin to search the registry. Growing a registry to fully compete with Be the Match’s could take years  given  that  there  is nocentralized  process  by  which  hospitals partner  with  bone  marrow  registries.  Each  hospital  would  have  to  make  an  individual partnership with the compensatory registry. Furthermore, there is currently little incentive for entrepreneurs  to  tackle  this  seemingly  daunting  startup  possibility  since  the  entire  bone marrow market accounts for only $3 million to $4 million a year.
...
"Lastly,  as  previously  mentioned,  47  percent  of  the  matches  made  by  Be  the  Match include either  a  foreign  donor  or  recipient.  Compensation  poses  a  problem  in  those  cases  because many  of  the  cooperative  registries  that  partner  with  Be  the  Match  are  national  registries  of countries where compensation is not legal. By making compensation legal in the United States, some  of  these  partnerships  could  be  strained, potentially leading  to  a  significant  loss  of international matches. All of these are barriers that would need to be somehow overcome in order for compensation not only to be realistic but also for it to accomplish its goal of helping to relieve the scarcity of bone marrow matches."
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HT: Frank McCormick

PBS asks: should the U.S. follow Iran in allowing a market for kidneys for transplant?

PBS asks the question
Iran pays kidney donors. Should the U.S. follow?

You can read the transcript or watch the video at the link.

HT: Mohammad Akbarpour

Surrogacy law in Israel

Haaretz has the story of the recent expansion of access to surrogacy in Israel, which however excludes same sex couples.

Why the Battle for Gay Rights in Israel Passes Through Parenthood, Not Marriage

"Thousands of Israelis walked out of their workplaces and took to the streets Sunday, to protest the government’s denial of gay men’s rights to have children through surrogacy.

"The protest over the legislation highlights how in a country where marriage is governed by religious authorities, parenthood is seen as the key to equality.

"The new legislation loosened surrogacy regulations in Israel, giving single women and women unable to become pregnant for medical reasons the right to apply for state support for surrogacy. However, an additional clause that would have granted the same rights to single fathers – and, by extension, gay couples – was nixed."