Saturday, October 26, 2019

Auction results: Nobel medals of John Nash and Reinhard Selten

The auction is over, and (unlike in some previous auctions) all of the items sold.  The highest profile items, namely the Nobel medals and diplomas, went for $735,000 (Nash) and 225,000 (Selten). 
LOT 58

Price Realized: USD 27,500
You did not place a bid on this lot
Nash's first great contributio
LOT 59

Price Realized: USD 25,000
You did not place a bid on this lot
Nash's doctoral thesis
LOT 60

Price Realized: USD 137,500
You did not place a bid on this lot
For his brilliant insight into
LOT 61

Price Realized: USD 735,000
You did not place a bid on this lot
For refining Nash's work
LOT 62

Price Realized: USD 225,000
You did not place a bid on this lot


Previous post:

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Friday, October 25, 2019

A substantial change in how transplant centers are regulated

From the website of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons:  it appears (although the Final Rule is hard to parse) that reporting requirements including one-year graft survival numbers have been relaxed, which will change the way transplant centers are regulated...


CMS Removes Outcomes Requirement for Transplant Center Re-approval

Sep 27, 2019
ASTS applauds the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the elimination of outcomes requirements as a condition of transplant center re-approval.
The announcement was part of the Omnibus Burden Reduction (Conditions of Participation) Final Rule, which will be published in the Federal Register on September 30, and the outcomes requirements are included in the data submission requirements being eliminated.
In announcing the Final Rule, CMS stated, “In an effort to improve patient care, CMS is responding to President Trump’s Executive Order on improving kidney health in America by strengthening the organ donation process. Specifically, the rule finalizes changes to transplant center requirements giving providers greater flexibility and freedom to support patients who need organ transplants. Current Medicare transplant center regulations for re-approval are burdensome. They are so burdensome, in fact, that they have led to some transplant programs avoiding performing transplants for certain patients, causing some organs to be discarded. The Omnibus rule will eliminate these requirements – specifically for data submission – which will reduce the number of organs that are discarded and increase the number of organs that are available for transplantation. As a result, more patients on the transplant waiting list will have access to lifesaving organ transplants. “

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Prostitution in Washington DC (sex, not politics)

The NY Times has the story, on a bill being discussed that would legalize not only prostitution, but pimps and brothels.

In Washington, a Fight to Decriminalize Prostitution Divides Allies
Supporters say a bill being considered by the District of Columbia Council would protect prostitutes in the nation’s capital. Critics say it would be a boon to sex traffickers.

"Groups supporting decriminalization include the A.C.L.U., Black Lives Matter, Amnesty International and the World Health Organization.

"Opponents include the National Organization for Women and World Without Exploitation, a coalition of groups dedicated to ending sexual trafficking and exploitation.
...
“If the issue people have about pimps is that they are benefiting from other people’s labor, don’t they have managers who do that at McDonald’s?” she asked."

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Designing effective reputation systems, by Donaker, Kim, and Luca in HBR

The Nov-Dec 2019 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article offering some strategies for designing a reputation system that will have a better chance of being well populated and reliable:

Designing Better Online Review Systems
Geoff Donaker, Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Same sex marriage, and abortion, to be legal in Northern Ireland

The Guardian has the story:

Northern Ireland to legalise abortion and same-sex marriage
Equality campaigners were celebrating before the midnight deadline for law to take effect

"Northern Ireland is to legalise abortion and same-sex marriage after an 11th-hour attempt by the region’s assembly to block change collapsed into farce.

Equality campaigners celebrated on Monday as the clock ticked towards midnight when laws extending abortion and marriage rights came into force, ushering in momentous social change as Northern Ireland aligned with the rest of the UK."

Monday, October 21, 2019

Exchange with the right of exclusion--Balbuzanov and Kotowski in Econometrica

Interesting...

Endowments, Exclusion, and Exchange
Ivan Balbuzanov, Maciej H. Kotowski
ECONOMETRICA: SEP 2019, VOLUME 87, ISSUE 5

Abstract: We propose a new solution for discrete exchange economies and resource-allocation problems, the exclusion core. The exclusion core rests upon a foundational idea in the legal understanding of property, the right to exclude others. By reinterpreting endowments as a distribution of exclusion rights, rather than as bundles of goods, our analysis extends to economies with qualified property rights, joint ownership, and social hierarchies. The exclusion core is characterized by a generalized top trading cycle algorithm in a large class of economies, including those featuring private, public, and mixed ownership. It is neither weaker nor stronger than the strong core.

"Our key contribution is the development of a new solution concept for discrete exchange economies and allocation problems, which we call the exclusion core. The exclusion core’s foundation is a reinterpretation of endowments in an exchange economy as a distribution of exclusion rights, rather than as bundles of things to trade. A simple idea—the ability to exclude others from goods in one’s own endowment—offers reallocation possibilities that are absent from traditional core solutions and is at the heart of the exclusion core’s rationale and predictive power. We formulate the exclusion core and analyze its properties in economies with single-unit demand, indivisible goods, and no transfers.
...
" we show that the exclusion core has a close association with David Gale’s top
trading cycle (TTC) algorithm (Shapley and Scarf (1974)). Beyond its theoretical elegance, the TTC algorithm is of substantial practical importance. Suitably generalized, it underpins implemented or proposed solutions to many market-design problems, including transplant organ exchange (Roth, Sönmez, and Ãœnver (2004)), student-school assignment (Abdulkadiro˘glu and Sönmez (2003)), airport landing-slot allocation (Schummer and Vohra (2013)), and refugee resettlement (Delacrétaz, Kominers, and Teytelboym (2016)). A generalized TTC algorithm characterizes the exclusion core in a large class of economies, including those with private, public, and mixed ownership."

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Amazon as a safe market-space for Hasidic business-NYT

The NY Times has the story about how Amazon is a good place to do business, if you don't like to leave home:

How Amazon Has Transformed the Hasidic Economy

"Amazon has become a lucrative place to do business for many Hasidic Jews, offering anonymity to a largely insular community and allowing women to work from home.
...
"The ability to sell merchandise easily and relatively anonymously on Amazon has transformed the economies of Hasidic enclaves in Brooklyn, suburban New York and central New Jersey, communities where members prefer to keep to themselves and typically do not go to college, let alone graduate from business programs.

But Amazon allows Hasidim to start selling without much experience and without making the investments required by a brick-and-mortar store. It permits Hasidic sellers to deal with the public invisibly — almost entirely by mail, by email or through package-delivery firms."

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Auction of John Nash and Reinhard Selten Nobel medals and memorabilia at Christie's, Oct 25

Great scholars pass away, and their estates need to put their affairs in order.
The auction house Christie's has several lots for sale, including the Nobel medals of John Nash and Reinhard Selten, and some items of Nash's work.

Here's Christie's front page for these auctions:
A ‘beautiful mind’ and his Nobel Prize
As Christie’s offers the medal given to John Nash in 1994, his biographer Sylvia Nasar reveals how he was nearly denied the prize that arguably saved his life

Here are the particular lots for sale:
LOT61|Sold in part to Benefit the John C.M. Nash Trust
For his brilliant insight into human behavior
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 1994
Estimate
USD 500,000 - USD 800,000
"The Nobel Prize and diploma are together with the following items relating to the ceremony: Typed letter signed, 11 October 1994, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, notifying Nash of his award; Nash's copy of Les Prix Nobel 1994, Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, 1995; Nash's handwritten dimensions for his formal attire, signed ("John Forbes Nash"), one page, c.October 1994; and Nash's nametag ("Dr. John F. Nash, Economics") bearing the Nobel logo."


LOT62|Sold in part to Benefit Scholarships to the California Institute of Technology
For refining Nash's work
REINHARD SELTEN, 1994
Estimate
USD 200,000 - USD 300,000
"The Nobel Prize and diploma are together with a group of 11 photographs of Dr Selten, all 1990s-2000s, various sizes, including shots of him teaching as well as accepting his Nobel Prize.

Fifty percent of the net proceeds of this sale (after all seller’s costs) will be donated to be used as financial aid for gifted students in mathematics and information technology from Eastern Europe studying at the California Institute of Technology."



LOT60 |THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
Nash's doctoral thesis
NON-COOPERATIVE GAMES, 1951
Estimate
USD 3,000 - USD 5,000
"Octavo (258 x 173mm). Original orange stapled wrappers (some light soiling to covers, a little rusting to staples). Provenance: John Forbes Nash, Jr."


LOT59|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
Nash's first great contribution to Game Theory
FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 1950S
Estimate
USD 2,500 - USD 3,500
"A group of rare offprints from Nash's personal library, two of them annotated. "The Bargaining Problem" is annotated by Nash on the first page where he has commented "a bad choice of phrasing" next to the line "that they are equal in bargaining skill." Contributions to the Theory of Games, which includes Nash and Shapley's "A Simple Three-Person Poker Game" (for which an offprint is also present) has Nash's ownership signature on the first page."

LOT58|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
''I think you will really go places''
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., C.1940S
Estimate
USD 800 - USD 1,200
"A high school trigonometry paper replete with encouraging words from Nash's teacher, and retained by Nash for the rest of his life"

LOT64|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
A handwritten history of Game Theory at Princeton
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 2000S
Estimate
USD 2,000 - USD 3,000
"Nash's handwritten lecture on Game Theory at Princeton University. At the time of his death in 2015, Nash had been associated with Princeton for nearly 70 years, first as an ingenious doctoral student and for the final ten years of his life as a senior research mathematician. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1994, Nash entered a long period of renewed activity and confidence, and here he looks back on the field. His overview begins with the contributions of French mathematician and politician Emile Borel followed by Princeton colleagues John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (he notes that von Neumann "entered the picture" in 1928, the year of his own birth). Nash comments that "scientific concepts often are discovered in stages," and credits Antoine Augustin Cournot and Frederik Zeuthen's work ahead of his own, as well as Shizuo Kakutani's fixed-point theorem. He also touches on the work of Albert Tucker, Alvin Roth, David Gale, Robert Aumann, and Lloyd Shapley."
************
I hope to update these items.  In the meantime, some related previous posts, including previous auctions that didn't meet the reserve price:

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Sunday, April 28, 2019


Hayek at auction at Sothebys


Tuesday, April 23, 2013 Crick's Nobel medal, and letter to his son describing DNA


**************************
Update:

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Auction results: Nobel medals of John Nash and Reinhard Selten

The auction is over, and (unlike in some previous auctions) all of the items sold.  The highest profile items, namely the Nobel medals and diplomas, went for $735,000 (Nash) and 225,000 (Selten).

 

Friday, October 18, 2019

Will IVF become more widely legal in France?

The Washington Post has the story:

Why an IVF bill is the next fault line for the French republic  By Camille Robcis

"Since 1994, France has banned surrogacy and restricted access to reproductive technologies to heterosexual couples who have been married or living together for more than two years, forcing single women and lesbian couples to travel to neighboring countries for fertility treatments, and gay men to resort to surrogates in countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, the French National Assembly is scheduled to vote on a bill that would finally allow access to assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, for unmarried women and lesbian couples. Under the proposed law, the treatments would be reimbursed by Social Security, and French doctors helping these women with fertility treatments would no longer face legal sanctions. Surrogacy, however, would remain illegal.
...
"After a month of fierce legislative debates that have resulted in more than 2,000 proposed amendments to the bill, an estimated 75,000 marchers took to the streets of Paris on Oct. 6 in opposition. "

Thursday, October 17, 2019

NBER Market Design meeting, Cambridge, October 18-19

Market Design Working Group Meeting

Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak, Organizers
October 18-19, 2019

NBER
Feldstein Conference Room, 2nd Floor
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA


Conference Code of Conduct
Friday, October 18
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast
9:00 am
Christina Aperjis, Power Auctions LLC
Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland
Oleg V. Baranov, University of Colorado, Boulder
Supply Reduction in the Broadcast Incentive Auction
9:45 am
Gianluca Brero, University of Zurich
Benjamin Lubin, Boston University
Sven Seuken, University of Zurich
Machine Learning-Powered Iterative Combinatorial Auctions
10:30 am
Break
11:00 am
Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College
M. Bumin Yenmez, Boston College
Affirmative Action in India via Vertical and Horizontal Reservations
11:45 am
Joshua Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Roman Zarate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Choice and Consequence: Assessing Mismatch at Chicago Exam Schools
12:30 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm
Marek Pycia, University of Zurich
Invariance and Matching Market Outcomes
2:45 pm
Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research
Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago
Irene Y. Lo, Stanford University
Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research
Information Acquisition Costs in Matching Markets
3:30 pm
Break
4:00 pm
Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University
Julien Combe, University College London
Yinghua He, Rice University
Victor Hiller, Université Paris 2
Robert Shimer, University of Chicago and NBER
Olivier Tercieux, Paris School of Economics
Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money
4:45 pm
Liran Einav, Stanford University and NBER
Amy Finkelstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Yunan Ji, Harvard University
Neale Mahoney, University of Chicago and NBER
Voluntary Regulation: Evidence from Medicare Bundled Payments
5:30 pm
Adjourn
6:30 pm
Group Dinner at Bambara
(across the street from the Royal Sonesta Hotel)
Saturday, October 19
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast
9:00 am
Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Microsoft Research
Lior Kovalio, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Noam Nisan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Assaf Romm, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University
Matching for the Israeli "Mechinot" Gap-Year Programs: Handling Rich Diversity Requirements
9:45 am
Amanda Y. Agan, Rutgers University and NBER
Bo Cowgill, Columbia University
Laura K. Gee, Tufts University
Salary Disclosure and Hiring: Field Experimental Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit Study
10:30 am
Break
11:00 am
Nick Arnosti, Columbia University
Peng Shi, University of Southern California
Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation
11:45 am
Daniel C. Waldinger, New York University
Targeting In-Kind Transfers Through Market Design: A Revealed Preference Analysis of Public Housing Allocation
12:30 pm
Adjourn
FORMAT
35 mins presenter
10 mins discussion

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Rates of organ donation in countries with presumed consent versus those with explicit consent

Here's an illuminating figure from the 2018 paper
Sonya Norris, Legal and Social Affairs Division, 2018-02-14

Figure 5 - Deceased Organ Donor Rates (per million population), Consent Regimes and Number of Donors in Selected Countries, 2015


Presumed consent (opt-out) countries are graphed in yellow, and explicit consent (opt in) countries in blue.  Given the confusing and often confused discussion of those two regimes, it's noteworthy that both regimes appear near both the top and the bottom of the graph, i.e. there are both high and low donation rate countries using each donation regime.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Kidney Exchange: an opportunity for cooperation in North America: Canadian Transplant Summit

I'll be speaking tomorrow  at the 2019 Canadian Transplant Summit, giving two talks.

In the morning, I'll speak at the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP) 6th Annual Scientific Meeting on "Computers and Kidney Exchange."

In the afternoon I'll speak on 
Kidney Exchange: An Opportunity for Cooperation in North America:

State-of-the-Art Opening Plenary Session - Modeling Organ Allocation in Transplantation

 Wed, October 16
 4:30 PM - 5:50 PM
 KC101+103
Session Chairs
Moderator
John Gill, University of British Columbia Division of Nephrology and Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences

Kenneth West, Dalhousie University

Presentations

Kidney Exchange: an opportunity for cooperation in North America
Alvin Roth, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate, Economics


Perspectives on organ transplantation as a donor family
Toby Boulet 

Monday, October 14, 2019

Congrats to Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty"

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 to
“for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”


From the Nobel press release:

"In the mid-1990s, Michael Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how powerful this approach can be, using field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya.

"Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics."

A kidney exchange chain initiated by a deceased donor, in Italy

 Deceased Donor–initiated Chains
First Report of a Successful Deliberate Case and Its Ethical Implications
Furian, Lucrezia MD1; Cornelio, Cristina PhD2; Silvestre, Cristina MD, PhD1; Neri, Flavia MD1; Rossi, Francesca PhD2,3; Rigotti, Paolo MD1; Cozzi, Emanuele MD, PhD4; Nicolò, Antonio PhD

Transplantation: October 2019 - Volume 103 - Issue 10 - p 2196–2200
doi: 10.1097/TP.0000000000002645

Background. It has been suggested that deceased donor kidneys could be used to initiate chains of living donor kidney paired donation, but the potential gains of this practice need to be quantified and the ethical implications must be addressed before it can be implemented.

Methods. The gain of implementing deceased donor–initiated chains was measured with an algorithm, using retrospective data on the pool of incompatible donor/recipient pairs, at a single center. The allocation rules for chain-ending kidneys and the characteristics and quality of the chain-initiating kidney are described.

Results. The benefit quantification process showed that, with a pool of 69 kidneys from deceased donors and 16 pairs enrolled in the kidney paired donation program, it was possible to transplant 8 of 16 recipients (50%) over a period of 3 years. After obtaining the approval of the Veneto Regional Authority’s Bioethical Committee and the revision of the Italian National Transplant Center’s allocation policies, the first successful case was completed. For the recipient (male, aged 53 y), who entered the program for a chain-initiating kidney with a Kidney Donor Risk Index of 0.61 and a Kidney Donor Profile Index of 3%, the waiting time was 4 days. His willing donor (female, aged 53 y) with a Living Kidney Donor Profile Index of 2, donated 2 days later to a chain-ending recipient (male, aged 47 y) who had been on dialysis for 5 years.

Conclusions. This is the first report of a successfully completed, deliberate deceased donor–initiated chain, which was made possible after a thorough assessment of the ethical issues and the impact of allocation policies. This article includes a preliminary efficacy assessment and describes the development of a dedicated algorithm.
**********

See earlier post:

Monday, April 11, 2016