I've posted several times about recent developments in the U.S. on the legalization of gay marriage, most recently here: Same sex marriage in Iowa, and New England . These developments involve the legality of a contract between two willing adults that third parties may find repugnant. This repugnance is of ancient origin, as I was reminded by the Torah portion read yesterday, which includes Chapter 18 verse 22 of Leviticus, which forbids (a male) lying with a male. This comes immediately after the prohibition against handing over your children "to Moloch" (which is often read as a ban on human sacrifice), and after the prohibitions against any kind of incest.
At the blog PaleoJudaica.com there's a discussion of some of the rabbinic discussion about this verse, and one of the comments points to a midrash claiming that the ancient Canaanites, who preceded Israel in the land, used to practice same sex marriage:
"The reference is to the Sifra 8:8, on Leviticus 18:2ומה היו עושים? האיש נושא לאיש והאשה לאשה, האיש נושא אשה ובתה, והאשה ניסת לשנים. לכך אמר ובחוקותיהם לא תלכוThe Hebrew can be translated as, "And what did they used to do? A man married a man and a woman a woman, a man married a woman and her daughter, and a woman married two men. Therefore it says, By their rules you shall not walk." "
So, some transactions have a very long history indeed of being regarded as repugnant. And still, views can change.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Market for sabbatical homes
Professors and some other kinds of teachers have periodic leaves, for a semester or an academic year, that don't match well with the usual rental real estate market, in which leases tend to be for a calendar year. This opens up a niche for a specialized rental market for sabbatical homes.
A professor with an upcoming leave might look to such a market both to rent his or her own home while on leave, and to rent a home where he will be spending his leave. Since other professors are the people most likely to want to rent (in either direction) for a corresponding time period, this opens up the possibility of a dedicated marketplace in which participants in this small slice of the large real estate market can efficiently find each other. (Such a marketplace may also serve to thicken the market for people with taste for the kinds of homes that professors live in, and may make it easier for owners to verify details about potential renters that make them more comfortable to temporarily rent their homes.)
When I searched on the web (under "sabbatical homes"), I found the following contenders for a share of this market, all of which appear to operate as simple listing services (i.e. they post ads, and people can then contact each other).
A professor with an upcoming leave might look to such a market both to rent his or her own home while on leave, and to rent a home where he will be spending his leave. Since other professors are the people most likely to want to rent (in either direction) for a corresponding time period, this opens up the possibility of a dedicated marketplace in which participants in this small slice of the large real estate market can efficiently find each other. (Such a marketplace may also serve to thicken the market for people with taste for the kinds of homes that professors live in, and may make it easier for owners to verify details about potential renters that make them more comfortable to temporarily rent their homes.)
When I searched on the web (under "sabbatical homes"), I found the following contenders for a share of this market, all of which appear to operate as simple listing services (i.e. they post ads, and people can then contact each other).
SabbaticalHomes.com, WanderingEducators.com , AcademicHomes.com
Update (on the market for goat rentals, as a lawn mowing substitute): This post elicited the following email from Mary O'Keeffe:
"Your post on the sabbatical rental market brought back memories of a year my husband and I spent a couple terms as visiting assistant professors at Caltech in 1981 and rented an incredibly nice luxury Pasadena townhouse from a senior professor who was on leave during the same two terms that year. We got a great below-market price and he got responsible tenants whose schedules aligned with his needs.
Anyway, I thought you might be interested in this article about the developing goat rental market in Silicon Valley:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/05/01/google-and-yahoo-both-use-goats-for-lawn-mowing"
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Football bowls: market design by Congress?
Sports fans will no doubt be relieved to learn that the Feds are on the case: Congress examining fairness, financing of BCS system .
"Tackling an issue sure to rouse sports fans, lawmakers pressed college football officials Friday on switching the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, with one Texas Republican calling the current system as unworkable as communism and joking it should be labeled "BS," not "BCS."
John Swofford, the coordinator of the BCS, rejected the idea of switching to a playoff, arguing it would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games. Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, "meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game's history, to survive," Swofford said.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it's the outcome of a playoff system, said that efforts to tinker with the BCS were bound to fail.
"It's like communism," he said at the House Energy and Commerce Committee's commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee hearing. "You can't fix it." "
While the BCS system is already a kind of camel (i.e. a horse designed by a committee), it is a considerable improvement over the unraveled market that came before it, in which bowl matchups were frequently mis-matches arranged several weeks before the end of the regular season, see
Frechette, Guillaume, Alvin E. Roth, and M. Utku Unver, "Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-Season College Football Bowls," Rand Journal of Economics, 38, 4, Winter 2007, 967-982, with an online appendix).
I'm skeptical that Congress will push this very far, but it is good to know that the country is in such good shape that some of our Congress persons can devote their efforts to this.
HT: Utku Unver
"Tackling an issue sure to rouse sports fans, lawmakers pressed college football officials Friday on switching the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, with one Texas Republican calling the current system as unworkable as communism and joking it should be labeled "BS," not "BCS."
John Swofford, the coordinator of the BCS, rejected the idea of switching to a playoff, arguing it would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games. Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, "meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game's history, to survive," Swofford said.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it's the outcome of a playoff system, said that efforts to tinker with the BCS were bound to fail.
"It's like communism," he said at the House Energy and Commerce Committee's commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee hearing. "You can't fix it." "
While the BCS system is already a kind of camel (i.e. a horse designed by a committee), it is a considerable improvement over the unraveled market that came before it, in which bowl matchups were frequently mis-matches arranged several weeks before the end of the regular season, see
Frechette, Guillaume, Alvin E. Roth, and M. Utku Unver, "Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-Season College Football Bowls," Rand Journal of Economics, 38, 4, Winter 2007, 967-982, with an online appendix).
I'm skeptical that Congress will push this very far, but it is good to know that the country is in such good shape that some of our Congress persons can devote their efforts to this.
HT: Utku Unver
Friday, May 1, 2009
College letters of rejection
Today is the day by which students must accept an offer of admission from most colleges. So it's a good time to think about those applications that were not accepted. The WSJ has a story reviewing (in the sense of a book review) the variety of ways colleges convey rejections: Rejection: Some Colleges Do It Better Than Others
"Toughest: Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Most rejection letters, in an effort to soften the blow, follow a pattern: We're sorry, we had a huge applicant pool, all our applicants were terrific, we wish we could admit everyone. Bates, a competitive, 1,700-student college, expresses its regrets to rejected applicants and praises its applicant pool. But it delivers a more direct, and perhaps more honest, message: "The deans were obliged to select from among candidates who clearly could do sound work at Bates," the letter says."
"Stanford University sends a steely "don't call us" message embedded in its otherwise gentle rejection letter. In addition to asserting that "we are humbled by your talents and achievements" and assuring the applicant that he or she is "a fine student," the letter says, "we are not able to consider appeals." It links to a Q&A that reiterates: "Admission decisions are final and there is absolutely no appeal process." It also discourages attempts to transfer later, an even more competitive process."
"Kindest: Harvard College. Despite an estimated admission rate of about 7% this year, this hotly sought-after school sends a humble rejection letter.
"Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the next four years." "
"Most Discouraging: Boston University. To students who have family ties to the university, its letter begins: "We give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University. We have extended this consideration in the evaluation of your application, but I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission."
"Biggest Spin: Numerous colleges spin the data in their rejection letters as a well-intentioned way of comforting denied students. University of California, Davis, says it had "42,000 applicants from which UC Davis could enroll a freshman class of 4,600." This implies an 11% acceptance rate. Its actual admission rate is closer to 50%, because many accepted candidates ultimately enroll elsewhere."
"Toughest: Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Most rejection letters, in an effort to soften the blow, follow a pattern: We're sorry, we had a huge applicant pool, all our applicants were terrific, we wish we could admit everyone. Bates, a competitive, 1,700-student college, expresses its regrets to rejected applicants and praises its applicant pool. But it delivers a more direct, and perhaps more honest, message: "The deans were obliged to select from among candidates who clearly could do sound work at Bates," the letter says."
"Stanford University sends a steely "don't call us" message embedded in its otherwise gentle rejection letter. In addition to asserting that "we are humbled by your talents and achievements" and assuring the applicant that he or she is "a fine student," the letter says, "we are not able to consider appeals." It links to a Q&A that reiterates: "Admission decisions are final and there is absolutely no appeal process." It also discourages attempts to transfer later, an even more competitive process."
"Kindest: Harvard College. Despite an estimated admission rate of about 7% this year, this hotly sought-after school sends a humble rejection letter.
"Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the next four years." "
"Most Discouraging: Boston University. To students who have family ties to the university, its letter begins: "We give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University. We have extended this consideration in the evaluation of your application, but I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission."
"Biggest Spin: Numerous colleges spin the data in their rejection letters as a well-intentioned way of comforting denied students. University of California, Davis, says it had "42,000 applicants from which UC Davis could enroll a freshman class of 4,600." This implies an 11% acceptance rate. Its actual admission rate is closer to 50%, because many accepted candidates ultimately enroll elsewhere."
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Cadavers for dissection by medical students
I've written before about how the purchase of cadavers (even) by medical schools for anatomy classes was for many years a repugnant and largely an illegal transaction in Europe and the U.S., but no longer. A recent review of a book of photographs of medical students posed with cadavers reveals something about the changing cultural attitudes that have accompanied this shift. Shifts of these kinds are potentially interesting to economists because of what they might tell us about changes in which transactions are regarded as repugnant more generally.
Recent news stories have covered the practice in Asia of having students treat the cadavers as honored teachers, sometimes at ceremonies attended by the families of the deceased: Taiwanese Med Students Honor Cadaver Donors.
"A Taiwanese medical school is responding to the island nation’s shortage of cadavers for study by bringing the family of the deceased fully into the program, the Wall Street Journal reports. At Tzu Chi University, medical students meet with donors' families and even compose poems to their “silent mentors” to express their gratitude. And before they wield their scalpels, they participate in a farewell ceremony."
It turns out such ceremonies have a reasonably long history. From the English language abstract of an article in a Chinese medical journal, Anatomy cadaver ceremonies in Taiwan:
"The practice of holding annual ceremonies in honor of cadaver donors in Taiwan's medical schools has a history of nearly a hundred years. It originated in Japan, where such ceremonies have been widely held in medical schools since the practice was founded by Toyo Yamawaki, who was the first medical scholar in Japan to engage in dissection of the human body and was the author of the first anatomy book to appear in Japan, the Zoshi. The practice of holding donor ceremonies was introduced into Taiwan after the Jaiwu Sino - Japanese war, when the island became a Japanese colony. The tradition was upheld in the Viceroy's Medical School, the Viceroy's College of Medicine, and Taihoku (Taipei) Imperial University College of Medicine, and continued since the restoration of Chinese power to the present. The practice of holding cadaver donor ceremonies in institutions of medical education is intended to express respect for the donor as well as to encourage the practice of cadaver donation to the benefit of medical education."
But going further back in time, it sounds as if the Asian experience may have been quite similar to the European history regarding cadavers. Here is the English abstract of an article published in Japanese on the History of collecting cadavers in Japan
"This study investigated how and from where medical students had acquired cadavers for research throughout Japanese history. At the beginning of dissection in the mid Edo era, they cut up executed prisoners granted by the Tokugawa Shyogunate to study internal body parts. After the Meiji Restoration, the social mechanism of delivering cadavers underwent a complete transformation and they began to utilize 1) dead bodies of inpatients who had received free medical treatment and 2) unclaimed bodies mainly from homes for the aged and prisons. It was quite recently that "kentai", voluntary body donation, became common practice of collecting cadavers. Consequently the history of cadavers submitted to dissection faithfully reflects the relation between medical science and society."
I can't help being reminded of the current cautious attempts in the U.S. to encourage organ donation for transplantation, about which I blogged yesterday: Tax credits for organ donors, and medals.
Recent news stories have covered the practice in Asia of having students treat the cadavers as honored teachers, sometimes at ceremonies attended by the families of the deceased: Taiwanese Med Students Honor Cadaver Donors.
"A Taiwanese medical school is responding to the island nation’s shortage of cadavers for study by bringing the family of the deceased fully into the program, the Wall Street Journal reports. At Tzu Chi University, medical students meet with donors' families and even compose poems to their “silent mentors” to express their gratitude. And before they wield their scalpels, they participate in a farewell ceremony."
It turns out such ceremonies have a reasonably long history. From the English language abstract of an article in a Chinese medical journal, Anatomy cadaver ceremonies in Taiwan:
"The practice of holding annual ceremonies in honor of cadaver donors in Taiwan's medical schools has a history of nearly a hundred years. It originated in Japan, where such ceremonies have been widely held in medical schools since the practice was founded by Toyo Yamawaki, who was the first medical scholar in Japan to engage in dissection of the human body and was the author of the first anatomy book to appear in Japan, the Zoshi. The practice of holding donor ceremonies was introduced into Taiwan after the Jaiwu Sino - Japanese war, when the island became a Japanese colony. The tradition was upheld in the Viceroy's Medical School, the Viceroy's College of Medicine, and Taihoku (Taipei) Imperial University College of Medicine, and continued since the restoration of Chinese power to the present. The practice of holding cadaver donor ceremonies in institutions of medical education is intended to express respect for the donor as well as to encourage the practice of cadaver donation to the benefit of medical education."
But going further back in time, it sounds as if the Asian experience may have been quite similar to the European history regarding cadavers. Here is the English abstract of an article published in Japanese on the History of collecting cadavers in Japan
"This study investigated how and from where medical students had acquired cadavers for research throughout Japanese history. At the beginning of dissection in the mid Edo era, they cut up executed prisoners granted by the Tokugawa Shyogunate to study internal body parts. After the Meiji Restoration, the social mechanism of delivering cadavers underwent a complete transformation and they began to utilize 1) dead bodies of inpatients who had received free medical treatment and 2) unclaimed bodies mainly from homes for the aged and prisons. It was quite recently that "kentai", voluntary body donation, became common practice of collecting cadavers. Consequently the history of cadavers submitted to dissection faithfully reflects the relation between medical science and society."
I can't help being reminded of the current cautious attempts in the U.S. to encourage organ donation for transplantation, about which I blogged yesterday: Tax credits for organ donors, and medals.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tax credits for organ donors, and medals
The issue of what compensation or reimbursement if any to allow for organ donation continues to be raised, very slowly, cautiously, and modestly in American legislation. The latest attempt, in the current (111th) Congress: Living Organ Donor Tax Credit Act of 2009 (Introduced in House), proposes
"In General- In the case of an individual who donates a qualified life-saving organ of such individual for transplantation into another individual during the taxable year, there shall be allowed as a credit against the tax imposed by this chapter for the taxable year the sum of--
`(1) unreimbursed costs paid by the taxpayer in connection with such transplantation, and
`(2) any lost wages of the individual in connection with such transplantation.
`(b) Limitation- The credit allowed under subsection (a) with respect to any individual for any taxable year shall not exceed $5,000."
If this sounds excessively cautious, note that the previous (110th) Congress passed, and on October 14, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law, the Stephanie Tubbs-Jones Congressional Gift of Life Medal Act (HR 7198) (Public Law No: 110-413). (It was passed without opposition in both houses of Congress). The Congressional Research Service summary of the law reads (emphasis added)
"10/14/2008--Public Law.
(This measure has not been amended since it was introduced. The summary of that version is repeated here.)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life Medal Act of 2008 - Makes any organ donor, or the family of any organ donor, eligible for a Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life Medal.
Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to direct the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to establish an application procedure, determine eligibility, and arrange for the presentation of medals.
Allows only one medal per family. Requires that such medal be presented to the donor or, in the case of a deceased donor, the family member who signed the consent form authorizing the organ donation.
Authorizes the Network to collect funds to offset expenditures relating to the issuance of medals.
Prohibits federal funds from being used to carry out this Act. "
"In General- In the case of an individual who donates a qualified life-saving organ of such individual for transplantation into another individual during the taxable year, there shall be allowed as a credit against the tax imposed by this chapter for the taxable year the sum of--
`(1) unreimbursed costs paid by the taxpayer in connection with such transplantation, and
`(2) any lost wages of the individual in connection with such transplantation.
`(b) Limitation- The credit allowed under subsection (a) with respect to any individual for any taxable year shall not exceed $5,000."
If this sounds excessively cautious, note that the previous (110th) Congress passed, and on October 14, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law, the Stephanie Tubbs-Jones Congressional Gift of Life Medal Act (HR 7198) (Public Law No: 110-413). (It was passed without opposition in both houses of Congress). The Congressional Research Service summary of the law reads (emphasis added)
"10/14/2008--Public Law.
(This measure has not been amended since it was introduced. The summary of that version is repeated here.)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life Medal Act of 2008 - Makes any organ donor, or the family of any organ donor, eligible for a Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life Medal.
Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to direct the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to establish an application procedure, determine eligibility, and arrange for the presentation of medals.
Allows only one medal per family. Requires that such medal be presented to the donor or, in the case of a deceased donor, the family member who signed the consent form authorizing the organ donation.
Authorizes the Network to collect funds to offset expenditures relating to the issuance of medals.
Prohibits federal funds from being used to carry out this Act. "
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Private sales of artworks, in a down market
Auctions are good for price discovery, and price discovery is particularly important for "common value" goods, i.e. goods whose value to each buyer may be substantially influenced by what other buyers are willing to pay. So, what should you do if you want to unload a common value asset but want to avoid disseminating potentially bad news about what it might be worth? The NY Times reports More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown .
"During good times, an auction is the obvious choice for any collector wanting to sell a work of art. But as the recession takes its toll, many collectors have changed strategies and retreated to the more hidden, and potentially less lucrative, world of private sales.
"For many sellers, the driving factor is fear. Fear that their friends will discover they need money. Fear that if a Picasso or Warhol, Monet or Modigliani does not sell at auction, it will be considered yesterday’s goods.
If they do not have to, fewer collectors are putting their holdings up for auction at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where prices and profits have plummeted. But executives at both houses say business in their private-sale departments has more than doubled in recent months. "
...
" “The game has definitely shifted,” said Christopher Eykyn, a former head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s who is now a dealer in New York. “A lot of clients don’t want to be seen selling, so the private route is suddenly more attractive.” "
...
"There are exceptions, of course. Estates continue to go to auction because executors have a fiduciary responsibility and prices are rarely challenged after public sales.
For the auction houses, private sales are lucrative and inexpensive. Generally Sotheby’s and Christie’s charge 5 to 10 percent of the purchase price of an artwork, depending on its value and the agreement with the seller. (If a work goes to auction the houses charge sellers 25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest.) Money earned from private transactions comes cheap, without expenses like advertising, insurance and shipping associated with auctions.
The dismal sales in New York in November, when night after night paintings by Monet and Matisse, Bacon and Warhol went unsold, meant big losses for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which had a financial interest in most of this expensive art in the form of guarantees, undisclosed sums paid to sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome.
After the fall auctions, both houses immediately began changing the way they conduct business. In addition to announcing hundreds of layoffs, with perhaps more to come, they mostly halted the practice of guarantees and stopped giving consignors a cut in the fees they charge buyers. The days of publishing luscious catalogs have ended as well.
For their part, dealers say that their phones started ringing after Sept. 15, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. “It’s been pretty steady ever since,” said Steven P. Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. He said he had been getting inquiries about selling art from people who had investments with Bernard L. Madoff, or who had seen the value of their stock or real estate assets collapse."
"During good times, an auction is the obvious choice for any collector wanting to sell a work of art. But as the recession takes its toll, many collectors have changed strategies and retreated to the more hidden, and potentially less lucrative, world of private sales.
"For many sellers, the driving factor is fear. Fear that their friends will discover they need money. Fear that if a Picasso or Warhol, Monet or Modigliani does not sell at auction, it will be considered yesterday’s goods.
If they do not have to, fewer collectors are putting their holdings up for auction at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where prices and profits have plummeted. But executives at both houses say business in their private-sale departments has more than doubled in recent months. "
...
" “The game has definitely shifted,” said Christopher Eykyn, a former head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s who is now a dealer in New York. “A lot of clients don’t want to be seen selling, so the private route is suddenly more attractive.” "
...
"There are exceptions, of course. Estates continue to go to auction because executors have a fiduciary responsibility and prices are rarely challenged after public sales.
For the auction houses, private sales are lucrative and inexpensive. Generally Sotheby’s and Christie’s charge 5 to 10 percent of the purchase price of an artwork, depending on its value and the agreement with the seller. (If a work goes to auction the houses charge sellers 25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest.) Money earned from private transactions comes cheap, without expenses like advertising, insurance and shipping associated with auctions.
The dismal sales in New York in November, when night after night paintings by Monet and Matisse, Bacon and Warhol went unsold, meant big losses for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which had a financial interest in most of this expensive art in the form of guarantees, undisclosed sums paid to sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome.
After the fall auctions, both houses immediately began changing the way they conduct business. In addition to announcing hundreds of layoffs, with perhaps more to come, they mostly halted the practice of guarantees and stopped giving consignors a cut in the fees they charge buyers. The days of publishing luscious catalogs have ended as well.
For their part, dealers say that their phones started ringing after Sept. 15, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. “It’s been pretty steady ever since,” said Steven P. Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. He said he had been getting inquiries about selling art from people who had investments with Bernard L. Madoff, or who had seen the value of their stock or real estate assets collapse."
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Rankings of universities: vintages and coordination of expectations
US News and World Report has published its annual ranking of American universities. One thing that the rankings make clear is that, while they may move around a bit from year to year (and the precise rankings are not so informative), it takes a long time to rise to the top.
This year the first place goes to the oldest American university, founded in 1636, and spots 2 and 3 go to universities established in 1746 (as the College of New Jersey), and 1701. Two universities that opened more than a century later, in 1861, and 1891 , are tied for 4th place. The two universities tied for 6th are of different vintages, 1891 and 1755, as are the three tied for 8th place, 1754, 1838, and 1892. The top dozen ranks are filled out by universities open for business since 1769, 1855, and 1856.
At number 17, Rice University, opened in 1912, seems to be the highest ranked university on the list to have begun in the 20th century.
So, while ranking is far from perfectly correlated with age (which is in turn correlated with wealth, among other things), a university that wants to rise to the top of these rankings must take a long view.
It would be good to know more about how rankings (and changes in rankings, especially changes of more than a few places) influence the success of universities in attracting students and faculty. Compared to fundamentals, the rankings themselves shouldn't do much (although they are correlated with features that make a university a desirable place to study and teach). But rankings may also serve as a coordination device for students. For example, if two otherwise similar universities have substantially different rankings, e.g. one is listed in the top 20 and the other in the top thirty, it may be that over time the top 20 university will attract better students, and become a better university. If so, universities that concern themselves with signaling their quality by trying to raise their ranking may not be misguided.
Rankings of international universities (for which the precise rankings are even harder to interpret as being deeply informative) reveal that age is less well correlated with ranking than might appear from looking at American universities alone. For example, in this ranking and in this one, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, both so old that no reliable founding dates are known (although 1096 and 1226 are mentioned in their histories) are both in the top 10. But the much younger American universities dominate the top of the lists, where the equally old universities in continental Europe are scarce.
Update: Here's a November 2009 article from across the pond, which suggests that independence of universities from government may play a role: The American lesson: How to be top
This year the first place goes to the oldest American university, founded in 1636, and spots 2 and 3 go to universities established in 1746 (as the College of New Jersey), and 1701. Two universities that opened more than a century later, in 1861, and 1891 , are tied for 4th place. The two universities tied for 6th are of different vintages, 1891 and 1755, as are the three tied for 8th place, 1754, 1838, and 1892. The top dozen ranks are filled out by universities open for business since 1769, 1855, and 1856.
At number 17, Rice University, opened in 1912, seems to be the highest ranked university on the list to have begun in the 20th century.
So, while ranking is far from perfectly correlated with age (which is in turn correlated with wealth, among other things), a university that wants to rise to the top of these rankings must take a long view.
It would be good to know more about how rankings (and changes in rankings, especially changes of more than a few places) influence the success of universities in attracting students and faculty. Compared to fundamentals, the rankings themselves shouldn't do much (although they are correlated with features that make a university a desirable place to study and teach). But rankings may also serve as a coordination device for students. For example, if two otherwise similar universities have substantially different rankings, e.g. one is listed in the top 20 and the other in the top thirty, it may be that over time the top 20 university will attract better students, and become a better university. If so, universities that concern themselves with signaling their quality by trying to raise their ranking may not be misguided.
Rankings of international universities (for which the precise rankings are even harder to interpret as being deeply informative) reveal that age is less well correlated with ranking than might appear from looking at American universities alone. For example, in this ranking and in this one, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, both so old that no reliable founding dates are known (although 1096 and 1226 are mentioned in their histories) are both in the top 10. But the much younger American universities dominate the top of the lists, where the equally old universities in continental Europe are scarce.
Update: Here's a November 2009 article from across the pond, which suggests that independence of universities from government may play a role: The American lesson: How to be top
Market for bogus colleges
Colleges not only educate students, they also give them credentials and certifications. So it is not too surprising that there is both a demand for credentials without education, and a supply.
In the United States, the focus seems to be on degrees. (If you type "college degrees" into Google, you find a number of intriguing options, including one that offers a degree in a week. Of course, maybe they have discovered a teaching and learning technology that we should all emulate...)
In Britain, it appears that the market focuses on obtaining a letter of admission, for immigration purposes: Fake colleges enable foreigners to disappear through the loophole.
"Bogus colleges set up to help foreign workers to enter Britain illegally have long been considered the biggest loophole in British immigration controls.
Often little more than two rooms over a takeaway restaurant or newsagents, the colleges have been enrolling hundreds of “overseas students” each year to enable them to obtain visas.
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, described the bogus colleges last month as the Achilles’ heel in the immigration system. The Government announced a crackdown on them in 2003 but regulations did not come into force until the end of last month.
Under the new rules, all universities, colleges and schools must be approved by the UK Border Agency before they can issue visa letters to foreign students. Of the 2,100 institutions that applied for a sponsor licence, 467 have failed the vetting. More than 3,000 other colleges estimated to have been accepting foreign students have not applied for a licence."
One of the latest terrorist suspects to be arrested in Britain appears to have entered Britain from Pakistan with a visa from a bogus college: Terror suspect was enrolled at college shut down by Home Office
Update: a subsequent story, 5/21/09 Sham colleges open doors to Pakistani terror suspects
In the United States, the focus seems to be on degrees. (If you type "college degrees" into Google, you find a number of intriguing options, including one that offers a degree in a week. Of course, maybe they have discovered a teaching and learning technology that we should all emulate...)
In Britain, it appears that the market focuses on obtaining a letter of admission, for immigration purposes: Fake colleges enable foreigners to disappear through the loophole.
"Bogus colleges set up to help foreign workers to enter Britain illegally have long been considered the biggest loophole in British immigration controls.
Often little more than two rooms over a takeaway restaurant or newsagents, the colleges have been enrolling hundreds of “overseas students” each year to enable them to obtain visas.
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, described the bogus colleges last month as the Achilles’ heel in the immigration system. The Government announced a crackdown on them in 2003 but regulations did not come into force until the end of last month.
Under the new rules, all universities, colleges and schools must be approved by the UK Border Agency before they can issue visa letters to foreign students. Of the 2,100 institutions that applied for a sponsor licence, 467 have failed the vetting. More than 3,000 other colleges estimated to have been accepting foreign students have not applied for a licence."
One of the latest terrorist suspects to be arrested in Britain appears to have entered Britain from Pakistan with a visa from a bogus college: Terror suspect was enrolled at college shut down by Home Office
Update: a subsequent story, 5/21/09 Sham colleges open doors to Pakistani terror suspects
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Efficient random allocation of discrete goods, Mihai Manea
In this season of Ph.D. dissertation defenses, Mihai Manea just completed the last defense that I'm intimately involved in. His work includes papers on the ex-ante efficiency of allocations involving lotteries in large markets.
This is a topic that comes up in school choice systems, for example, with the random element coming from the fact that a given school may not have the capacity to serve all the students who would like to enroll, so that some random tie breaking procedure has to be employed.
An important paper by Bogolmanaia and Moulin (2001) noted that random serial dictatorship, although ex post efficient, may be ex ante inefficient. They proposed an "ordinally efficient" random mechanism called the probabilistic serial mechanism. An ordinally efficient mechanism chooses a probability matrix (assigning each player some probability of obtaining each object) that cannot be Pareto improved upon by another random assignment that first order stochastically dominates the first.
Random serial dictatorship is the procedure for allocating indivisible goods by putting the claimants in a random order, and then allowing the first to choose the object he prefers, the second to choose the object he prefers from those that remain, etc. This results in a lottery over ex post efficient allocations, which B&M noted may be an inefficient lottery: it induces a stochastic allocation matrix with the property that some claimants would be willing to trade some of their probability of getting one object with one another, to yield a mutually preferable stochastic matrix. One of Mihai's early papers shows that efficient probability-exchange contracts of this sort can be written by agents agreeing to exchange their orders in some realizations: i.e. the agents can write an ordinally efficient ordering-exchange contract that they all prefer to the random serial dictatorship allocation in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance. (Random Serial Dictatorship and Ordinally Efficient Contracts, International Journal of Game Theory 2008.)
One drawback of the probabilistic serial mechanism is that, while it is ordinally efficient (unlike random serial dictatorship) it does not make it a dominant strategy for agents to state their true preferences (again, unlike random serial dictatorship). Mihai and Fuhito Kojima show that this drawback goes away when the number of identical copies of each object is sufficiently large: Strategy-Proofness of the Probabilistic Serial Mechanism in Large Random Assignment Problems . Their result isn't just a limit theorem, rather, they show that there is a finite number such that, when the number of identical copies of each object is larger than that, the psm is strategy proof.
Separately, Mihai and Fuhito study the efficiency of random serial dictatorship in different ways as markets grow large. Mihai shows that , as the market becomes large (in particular, as the number of types of objects grows along with the number of participants), the proportion of preference profiles at which rsd is ordinally inefficient goes to one in the limit. (Asymptotic Ordinal Inefficiency of Random Serial Dictatorship, forthcoming Theoretical Economics.)
Fuhito, together with Yeon-Koo Che, shows, in a market that grows large in a different way (the number of copies of each object type grows along with the number of participants) that random serial dictatorship converges to the probabilistic serial mechanism. (Asymptotic Equivalence of Probabilistic Serial and Random Priority Mechanisms , 2008.)
In general, looking at efficiency ex-ante as well as ex post opens up new avenues for investigation, and how these interact in large markets has been a fruitful way to start thinking about them.
Welcome to the club, Mihai.
This is a topic that comes up in school choice systems, for example, with the random element coming from the fact that a given school may not have the capacity to serve all the students who would like to enroll, so that some random tie breaking procedure has to be employed.
An important paper by Bogolmanaia and Moulin (2001) noted that random serial dictatorship, although ex post efficient, may be ex ante inefficient. They proposed an "ordinally efficient" random mechanism called the probabilistic serial mechanism. An ordinally efficient mechanism chooses a probability matrix (assigning each player some probability of obtaining each object) that cannot be Pareto improved upon by another random assignment that first order stochastically dominates the first.
Random serial dictatorship is the procedure for allocating indivisible goods by putting the claimants in a random order, and then allowing the first to choose the object he prefers, the second to choose the object he prefers from those that remain, etc. This results in a lottery over ex post efficient allocations, which B&M noted may be an inefficient lottery: it induces a stochastic allocation matrix with the property that some claimants would be willing to trade some of their probability of getting one object with one another, to yield a mutually preferable stochastic matrix. One of Mihai's early papers shows that efficient probability-exchange contracts of this sort can be written by agents agreeing to exchange their orders in some realizations: i.e. the agents can write an ordinally efficient ordering-exchange contract that they all prefer to the random serial dictatorship allocation in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance. (Random Serial Dictatorship and Ordinally Efficient Contracts, International Journal of Game Theory 2008.)
One drawback of the probabilistic serial mechanism is that, while it is ordinally efficient (unlike random serial dictatorship) it does not make it a dominant strategy for agents to state their true preferences (again, unlike random serial dictatorship). Mihai and Fuhito Kojima show that this drawback goes away when the number of identical copies of each object is sufficiently large: Strategy-Proofness of the Probabilistic Serial Mechanism in Large Random Assignment Problems . Their result isn't just a limit theorem, rather, they show that there is a finite number such that, when the number of identical copies of each object is larger than that, the psm is strategy proof.
Separately, Mihai and Fuhito study the efficiency of random serial dictatorship in different ways as markets grow large. Mihai shows that , as the market becomes large (in particular, as the number of types of objects grows along with the number of participants), the proportion of preference profiles at which rsd is ordinally inefficient goes to one in the limit. (Asymptotic Ordinal Inefficiency of Random Serial Dictatorship, forthcoming Theoretical Economics.)
Fuhito, together with Yeon-Koo Che, shows, in a market that grows large in a different way (the number of copies of each object type grows along with the number of participants) that random serial dictatorship converges to the probabilistic serial mechanism. (Asymptotic Equivalence of Probabilistic Serial and Random Priority Mechanisms , 2008.)
In general, looking at efficiency ex-ante as well as ex post opens up new avenues for investigation, and how these interact in large markets has been a fruitful way to start thinking about them.
Welcome to the club, Mihai.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Behavioral contract design; Steve Leider
Steve Leider defended his dissertation last week. He's an eclectic experimenter, but among his varied interests is how insights from psychology might change our view of contract design. In particular, if people are nicer than the standard economic model supposes (e.g. more inclined to reciprocate favors, more inclined to keep promises and uphold social norms), how might that change our views of how contracts might function, and therefore how they should be structured?
Among his papers, the following best exemplify that part of his work.
Norms and Contracting (with Judd Kessler) (Job Market Paper) Abstract: We argue that agents create norms specific to their relationships, particularly through the contracts they establish. We build a theory of how the enforceable and unenforceable aspects of a contract determine the norm, and how norms impact behavior. We then demonstrate experimentally that even totally incomplete contracts (i.e. contracts with no enforceable restriction on actions) move behavior substantially towards the first best in a variety of games. A contract with only unenforceable agreements is often more effective than a contract with only enforceable restrictions. Combining enforceable restrictions with an unenforceable agreement is frequently no more effective (and sometimes strictly less effective) than an unenforceable agreement alone. Consistent with our modeling approach that violating the norm creates disutility, many subjects often choose not to make unenforceable agreements, despite earnings substantially higher payoffs with the agreement.
Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks (with Markus M. Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, and Quoc-Anh Do) [Forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics] Abstract: We conduct online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism towards randomly selected strangers, (2) directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52 percent relative to random strangers, while future interaction effects increase giving by an additional 24 percent when giving is socially efficient. This finding suggests that future interaction affects giving through a repeated game mechanism where agents can be rewarded for granting efficiency-enhancing favors. We also find that subjects with higher baseline altruism have friends with higher baseline altruism.
Contractual and Organizational Structure with Reciprocal Agents (with Florian Englmaier) [Submitted] Abstract: Empirically, compensation systems generate substantial effort despite weak monetary incentives. We consider reciprocal motivations as a source of incentives. We solve for the optimal contract in the basic principal-agent problem and show that reciprocal motivations and explicit performance-based pay are substitutes. A firm endogenously determines the mix of the two sources of incentives to best induce effort from the agent. Analyzing extended versions of the model allows us to examine how organizational structure impacts the effectiveness of reciprocity and to derive specific empirical predictions. We use the UK-WERS workplace compensation data set to confirm the predictions of our extended model.
Gift Exchange in the Lab and in the Field - It is not (only) how much you give ... (with Florian Englmaier) Abstract: We build on the theoretical results from our companion paper, Englmaier and Leider (2008), that an important aspect in determining the effectiveness of gift exchange relations is the ability of the agent to “repay the gift” to the principal. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a real effort laboratory experiment and a field experiment where we vary the effect of the agent’s effort on the principal’s payoff. Furthermore we collect additional information that allows us to control for the agents’ effort costs and whether they can be classified as reciprocal or not. From our model we derive nontrivial predictions about which is the marginal agent in terms of ability affected by our experimental variation and how different types of individuals, selfish and reciprocal, will react to it. The experimental data lend support to our hypotheses.
Steve's email address will have a "umich.edu" in it starting next semester, when he starts work at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Welcome to the club, Steve.
Among his papers, the following best exemplify that part of his work.
Norms and Contracting (with Judd Kessler) (Job Market Paper) Abstract: We argue that agents create norms specific to their relationships, particularly through the contracts they establish. We build a theory of how the enforceable and unenforceable aspects of a contract determine the norm, and how norms impact behavior. We then demonstrate experimentally that even totally incomplete contracts (i.e. contracts with no enforceable restriction on actions) move behavior substantially towards the first best in a variety of games. A contract with only unenforceable agreements is often more effective than a contract with only enforceable restrictions. Combining enforceable restrictions with an unenforceable agreement is frequently no more effective (and sometimes strictly less effective) than an unenforceable agreement alone. Consistent with our modeling approach that violating the norm creates disutility, many subjects often choose not to make unenforceable agreements, despite earnings substantially higher payoffs with the agreement.
Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks (with Markus M. Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, and Quoc-Anh Do) [Forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics] Abstract: We conduct online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism towards randomly selected strangers, (2) directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52 percent relative to random strangers, while future interaction effects increase giving by an additional 24 percent when giving is socially efficient. This finding suggests that future interaction affects giving through a repeated game mechanism where agents can be rewarded for granting efficiency-enhancing favors. We also find that subjects with higher baseline altruism have friends with higher baseline altruism.
Contractual and Organizational Structure with Reciprocal Agents (with Florian Englmaier) [Submitted] Abstract: Empirically, compensation systems generate substantial effort despite weak monetary incentives. We consider reciprocal motivations as a source of incentives. We solve for the optimal contract in the basic principal-agent problem and show that reciprocal motivations and explicit performance-based pay are substitutes. A firm endogenously determines the mix of the two sources of incentives to best induce effort from the agent. Analyzing extended versions of the model allows us to examine how organizational structure impacts the effectiveness of reciprocity and to derive specific empirical predictions. We use the UK-WERS workplace compensation data set to confirm the predictions of our extended model.
Gift Exchange in the Lab and in the Field - It is not (only) how much you give ... (with Florian Englmaier) Abstract: We build on the theoretical results from our companion paper, Englmaier and Leider (2008), that an important aspect in determining the effectiveness of gift exchange relations is the ability of the agent to “repay the gift” to the principal. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a real effort laboratory experiment and a field experiment where we vary the effect of the agent’s effort on the principal’s payoff. Furthermore we collect additional information that allows us to control for the agents’ effort costs and whether they can be classified as reciprocal or not. From our model we derive nontrivial predictions about which is the marginal agent in terms of ability affected by our experimental variation and how different types of individuals, selfish and reciprocal, will react to it. The experimental data lend support to our hypotheses.
Steve's email address will have a "umich.edu" in it starting next semester, when he starts work at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Welcome to the club, Steve.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Course allocation, by Eric Budish
The problem of allocating courses to students is a famously hard problem of market design. The reasons include the fact that, in most applications, it isn't acceptable to sell the most desirable class places at higher prices to richer students. Also, students take multiple classes, and may have preferences for how their bundle is composed. So the problem is substantially more difficult than how to auction multiple goods, or how to allocate each student a single place, as comes up e.g. in assigning students to schools.
Eric Budish, who defended his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard this week, has made a substantial, practical dent in the problem. His motivation comes from a detailed study, with Estelle Cantillon, of how classes are assigned to second year MBA students at the Harvard Business School, and how students approach this assignment problem strategically: Strategic Behavior in Multi-Unit Assignment Problems: Theory and Evidence from Course Allocations .
Largely motivated by what they learn about the good and not so good properties of the HBS mechanism, Eric then proposes a new mechanism: The Combinatorial Assignment Problem: Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes. Eric's work, like market design in general, is eclectic. Among other things, he formulates new notions of what constitutes "fair" outcomes in cases hedged in by the impossibility results that abound when allocating indivisible goods.
Although allocating multiple indivisible items to each student makes the standard economic goals involving efficiency and incentives more difficult to achieve, it gives the designer somewhat more leeway to think about fairness, since although class places are indivisible, the package of classes that each student gets is not. And Eric’s investigations of existing course allocation institutions has convinced him that concerns about avoiding excessive ex-post unfairness are an important constraint on what kinds of mechanisms can be implemented in practice.
Eric's mechanism looks like it has legs, and may be ready for practical implementation in the not so distant future. Perhaps he'll get a chance to have more than the usual impact next year when he brings market design to U. Chicago's Booth School of Business (until recently Chicago GSB).
Welcome to the club, Eric.
Eric Budish, who defended his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard this week, has made a substantial, practical dent in the problem. His motivation comes from a detailed study, with Estelle Cantillon, of how classes are assigned to second year MBA students at the Harvard Business School, and how students approach this assignment problem strategically: Strategic Behavior in Multi-Unit Assignment Problems: Theory and Evidence from Course Allocations .
Largely motivated by what they learn about the good and not so good properties of the HBS mechanism, Eric then proposes a new mechanism: The Combinatorial Assignment Problem: Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes. Eric's work, like market design in general, is eclectic. Among other things, he formulates new notions of what constitutes "fair" outcomes in cases hedged in by the impossibility results that abound when allocating indivisible goods.
Although allocating multiple indivisible items to each student makes the standard economic goals involving efficiency and incentives more difficult to achieve, it gives the designer somewhat more leeway to think about fairness, since although class places are indivisible, the package of classes that each student gets is not. And Eric’s investigations of existing course allocation institutions has convinced him that concerns about avoiding excessive ex-post unfairness are an important constraint on what kinds of mechanisms can be implemented in practice.
Eric's mechanism looks like it has legs, and may be ready for practical implementation in the not so distant future. Perhaps he'll get a chance to have more than the usual impact next year when he brings market design to U. Chicago's Booth School of Business (until recently Chicago GSB).
Welcome to the club, Eric.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Market for authenticity: sports memorabilia
Sports memorabilia from specific games can be valuable, but used to be hard to authenticate. No more. Now Major League Baseball Fights Fakery With an Army of Authenticators, on the spot to tag items as they become sports history.
"Nothing is too mundane to be authenticated, if deemed potentially valuable. Cans of insect repellent used to combat the midges that swarmed the 2007 playoffs in Cleveland were authenticated. So were urinals pulled from the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis and office equipment from since-razed Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Phillies are cutting the clubhouse carpet from last season into authenticated 18-by-24-inch mats. "
Indeed, "...every game has at least one authenticator, watching from a dugout or near one. The authenticators are part of a team of 120 active and retired law-enforcement officials sharing the duties for the 30 franchises. Several worked the home openers for the Yankees and the Mets, helping track firsts at the new stadiums. They verified balls, bases, jerseys, the pitchers’ rosin bag, even the pitching rubber and the home plate that were removed after the first game at Yankee Stadium. "
"With Yankee Stadium emptied after the opening 10-2 loss to Cleveland, Lubrano watched groundskeepers shovel dirt from the mound and home plate into five-gallon buckets. Lubrano sealed the lids with tape, then stuck holograms on each bucket, lid and seal. The dirt will be divided into small containers at a warehouse, in front of an authenticator."
How's that for product differentiation?
Update: Tyler Cowen at MR has a post on a related subject, titled Department of Unintended Consequences. Apparently, fraudulent items in the (unauthenticated) market for antiquities on eBay have driven out genuine items, driving down prices (for genuine as well as fake items, since there's no authentication) with the unintended but welcome consequence that grave robbing has become less profitable.
"Nothing is too mundane to be authenticated, if deemed potentially valuable. Cans of insect repellent used to combat the midges that swarmed the 2007 playoffs in Cleveland were authenticated. So were urinals pulled from the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis and office equipment from since-razed Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Phillies are cutting the clubhouse carpet from last season into authenticated 18-by-24-inch mats. "
Indeed, "...every game has at least one authenticator, watching from a dugout or near one. The authenticators are part of a team of 120 active and retired law-enforcement officials sharing the duties for the 30 franchises. Several worked the home openers for the Yankees and the Mets, helping track firsts at the new stadiums. They verified balls, bases, jerseys, the pitchers’ rosin bag, even the pitching rubber and the home plate that were removed after the first game at Yankee Stadium. "
"With Yankee Stadium emptied after the opening 10-2 loss to Cleveland, Lubrano watched groundskeepers shovel dirt from the mound and home plate into five-gallon buckets. Lubrano sealed the lids with tape, then stuck holograms on each bucket, lid and seal. The dirt will be divided into small containers at a warehouse, in front of an authenticator."
How's that for product differentiation?
Update: Tyler Cowen at MR has a post on a related subject, titled Department of Unintended Consequences. Apparently, fraudulent items in the (unauthenticated) market for antiquities on eBay have driven out genuine items, driving down prices (for genuine as well as fake items, since there's no authentication) with the unintended but welcome consequence that grave robbing has become less profitable.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Giving anonymously, through an intermediary
I recently blogged about a service set up to enable people to give (relatively) small gifts anonymously, Giving anonymously, for a fee .
Larger gifts, e.g. to university endowments, are also often given anonymously. But "anonymous" is a relative term, and often someone at the gift-receiving institution knows who the donor is. (Here at Harvard, my HBS office is in a building called Baker Library, whose southern side now sports a new wing called Bloomberg. It was anonymous for a while; all we knew was that the donor wished his identity to remain unknown until he had completed his election for a second term as mayor of New York.)
Now a number of gifts to universities have been made behind a deeper than usual veil of anonymity: Mystery donors give over $45M to 9 universities.
"A mystery is unfolding in the world of college fundraising: During the past few weeks, at least nine universities have received gifts totaling more than $45 million, and the schools had to promise not to try to find out the giver's identity.
One school went so far as to check with the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security just to make sure a $1.5 million gift didn't come from illegal sources.
"In my last 28 years in fundraising ... this is the first time I've dealt with a gift that the institution didn't know who the donor is," said Phillip D. Adams, vice president for university advancement at Norfolk State University, which received $3.5 million.
The gifts ranged from $8 million at Purdue to $1.5 million donated to the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The University of Iowa received $7 million; the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Maryland University College got $6 million each; the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was given $5.5 million; and Penn State-Harrisburg received $3 million.
It's not clear whether the gifts came from an individual, an organization or a group of people with similar interests. In every case, the donor or donors dealt with the universities through lawyers or other middlemen. Some of the money came in cashier's checks, while other schools received checks from a law firm or another representative.
All the schools had to agree not to investigate the identity of the giver. Some were required to make such a promise in writing."
Larger gifts, e.g. to university endowments, are also often given anonymously. But "anonymous" is a relative term, and often someone at the gift-receiving institution knows who the donor is. (Here at Harvard, my HBS office is in a building called Baker Library, whose southern side now sports a new wing called Bloomberg. It was anonymous for a while; all we knew was that the donor wished his identity to remain unknown until he had completed his election for a second term as mayor of New York.)
Now a number of gifts to universities have been made behind a deeper than usual veil of anonymity: Mystery donors give over $45M to 9 universities.
"A mystery is unfolding in the world of college fundraising: During the past few weeks, at least nine universities have received gifts totaling more than $45 million, and the schools had to promise not to try to find out the giver's identity.
One school went so far as to check with the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security just to make sure a $1.5 million gift didn't come from illegal sources.
"In my last 28 years in fundraising ... this is the first time I've dealt with a gift that the institution didn't know who the donor is," said Phillip D. Adams, vice president for university advancement at Norfolk State University, which received $3.5 million.
The gifts ranged from $8 million at Purdue to $1.5 million donated to the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The University of Iowa received $7 million; the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Maryland University College got $6 million each; the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was given $5.5 million; and Penn State-Harrisburg received $3 million.
It's not clear whether the gifts came from an individual, an organization or a group of people with similar interests. In every case, the donor or donors dealt with the universities through lawyers or other middlemen. Some of the money came in cashier's checks, while other schools received checks from a law firm or another representative.
All the schools had to agree not to investigate the identity of the giver. Some were required to make such a promise in writing."
Monday, April 20, 2009
Market for hand crafted food, continued
When I last wrote about the market for hand crafted food, I focused on a concentration of producers in Brooklyn. The fact that there are several of them in the same vicinity allows them to support each other and a growing common set of retailers and customers.
Around Passover, there's also an export market of sorts, and we recently enjoyed hand made "shmura" matzah from both Brooklyn and the nearby Long Island town of Lawrence (made respectively by the Boro Park Shmura Matzoh Bakery and by Tiferes Matzah). Matzah is unleavened bread, and shmura ("watched") matzah is baked very quickly after the wheat is ground into flour and water is added, to make sure no leavening takes place. The handmade matzot are round, and much bigger and denser than machine made matzah, and we always buy enough to enjoy for several days after the Passover seders.
The market for kosher food is a very interesting one, because while it is a very important one for observant Jews, most commercially produced kosher food in the United States is bought by non-Jews (since Jews constitute such a small part of the population). In some cases, non-Jewish consumers may not even notice that the food is kosher: for processed food, the kosher symbols are often inconspicuous. (The New Yorker recently had an article on the growing export of kosher food from China.) In other cases, e.g. for kosher meat, which is more expensive, consumers may be attracted by the extra steps of inspection. In any event, the fact that there is a wide market for kosher food increases its availability and lowers its cost.
A guest also brought us some handmade goat cheese, from Twig Farm in Vermont. As in Brooklyn, Vermont seems to support a variety of handmade food producers who support each other. Along with the goat cheese from their own goats, came some cow's milk cheese, made by a neighboring organic farmer.
Around Passover, there's also an export market of sorts, and we recently enjoyed hand made "shmura" matzah from both Brooklyn and the nearby Long Island town of Lawrence (made respectively by the Boro Park Shmura Matzoh Bakery and by Tiferes Matzah). Matzah is unleavened bread, and shmura ("watched") matzah is baked very quickly after the wheat is ground into flour and water is added, to make sure no leavening takes place. The handmade matzot are round, and much bigger and denser than machine made matzah, and we always buy enough to enjoy for several days after the Passover seders.
The market for kosher food is a very interesting one, because while it is a very important one for observant Jews, most commercially produced kosher food in the United States is bought by non-Jews (since Jews constitute such a small part of the population). In some cases, non-Jewish consumers may not even notice that the food is kosher: for processed food, the kosher symbols are often inconspicuous. (The New Yorker recently had an article on the growing export of kosher food from China.) In other cases, e.g. for kosher meat, which is more expensive, consumers may be attracted by the extra steps of inspection. In any event, the fact that there is a wide market for kosher food increases its availability and lowers its cost.
A guest also brought us some handmade goat cheese, from Twig Farm in Vermont. As in Brooklyn, Vermont seems to support a variety of handmade food producers who support each other. Along with the goat cheese from their own goats, came some cow's milk cheese, made by a neighboring organic farmer.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
College admissions waiting lists: advice on signaling
I last wrote about College admissions waiting lists on March 31, when the most selective colleges were just sending out their acceptances, rejections, and waitlist decisions. Now there is an interregnum, until the May 1 deadline for students to decide which college acceptances to accept. Only after that will colleges know how many students have accepted and rejected them, and hence how many empty places they still have, and how many admits they can make from their waitlist.
Most colleges don't want the waitlist process to drag on too long. But the waitlist process is potentially lengthy, since students admitted from the waitlist need some time to decide, and if some of these ultimately decline, then new students must be admitted from the waitlist later, and so on. So what colleges can do is give some preference to students on the waitlist who they think are more likely to accept an offer. For this reason colleges ask students who are offered a position on the waiting list to actively indicate that they wish to remain on it (this removes from consideration those who have already been accepted to a college they know they prefer). But it also leaves some scope for students to give further indications of their interest, and many colleges explicitly encourage this.
For example, the MIT Admissions Office blog on waitlists says
"If you are still interested in MIT, you should stay in contact with us. A letter, a phone call, notes from people who know you well... these are good things to provide. Please always be very nice in all of your interactions with us! Keep us up to date all the way through May 1 and beyond if you remain interested."
That is, just as in the initial admissions process, there is room for signaling.
The Boston Globe reports how signals of interest to colleges at this stage occupies the attention of some students and admissions offices: Students hope to beat college waiting list.
"... in the elbows-out world of college admissions, savvy hopefuls, often with the help of private advisors and aggressive high school counselors, are launching full-scale campaigns to spring themselves from the list.
In-the-know seniors are writing letters assuring admission deans that if admitted, they will go. They're e-mailing updates on their second-semester senior grades, spring awards, and other academic breakthroughs. (There's no room for senioritis if you're on a waiting list.)
And they are placing one, just one, well-timed phone call, a step that can spur an admission officer to pull the student's file and disclose whether there is something else he or she can do to boost the chance of admission.
"It's too bad if students don't know to follow up," said Tom Parker, dean of admission and financial aid at Amherst College, which expects to take about 35 students from its list of 1,000. "If you're going to get off the wait list, you're really going to have to demonstrate a significant interest."
Not that this is something many colleges publicize when they inform applicants that they have landed in admissions limbo. While admission deans admit they can be lobbied, they insist that, technically, they do not require any additional information. And schools are quick to say that they do not penalize students who fail to follow up, especially if they come from low-income communities where high school counselors are often overwhelmed.
"We wouldn't want to overlook a student who doesn't know she can even do that," said Jennifer Desjarlais, dean of admission at Wellesley College.
But all things being equal, especially as the swooning economy has added a new volatility to the admissions process, students can vault to the top of the pack by writing a letter about why a college is their number one choice and promising to attend if accepted, said deans at numerous colleges."
Of course, some signaling strategies convey negative information:
"While demonstrating interest and presenting updates often helps in the final rounds of evaluations, tread carefully. Go too far, admission deans warn, and you will snuff out your chances.
Do not stalk admission officers, camp out in front of their office, or flood their inboxes with daily e-mails. ("That's like the kiss of death," said Richard Nesbitt, director of admission at Williams College.)"
The NY Times blog on college admissions advises one parent of a waitlisted daughter:
"In terms of pursuing her wait-list offer, she should send an e-mail to the regional admissions officer stating her strong and unqualified interest (being straightforward and unequivocal: if admitted I will enroll, etc). We also think it is important to send a letter to the admissions office with any recent accomplishments. In the letter it is helpful for the admissions committee to be able to discern genuine interest by reiterating why you think the school would be such a good match.
So...if there's a waiting list you are waiting for, and you haven't done so already, send an email to the admissions office. And then, to quote the final line from the MIT admissions blog
"... be patient. There won't be any waitlist news until after May 1."
Most colleges don't want the waitlist process to drag on too long. But the waitlist process is potentially lengthy, since students admitted from the waitlist need some time to decide, and if some of these ultimately decline, then new students must be admitted from the waitlist later, and so on. So what colleges can do is give some preference to students on the waitlist who they think are more likely to accept an offer. For this reason colleges ask students who are offered a position on the waiting list to actively indicate that they wish to remain on it (this removes from consideration those who have already been accepted to a college they know they prefer). But it also leaves some scope for students to give further indications of their interest, and many colleges explicitly encourage this.
For example, the MIT Admissions Office blog on waitlists says
"If you are still interested in MIT, you should stay in contact with us. A letter, a phone call, notes from people who know you well... these are good things to provide. Please always be very nice in all of your interactions with us! Keep us up to date all the way through May 1 and beyond if you remain interested."
That is, just as in the initial admissions process, there is room for signaling.
The Boston Globe reports how signals of interest to colleges at this stage occupies the attention of some students and admissions offices: Students hope to beat college waiting list.
"... in the elbows-out world of college admissions, savvy hopefuls, often with the help of private advisors and aggressive high school counselors, are launching full-scale campaigns to spring themselves from the list.
In-the-know seniors are writing letters assuring admission deans that if admitted, they will go. They're e-mailing updates on their second-semester senior grades, spring awards, and other academic breakthroughs. (There's no room for senioritis if you're on a waiting list.)
And they are placing one, just one, well-timed phone call, a step that can spur an admission officer to pull the student's file and disclose whether there is something else he or she can do to boost the chance of admission.
"It's too bad if students don't know to follow up," said Tom Parker, dean of admission and financial aid at Amherst College, which expects to take about 35 students from its list of 1,000. "If you're going to get off the wait list, you're really going to have to demonstrate a significant interest."
Not that this is something many colleges publicize when they inform applicants that they have landed in admissions limbo. While admission deans admit they can be lobbied, they insist that, technically, they do not require any additional information. And schools are quick to say that they do not penalize students who fail to follow up, especially if they come from low-income communities where high school counselors are often overwhelmed.
"We wouldn't want to overlook a student who doesn't know she can even do that," said Jennifer Desjarlais, dean of admission at Wellesley College.
But all things being equal, especially as the swooning economy has added a new volatility to the admissions process, students can vault to the top of the pack by writing a letter about why a college is their number one choice and promising to attend if accepted, said deans at numerous colleges."
Of course, some signaling strategies convey negative information:
"While demonstrating interest and presenting updates often helps in the final rounds of evaluations, tread carefully. Go too far, admission deans warn, and you will snuff out your chances.
Do not stalk admission officers, camp out in front of their office, or flood their inboxes with daily e-mails. ("That's like the kiss of death," said Richard Nesbitt, director of admission at Williams College.)"
The NY Times blog on college admissions advises one parent of a waitlisted daughter:
"In terms of pursuing her wait-list offer, she should send an e-mail to the regional admissions officer stating her strong and unqualified interest (being straightforward and unequivocal: if admitted I will enroll, etc). We also think it is important to send a letter to the admissions office with any recent accomplishments. In the letter it is helpful for the admissions committee to be able to discern genuine interest by reiterating why you think the school would be such a good match.
So...if there's a waiting list you are waiting for, and you haven't done so already, send an email to the admissions office. And then, to quote the final line from the MIT admissions blog
"... be patient. There won't be any waitlist news until after May 1."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Why people don't sign organ donor cards
In a report titled The Reluctant Organ Donor, the NY Times wellness blog reports that
"Only 38 percent of licensed drivers are registered to be organ donors, despite the fact that many states offer a simple registration process that typically just requires a signature when obtaining or renewing a driver’s license. An online survey of 5,100 people conducted by the advocacy group Donate Life America found that many people still harbor fears about what organ donation really means.
23 percent of people fear they are not healthy enough or are too old to donate their organs.
50 percent of respondents are concerned that doctors will not try as hard to save them if they are known to be an organ donor.
44 percent believe there is a black market in which people can buy or sell organs or tissue.
57 percent question whether or not a person can recover from brain death."
"Donate Life America is launching a page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/donatelife to make it easier for users to register as donors. Just click on the link and then click on the “Register” tab."
"Only 38 percent of licensed drivers are registered to be organ donors, despite the fact that many states offer a simple registration process that typically just requires a signature when obtaining or renewing a driver’s license. An online survey of 5,100 people conducted by the advocacy group Donate Life America found that many people still harbor fears about what organ donation really means.
23 percent of people fear they are not healthy enough or are too old to donate their organs.
50 percent of respondents are concerned that doctors will not try as hard to save them if they are known to be an organ donor.
44 percent believe there is a black market in which people can buy or sell organs or tissue.
57 percent question whether or not a person can recover from brain death."
"Donate Life America is launching a page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/donatelife to make it easier for users to register as donors. Just click on the link and then click on the “Register” tab."
Friday, April 17, 2009
Plug-in hybrid cars, and the retail market for electricity
The news is full of plug-in hybrid cars, i.e. cars with both an electric and a gasoline powered motor, which can be recharged overnight from your household electric outlet. See e.g.MIT's Technology Review on First Plug-in Hybrid to Be Sold in the United States or the AP onAuto industry on plug-in hybrids and electric cars, which begins
"Several automakers are developing plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric cars that could help meet President Barack Obama's goal of putting 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. Many industry officials say the goal is a worthy one but will be difficult to meet. "
One difficulty not discussed in these articles is how retail electricity is sold. If your electricity bill is like mine, it consists of charges for power consumed, and charges for delivery and maintainence of the network. That is, you are charged both for the variable cost of the electricity you use, and a share of the fixed cost of the infrastructure. However, and strangely, you are charged for both by the kilowatt hour of electricity you use. That is, for each kilowatt hour, you pay an electricity part and an infrastructure part (and you can see this because your electricity utility is now required to offer its delivery service to multiple providers...)
This has some strange consequences, not least of which is that it makes additional electricity usage much more expensive than it would be if you instead were charged an access fee to cover your share of the infrastructure (including the peak load generating capacity), and a separate energy usage fee. Then the marginal additional kilowatt would be cheaper. In that case it might be economical for you to buy an electric car that would charge itself by being plugged in overnight, or even heat your home with electricity.
"Several automakers are developing plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric cars that could help meet President Barack Obama's goal of putting 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. Many industry officials say the goal is a worthy one but will be difficult to meet. "
One difficulty not discussed in these articles is how retail electricity is sold. If your electricity bill is like mine, it consists of charges for power consumed, and charges for delivery and maintainence of the network. That is, you are charged both for the variable cost of the electricity you use, and a share of the fixed cost of the infrastructure. However, and strangely, you are charged for both by the kilowatt hour of electricity you use. That is, for each kilowatt hour, you pay an electricity part and an infrastructure part (and you can see this because your electricity utility is now required to offer its delivery service to multiple providers...)
This has some strange consequences, not least of which is that it makes additional electricity usage much more expensive than it would be if you instead were charged an access fee to cover your share of the infrastructure (including the peak load generating capacity), and a separate energy usage fee. Then the marginal additional kilowatt would be cheaper. In that case it might be economical for you to buy an electric car that would charge itself by being plugged in overnight, or even heat your home with electricity.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Match Day for New Doctors, the book
When I blogged last month about Match Day for new doctors, I mentioned Brian Eule's new book, Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors. A copy of the book arrived in my mailbox last week, with a note from the author, who had interviewed me while writing it.
I've noticed before that good science writers tend to write about scientists at least as much as they write about science. But I guess I am not in the habit of anthropomorphizing markets, since I was nevertheless surprised to read the following characterization of the market for new medical residents.
"If you wanted to put a face on this faceless machine, it would have a thick black beard, beginning to go gray. It would have a receding hairline. It would wear glasses, squint when smiling, and present a big forehead adding to its contemplative appearance. It would look, in this case, much like an economist at Harvard University named Alvin Roth."
Fortunately, most of the story is about the three couples he follows through the resident match and their first year of residency. I didn't reach a point at which I could put the book down for the first time until after the first hundred pages, since the story carried me along, and I wanted to find out where they matched. Way to go, Brian.
I've noticed before that good science writers tend to write about scientists at least as much as they write about science. But I guess I am not in the habit of anthropomorphizing markets, since I was nevertheless surprised to read the following characterization of the market for new medical residents.
"If you wanted to put a face on this faceless machine, it would have a thick black beard, beginning to go gray. It would have a receding hairline. It would wear glasses, squint when smiling, and present a big forehead adding to its contemplative appearance. It would look, in this case, much like an economist at Harvard University named Alvin Roth."
Fortunately, most of the story is about the three couples he follows through the resident match and their first year of residency. I didn't reach a point at which I could put the book down for the first time until after the first hundred pages, since the story carried me along, and I wanted to find out where they matched. Way to go, Brian.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Real money trading in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Want to know the current price of gold? Check out http://www.mysupersales.com/. You won't find the traditional store of value there, but rather the virtual gold used in massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. You could earn gold by playing the game, and use the gold you earned in the game to buy equipment "in-game". But you can also buy gold from "gold farmers," in China and elsewhere, using real money, and having the gold delivered to you inside the game. Here's a paper by Richard Heeks of Manchester that says it's a surprisingly big business: "It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. "
Real money trading for online gold also involves a set of transactions that some gamers and game operators find repugnant: operators go to great lengths to stop it. Here's a statement against the practice by the proprietors of World of Warcraft. And an article at a gamer site begins
"Is gold selling like pornography: something more of us do than admit? A shameful secret, something indulged alone and at night, in front of the screen; or during a lunchbreak, safely away from a partner, when a quick credit card or PayPal transaction will go unnoticed by others in-game?"
A further article recounts how some game operators have tried changing the rules on in-game transactions to make real money purchases less practical, while other games have decided to allow players to enter for free, and finance the game by officially selling equipment for real money:
"The most probable trend is that the games become 'free-to-play', and the operators sell gold or other in-game items by themselves. There are a lot of so-called F2P MMOs, and they mainly get revenue from selling in-game items.
"One of the most famous examples is a Chinese online game developer and operator - Giant Interactive Group, they got listed in the NASDAQ by selling in-game items in ZhengTu, a game they developed and published in China. So I don't think the game publishers will be willing to share the cake with the gold sellers.
...
"According to Vili Lehdonvirta of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, an expert on virtual consumerism, real money trading is now well-established outside of the MMO sphere.
"Several Korean online games successfully sell performance-based items to users," he says in his recent report Virtual item sales as a revenue model: identifying attributes that drive purchase decisions. "
HT: Rich Dougherty (who describes himself as an avid reader of Market Design).
Real money trading for online gold also involves a set of transactions that some gamers and game operators find repugnant: operators go to great lengths to stop it. Here's a statement against the practice by the proprietors of World of Warcraft. And an article at a gamer site begins
"Is gold selling like pornography: something more of us do than admit? A shameful secret, something indulged alone and at night, in front of the screen; or during a lunchbreak, safely away from a partner, when a quick credit card or PayPal transaction will go unnoticed by others in-game?"
A further article recounts how some game operators have tried changing the rules on in-game transactions to make real money purchases less practical, while other games have decided to allow players to enter for free, and finance the game by officially selling equipment for real money:
"The most probable trend is that the games become 'free-to-play', and the operators sell gold or other in-game items by themselves. There are a lot of so-called F2P MMOs, and they mainly get revenue from selling in-game items.
"One of the most famous examples is a Chinese online game developer and operator - Giant Interactive Group, they got listed in the NASDAQ by selling in-game items in ZhengTu, a game they developed and published in China. So I don't think the game publishers will be willing to share the cake with the gold sellers.
...
"According to Vili Lehdonvirta of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, an expert on virtual consumerism, real money trading is now well-established outside of the MMO sphere.
"Several Korean online games successfully sell performance-based items to users," he says in his recent report Virtual item sales as a revenue model: identifying attributes that drive purchase decisions. "
HT: Rich Dougherty (who describes himself as an avid reader of Market Design).
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