Natalie Angier reports on squirrel game theorists in the NY Times: Nut? What Nut? The Squirrel Outwits to Survive
"But the squirrels don’t just bury an acorn and come back in winter. They bury the seed, dig it up shortly afterward, rebury it elsewhere, dig it up again. “We’ve seen seeds that were recached as many as five times,” said Dr. Steele. The squirrels recache to deter theft, lest another squirrel spied the burial the first X times. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, the Steele team showed that when squirrels are certain that they are being watched, they will actively seek to deceive the would-be thieves. They’ll dig a hole, pretend to push an acorn in, and then cover it over, all the while keeping the prized seed hidden in their mouth. “Deceptive caching involves some pretty serious decision making,” Dr. Steele said. “It meets the criteria of tactical deception, which previously was thought to only occur in primates.”
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Paid drug trials
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a (gated) story about professional volunteers for drug trials: Inside the Risky World of Drug-Trial 'Guinea Pigs'
"Mr. Abadie spent time with anarchist activists who are attracted to guinea-pigging because of the flexibility it offers. Between 1996 and 2002, that milieu was documented in Guinea Pig Zero, a Philadelphia zine published by and for activist medical volunteers.
"But Mr. Abadie's book also examines two other types of medical volunteer. First, he describes transient, economically struggling people who travel from place to place in search of lucrative trials. These volunteers are often less educated and more socially isolated than the anarchists.
"Second, Mr. Abadie spent months at an HIV clinic where patients were participating in long-term trials to determine the effectiveness of new drug combinations. That environment is very different from the Phase 1 trials described elsewhere in the book. At the clinic, the HIV patients knew they had a personal stake in the development of new drugs, and the financial compensation they received was much smaller. Even though they were taking risks by participating in the drug studies, Mr. Abadie says, those volunteers seemed to reap psychological gains."
I'm reminded that we teach kids that the tooth fairy buys their baby teeth for money. But of course many sales of body parts are regarded as repugnant transactions and are illegal, while paid drug trials are legal.
"Since 1980, when Phase 1 drug tests on prisoners were banned in the United States, university medical schools and pharmaceutical companies have depended on volunteers like Mr. Little to test the safety of new drugs. Bioethicists have devoted thousands of pages to debates about the system. Some fear that high payments for volunteers are an "undue inducement" that might tempt them to take risks against their better judgment. Others say that people like Mr. Little are consenting adults who are reasonably capable of assessing danger.
"Most of those debates have been conducted in the abstract. But now an anthropologist has produced a study of several dozen medical volunteers, including Mr. Little. Roberto L. Abadie, a visiting scholar in the health-sciences program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, spent a year living in youth hostels and group houses in Philadelphia, trying to get a sense of why volunteers do what they do and how they understand their risks.
"He offers his findings in The Professional Guinea Pig: Big Pharma and the Risky World of Human Subjects (Duke University Press, August). The book's primary purpose is to offer a detailed description of medical volunteering and its contexts, not to weigh in on the ethics of clinical trials. But after his year in the field, Mr. Abadie does have opinions about policy: Volunteers underestimate their long-term risks, he says, and universities should do more to protect them."..."Mr. Abadie spent time with anarchist activists who are attracted to guinea-pigging because of the flexibility it offers. Between 1996 and 2002, that milieu was documented in Guinea Pig Zero, a Philadelphia zine published by and for activist medical volunteers.
"But Mr. Abadie's book also examines two other types of medical volunteer. First, he describes transient, economically struggling people who travel from place to place in search of lucrative trials. These volunteers are often less educated and more socially isolated than the anarchists.
"Second, Mr. Abadie spent months at an HIV clinic where patients were participating in long-term trials to determine the effectiveness of new drug combinations. That environment is very different from the Phase 1 trials described elsewhere in the book. At the clinic, the HIV patients knew they had a personal stake in the development of new drugs, and the financial compensation they received was much smaller. Even though they were taking risks by participating in the drug studies, Mr. Abadie says, those volunteers seemed to reap psychological gains."
I'm reminded that we teach kids that the tooth fairy buys their baby teeth for money. But of course many sales of body parts are regarded as repugnant transactions and are illegal, while paid drug trials are legal.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Internet dating moves (back) into the real world
Computers can provide a multitude of services, and a new class of dating services uses them not to help people meet others, but to preserve their anonymity until they decide to relinquish it: The New Dating Tools: A Card and a Wink.
"This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinizing photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.
"Some companies offer a combination of flirty calling cards and Web pages. Others operate dating applications that use the global positioning systems in cellphones to help local singles find one another.
"All of them contend they are superior to big online dating sites like Match.com; eHarmony.com because meeting people is faster, more organic and less formal. And participants are not limited to a database of members: the world is their dating pool.
“It’s almost like you’re shopping online,” said Ms. Cheek, “but you’re shopping in real life.”
"At the same time, these hybrid dating tools still enable users to keep their names and personal information private for as long as they like.
"Ms. Cheek, an architect who works part-time in sales for a high-end Manhattan furniture company, founded one such venture, Cheek’d, which had its debut in May. Users receive calling cards to dole out to alluring strangers they encounter in their everyday lives, be it in a club or in a subway on their morning commute. Recipients of the cards can use the identification code printed on them to log onto Cheekd.com;and send a message to their admirer. A pack of 50 cards and a month’s subscription to Cheek’d, where users can receive messages and post information about themselves, is $25. There is no fee for those who receive cards to communicate with an admirer through the site."
...
"On each red FlipMe! card is an explanation for the recipient: “I’ve said ‘what if’ too many times ... not this time.” A pack of 30 cards and a three-month membership to flipmedating.com is $24.99. The cards, which all say the same thing, are sold online and in some salons and spas in the Northeast. A cellphone application is in the works."
...
"Card users said companies like FlipMe! and Cheek’d are emboldening them to approach people who might otherwise have been missed connections. They also appreciate how the companies reverse the online dating process — observe someone in person first, then send an electronic message. There’s no need to contend with false advertising on dating Web sites."
...
"Other companies are helping singles connect through location-based technology on their mobile phones. In the last few years the number of Web sites and applications like Grindr, Are You Interested? and Urban Signals, has swelled.
"One of the biggest is the free iPhone dating application Skout, which recently surpassed its millionth member. Skout uses a cellphone’s global positioning system to help users to find like-minded people within a walkable radius of one another. (For safety reasons, Skout does not identify a user’s precise location.) Those who sign up for the application create basic profiles with photographs and then use an instant message feature to communicate when they are within range of each other. Then, they can arrange a mutual meeting spot.
“It’s really combining the best of online dating and real-world people discovery,” said Christian Wiklund, Skout’s founder."
"This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinizing photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.
"Some companies offer a combination of flirty calling cards and Web pages. Others operate dating applications that use the global positioning systems in cellphones to help local singles find one another.
"All of them contend they are superior to big online dating sites like Match.com; eHarmony.com because meeting people is faster, more organic and less formal. And participants are not limited to a database of members: the world is their dating pool.
“It’s almost like you’re shopping online,” said Ms. Cheek, “but you’re shopping in real life.”
"At the same time, these hybrid dating tools still enable users to keep their names and personal information private for as long as they like.
"Ms. Cheek, an architect who works part-time in sales for a high-end Manhattan furniture company, founded one such venture, Cheek’d, which had its debut in May. Users receive calling cards to dole out to alluring strangers they encounter in their everyday lives, be it in a club or in a subway on their morning commute. Recipients of the cards can use the identification code printed on them to log onto Cheekd.com;and send a message to their admirer. A pack of 50 cards and a month’s subscription to Cheek’d, where users can receive messages and post information about themselves, is $25. There is no fee for those who receive cards to communicate with an admirer through the site."
...
"On each red FlipMe! card is an explanation for the recipient: “I’ve said ‘what if’ too many times ... not this time.” A pack of 30 cards and a three-month membership to flipmedating.com is $24.99. The cards, which all say the same thing, are sold online and in some salons and spas in the Northeast. A cellphone application is in the works."
...
"Card users said companies like FlipMe! and Cheek’d are emboldening them to approach people who might otherwise have been missed connections. They also appreciate how the companies reverse the online dating process — observe someone in person first, then send an electronic message. There’s no need to contend with false advertising on dating Web sites."
...
"Other companies are helping singles connect through location-based technology on their mobile phones. In the last few years the number of Web sites and applications like Grindr, Are You Interested? and Urban Signals, has swelled.
"One of the biggest is the free iPhone dating application Skout, which recently surpassed its millionth member. Skout uses a cellphone’s global positioning system to help users to find like-minded people within a walkable radius of one another. (For safety reasons, Skout does not identify a user’s precise location.) Those who sign up for the application create basic profiles with photographs and then use an instant message feature to communicate when they are within range of each other. Then, they can arrange a mutual meeting spot.
“It’s really combining the best of online dating and real-world people discovery,” said Christian Wiklund, Skout’s founder."
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Advice for Wake County schools
It sounds like the troubled Wake County school system is about to get some advice on school choice. But, to the extent that you can judge from a newspaper story, they may not be looking for the right kind of advice, or in the right places (more about right places at the end...)
Here's the problem. Suppose you want a school choice plan, and would like to be able to say that it results in lots of families getting their first choice. That might be hard, if the most popular schools are overdemanded. But you could adopt a choice procedure that is punitive to those who fail to get the school they list as their first choice. That would present families who liked overdemanded schools with a risky decision, and the safe choice would be to choose a school (e.g. their local school) that they could be pretty confident of getting into, and saying that was their first choice. When parents feel compelled to play it safe this way, it looks like they are getting their first choice, even though they aren't really. Once upon a time that was how schools were chosen in Boston, and that kind of system is still used in some places, including Cambridge, MA.
So, here's the news story that makes me worry about this.
Idea intrigues Wake school board factions
"A controlled choice model for Wake would create a dozen or more attendance zones, each of which would reflect the makeup of Wake County - no rich zones or poor zones, said Massachusetts education consultant Michael Alves, who's helped design dozens of such systems nationally.
"Parents would be able to choose from a wide range of school offerings in their zone, with a lottery to make another choice when schools are too crowded or apply to a countywide system of magnets, Alves said. He will be in Raleigh on Tuesday for a presentation before the board committee charged with developing a new plan. Parents would not be guaranteed of getting their first choice, but in systems that use controlled choice, such as Lee County, Fla., and Cambridge, Mass., a large majority do.
"We've been looking at a number of plans from a number of districts across the country," board chairman Ron Margiotta said Wednesday. "He's very close to what we have in mind, to my understanding."
Here's some background on School choice that pays attention to making it safe for families to reveal their true preferences. Which brings me to where the Wake County school board can look for advice.
One of the world's experts on the design of school choice systems is Atila Abdulkadiroglu, who is a professor at Duke, in Raleigh NC, the largest city in Wake County. So he's on location. Here is Atila's blog on school choice.
Here are my previous posts on Wake County: School choice in North Carolina, School choice gets contentious in Wake County, NC
Here's the problem. Suppose you want a school choice plan, and would like to be able to say that it results in lots of families getting their first choice. That might be hard, if the most popular schools are overdemanded. But you could adopt a choice procedure that is punitive to those who fail to get the school they list as their first choice. That would present families who liked overdemanded schools with a risky decision, and the safe choice would be to choose a school (e.g. their local school) that they could be pretty confident of getting into, and saying that was their first choice. When parents feel compelled to play it safe this way, it looks like they are getting their first choice, even though they aren't really. Once upon a time that was how schools were chosen in Boston, and that kind of system is still used in some places, including Cambridge, MA.
So, here's the news story that makes me worry about this.
Idea intrigues Wake school board factions
"A controlled choice model for Wake would create a dozen or more attendance zones, each of which would reflect the makeup of Wake County - no rich zones or poor zones, said Massachusetts education consultant Michael Alves, who's helped design dozens of such systems nationally.
"Parents would be able to choose from a wide range of school offerings in their zone, with a lottery to make another choice when schools are too crowded or apply to a countywide system of magnets, Alves said. He will be in Raleigh on Tuesday for a presentation before the board committee charged with developing a new plan. Parents would not be guaranteed of getting their first choice, but in systems that use controlled choice, such as Lee County, Fla., and Cambridge, Mass., a large majority do.
"We've been looking at a number of plans from a number of districts across the country," board chairman Ron Margiotta said Wednesday. "He's very close to what we have in mind, to my understanding."
Here's some background on School choice that pays attention to making it safe for families to reveal their true preferences. Which brings me to where the Wake County school board can look for advice.
One of the world's experts on the design of school choice systems is Atila Abdulkadiroglu, who is a professor at Duke, in Raleigh NC, the largest city in Wake County. So he's on location. Here is Atila's blog on school choice.
Here are my previous posts on Wake County: School choice in North Carolina, School choice gets contentious in Wake County, NC
Abandoned horses not headed for foreign tables
Speaking of the pony express, Activists Keep Nev. Horses From Going to Slaughter
"With the financial backing of the wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens and others, activists on Saturday purchased almost all 174 horses up for sale at a state-sanctioned auction in Nevada to keep the horses from going to the slaughterhouse.
"Stephanie Hoefener of the Lancaster, Calif.-based Livesavers Wild Horse Rescue group said activists purchased 172 horses for $31,415. The other two horses were acquired by private individuals for their personal use, she said.
...
"The horses were rounded up by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last month near the Nevada-Utah line and turned over to the Nevada Department of Agriculture for disposal.
"Agriculture department officials acknowledge the stray horses could have wound up at slaughterhouses because they did not have the federal protections afforded to wild-roaming horses.
"The horses are believed to be strays or descendants of horses abandoned by private owners over the years in Pilot Valley north of West Wendover.
''For advocacy groups to step up to the plate and make a financial commitment like this to save the horses, we think this is a wonderful thing,'' Nevada Department of Agriculture spokesman Ed Foster said.
"Jill Starr, president of Lifesavers, said the purchase of the horses at the Fallon auction was made possible by the financial backing of Madeleine Pickens and other donors.
"Starr said high bidders of such horses usually are representatives of slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. The meat of the horses is processed for sale in Europe and Asia, where it fetches as much as $25 a pound, she added. "
"With the financial backing of the wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens and others, activists on Saturday purchased almost all 174 horses up for sale at a state-sanctioned auction in Nevada to keep the horses from going to the slaughterhouse.
"Stephanie Hoefener of the Lancaster, Calif.-based Livesavers Wild Horse Rescue group said activists purchased 172 horses for $31,415. The other two horses were acquired by private individuals for their personal use, she said.
...
"The horses were rounded up by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last month near the Nevada-Utah line and turned over to the Nevada Department of Agriculture for disposal.
"Agriculture department officials acknowledge the stray horses could have wound up at slaughterhouses because they did not have the federal protections afforded to wild-roaming horses.
"The horses are believed to be strays or descendants of horses abandoned by private owners over the years in Pilot Valley north of West Wendover.
''For advocacy groups to step up to the plate and make a financial commitment like this to save the horses, we think this is a wonderful thing,'' Nevada Department of Agriculture spokesman Ed Foster said.
"Jill Starr, president of Lifesavers, said the purchase of the horses at the Fallon auction was made possible by the financial backing of Madeleine Pickens and other donors.
"Starr said high bidders of such horses usually are representatives of slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. The meat of the horses is processed for sale in Europe and Asia, where it fetches as much as $25 a pound, she added. "
For previous posts on the American repugnance for the use of horse meat for human consumption, as compared to the high prices it fetches overseas, see here.
Express mail 1.0
The Pony Rides Again (and again)
" The heroic, nearly 2,000-mile delivery of mail across the country hemorrhaged money, from the first day a rider saddled up until the click of the transcontinental telegraph shut it down 78 weeks later. "
" The heroic, nearly 2,000-mile delivery of mail across the country hemorrhaged money, from the first day a rider saddled up until the click of the transcontinental telegraph shut it down 78 weeks later. "
Friday, July 23, 2010
Matching Marine officers to MOS
A reader writes:
"Dear Al,
"Dear Al,
I was a grad student a few years ago in your econ 2010a segment.
I came across a market design problem recently that I thought you might find interesting. My brother is a Marine officer and is approaching the point when he gets matched to his "Military Occupational Specialty"-his future job (infantry, engineering, logistics etc). As in matching medical residents, upcoming officers provide a ranking of their preferences. Then the Marine administration ranks all the upcoming candidates on the basis of their performance in basic training (their overall average grade in "military skills, leadership, and academics").
The matching process is as follows: in a class of 100 officers, the officer ranked #1 gets his first choice, the 33rd ranked officer gets his first choice, then the 67th ranked officer gets his first choice. Then the #2 ranked guy gets his top choice of the remaining jobs, then 34th, 68th, 3rd, 35th, 69th etc.
The intended purpose is clearly to ensure that there is an even distribution of "quality" in all specialties (you don't want all the best officers doing infantry (highest prestige) and all the worst officers managing logistics or supply). (Actually this seems like a good idea for doctors too.) However, the mechanism is clearly not incentive compatible-the 32nd ranked guy tries to fail his last tests to drop in rank to 33...
More details are here: http://www.dbdriven.net/mymos/All_MOS_Assignment_Process.asp. I also believe that the Army and other branches use similar systems.
Anyway, perhaps you've already seen this. And perhaps the Marines are totally uninterested in changing a "tried and true" system. But it sounded like an interesting question on a socially important topic.
Best,
A.L.
Misc. repugnant transactions
A transaction is repugnant if some people don't want other people to do it. Here are some recent developments:
International Space Station sex ban : "Commanders do not allow sexual intercourse on the International Space Station, it has been disclosed"
The journal of the American Enterprise Institute has an article by a father-daughter kidney recipient and kidney donor called Our Deeply Unethical National Organ Policy. It argues in favor of compensating organ donors. It ends with this list of further readings on the subject:
"FURTHER READING: Gershowitz earlier offered, with Stephen Porter and Stephen Fuller, “A Stimulus That Would Work.” Dr. Sally Satel discussed “The National Kidney Foundation’s Bizarre Logic” against rewarding kidney donors, and “The Limits of Bioethics.” Satel lauded Israel’s steps to solve its organ shortage in “Kidney Mitzvah,” and just published a book on compensating kidney donors: When Altruism Isn’t Enough."
Argentina Approves Gay Marriage, in a First for Region July 15, 201 BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s Senate narrowly approved a law early on Thursday authorizing same-sex marriages, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to allow gay couples to wed.
"After nearly 15 hours of debate, the Senate voted 33 to 27 in favor of the measure, which was sponsored by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. For weeks, she waged a bitter war of words with the Roman Catholic Churchover the issue, saying that it would be a “terrible distortion of democracy” to deny gay couples the right to wed and that it was time for religious leaders to recognize how much more liberal and less discriminatory the nation’s social mores had become.
"In its race to derail the change, the church organized large protests involving tens of thousands of opponents of the measure, with Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, calling the bill a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”
"Portugal and Iceland also legalized gay marriage this year, adding to the small but steadily expanding list of nations, most of them in Europe, to do so."
Vatican Revises Abuse Process, but Causes Stir July 15, 2010 VATICAN CITY — "The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia."
International Space Station sex ban : "Commanders do not allow sexual intercourse on the International Space Station, it has been disclosed"
The journal of the American Enterprise Institute has an article by a father-daughter kidney recipient and kidney donor called Our Deeply Unethical National Organ Policy. It argues in favor of compensating organ donors. It ends with this list of further readings on the subject:
"FURTHER READING: Gershowitz earlier offered, with Stephen Porter and Stephen Fuller, “A Stimulus That Would Work.” Dr. Sally Satel discussed “The National Kidney Foundation’s Bizarre Logic” against rewarding kidney donors, and “The Limits of Bioethics.” Satel lauded Israel’s steps to solve its organ shortage in “Kidney Mitzvah,” and just published a book on compensating kidney donors: When Altruism Isn’t Enough."
Argentina Approves Gay Marriage, in a First for Region July 15, 201 BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s Senate narrowly approved a law early on Thursday authorizing same-sex marriages, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to allow gay couples to wed.
"After nearly 15 hours of debate, the Senate voted 33 to 27 in favor of the measure, which was sponsored by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. For weeks, she waged a bitter war of words with the Roman Catholic Churchover the issue, saying that it would be a “terrible distortion of democracy” to deny gay couples the right to wed and that it was time for religious leaders to recognize how much more liberal and less discriminatory the nation’s social mores had become.
"In its race to derail the change, the church organized large protests involving tens of thousands of opponents of the measure, with Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, calling the bill a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”
"Portugal and Iceland also legalized gay marriage this year, adding to the small but steadily expanding list of nations, most of them in Europe, to do so."
Vatican Revises Abuse Process, but Causes Stir July 15, 2010 VATICAN CITY — "The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia."
Thursday, July 22, 2010
School choice gets contentious in Wake County, NC
19 arrested as protesters claim school plan would resegregate system
"Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, arrested 19 people at a rancorous school board meeting Tuesday afternoon where protesters accused the Wake County School Board of adopting a plan that will resegregate the school system.
The Wake County School School Board voted in March to stop the decade-long practice of socio-economic school assignment and assign students to their neighborhood schools. The system plans to transition into the new practice in the next 15 months."
The story includes a video of the arrests, that makes me think that the school board meetings I've been to haven't really been so bad...
My previous posts on Wake County schools are
Blog on school choice by Atila Abdulkadiroglu and School choice in North Carolina
HT: Parag Pathak
"Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, arrested 19 people at a rancorous school board meeting Tuesday afternoon where protesters accused the Wake County School Board of adopting a plan that will resegregate the school system.
The Wake County School School Board voted in March to stop the decade-long practice of socio-economic school assignment and assign students to their neighborhood schools. The system plans to transition into the new practice in the next 15 months."
The story includes a video of the arrests, that makes me think that the school board meetings I've been to haven't really been so bad...
My previous posts on Wake County schools are
Blog on school choice by Atila Abdulkadiroglu and School choice in North Carolina
HT: Parag Pathak
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Me and market design, in Forbes
Susan Adams in the August Forbes magazine (but online now) has a nice article about me and market design called (maybe for search engine reasons)" Un-Freakonomics: A Harvard professor uses economics to save lives, assign doctors and get kids into the right high school."
Here's the sentence I liked best:
"Leaning over a cup of Turkish coffee at a cafe across the Charles River from his messy journal-strewn corner office, he bends over backward to give credit to his younger protégés, students and coauthors. "Market design is a team sport," he insists."
If you want to see me bend over backwards while leaning over a cup of coffee, we'll have to have a cup of coffee:) But seriously, Ms. Adams got that part very right--lots of people have to do lots of things before a new marketplace is designed, adopted, and implemented. I'm very lucky in my colleagues.
The article title might suggest I have some sort of quarrel with Freakonomics, but that's not the case, although my work is very different. I recall reading Freakonomics and being full of admiration for the way it brought Steve Levitt's work to a general audience. I wouldn't mind doing that someday with market design, and maybe Ms. Adam's generous article will be a step towards making market design known to a wider public.
Here's the sentence I liked best:
"Leaning over a cup of Turkish coffee at a cafe across the Charles River from his messy journal-strewn corner office, he bends over backward to give credit to his younger protégés, students and coauthors. "Market design is a team sport," he insists."
If you want to see me bend over backwards while leaning over a cup of coffee, we'll have to have a cup of coffee:) But seriously, Ms. Adams got that part very right--lots of people have to do lots of things before a new marketplace is designed, adopted, and implemented. I'm very lucky in my colleagues.
The article title might suggest I have some sort of quarrel with Freakonomics, but that's not the case, although my work is very different. I recall reading Freakonomics and being full of admiration for the way it brought Steve Levitt's work to a general audience. I wouldn't mind doing that someday with market design, and maybe Ms. Adam's generous article will be a step towards making market design known to a wider public.
F.C.C. Indecency Policy Rejected on Appeal
The NY Times reports the story: A federal appeals court struck down a Federal Communications Commission policy on indecency Tuesday, saying that regulations barring the use of “fleeting expletives” on radio and television violated the First Amendment because they were vague and could inhibit free speech.
"The decision, which many constitutional scholars expect to be appealed to the Supreme Court, stems from a challenge by Fox, CBS and other broadcasters to the F.C.C.’s decision in 2004 to begin enforcing a stricter standard of what kind of language is allowed on free, over-the-air television.
"The stricter policy followed several incidents that drew widespread public complaint, including Janet Jackson’s breast-baring episode at the 2004 Super Bowl and repeated instances of profanity by celebrities, including Cher, Paris Hilton and Bono, during the live broadcasts of awards programs. The Janet Jackson incident did not involve speech but it drew wide public outrage that spurred a crackdown by the F.C.C.
"In a unanimous three-judge decision, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said that the F.C.C.’s current policy created “a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here” because it left broadcasters without a reliable guide to what the commission would find offensive. "The appeals court emphasized that it was not precluding federal regulation of broadcast standards. “We do not suggest that the F.C.C. could not create a constitutional policy,” the court said. “We hold only that the F.C.C.’s current policy fails constitutional scrutiny.” "
Here's my earlier post on the case: Fleeting expletives and wardrobe malfunctions: FCC vs Fox Television and CBS
"The decision, which many constitutional scholars expect to be appealed to the Supreme Court, stems from a challenge by Fox, CBS and other broadcasters to the F.C.C.’s decision in 2004 to begin enforcing a stricter standard of what kind of language is allowed on free, over-the-air television.
"The stricter policy followed several incidents that drew widespread public complaint, including Janet Jackson’s breast-baring episode at the 2004 Super Bowl and repeated instances of profanity by celebrities, including Cher, Paris Hilton and Bono, during the live broadcasts of awards programs. The Janet Jackson incident did not involve speech but it drew wide public outrage that spurred a crackdown by the F.C.C.
"In a unanimous three-judge decision, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said that the F.C.C.’s current policy created “a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here” because it left broadcasters without a reliable guide to what the commission would find offensive. "The appeals court emphasized that it was not precluding federal regulation of broadcast standards. “We do not suggest that the F.C.C. could not create a constitutional policy,” the court said. “We hold only that the F.C.C.’s current policy fails constitutional scrutiny.” "
Here's my earlier post on the case: Fleeting expletives and wardrobe malfunctions: FCC vs Fox Television and CBS
Monday, July 19, 2010
Kidney exchange story at NEPKE
Market design is full of both frustration and satisfaction. Kidney exchange provides an unusual amount of each. Sometimes the satisfactions come in unexpected ways. Below is an email I received yesterday, whose author gave me permission to share it here, along with the photo.
"Dear Dr. Roth,
I want to thank you for your role in establishing the New England Program for Kidney Exchange. On July 8 my husband Bryan, in a 3-way swap with donor/ recipient pairs at Hopkins, RIH/ Brown and Dartmouth, received his new kidney after years of failing health. He is already feeling remarkably better, and his new kidney is functioning well.
Here is a photo of our 3-year-old, Lincoln, and 3-month-old, Haven, thanking Bryan's brother for donating his kidney to a stranger at Hopkins so Bryan could receive one from Dartmouth. I can imagine that theoretical academic work can lack a human face at times, so I wanted to assure you that your work is truly changing lives. I can't thank you enough for giving my boys their Daddy back.
Yours,
Katie Silberman
Providence"
Market design in Australia?
The Australian prime minister Julia Gillard makes a speech in which she refers to "market design." (I can't tell exactly what that means in Australian...). The story, in The Australian today, is headlined Gillard banks on Per Capita think tank.
"In her speech to Per Capita last year, she said the approach she had taken to education would provide the template for further work on policy design, innovation, research and evaluation.
"This included starting with the needs of students and focusing on the performance of institutions, rather than allowing the focus of policy to rest only on "systems, structures and sectoral concerns".
"She said this came with an emphasis on equity for the disadvantaged, a preoccupation with transparency and a concern with "market design".
"The idea of "market design" is a key theme for Per Capita. Governments have always had a role in setting the rules of conduct for markets through trade practices. Per Capita argues that with due government guidance, markets can perform a powerful role in delivering human services, such as the jobs network.
"Gillard returned to market design in her speech to the National Press Club on economic policy last week.
"As far as I am concerned, there is no inherent superiority in a public sector or a private sector provider, certainly not on ideological grounds. The challenge is not whether to combine public and private resources in these essential sectors, but how best to do it," she said. "
Update: Joshua Gans tells me that "market design" means the same thing in Australia that it does in Boston, and he points me to a talk on the subject he gave to the thinktank in question: Emerging Concepts in Market Design. (And here's Joshua's post on the subject today, to close the loop:) What is market design anyway?
"In her speech to Per Capita last year, she said the approach she had taken to education would provide the template for further work on policy design, innovation, research and evaluation.
"This included starting with the needs of students and focusing on the performance of institutions, rather than allowing the focus of policy to rest only on "systems, structures and sectoral concerns".
"She said this came with an emphasis on equity for the disadvantaged, a preoccupation with transparency and a concern with "market design".
"The idea of "market design" is a key theme for Per Capita. Governments have always had a role in setting the rules of conduct for markets through trade practices. Per Capita argues that with due government guidance, markets can perform a powerful role in delivering human services, such as the jobs network.
"Gillard returned to market design in her speech to the National Press Club on economic policy last week.
"As far as I am concerned, there is no inherent superiority in a public sector or a private sector provider, certainly not on ideological grounds. The challenge is not whether to combine public and private resources in these essential sectors, but how best to do it," she said. "
Update: Joshua Gans tells me that "market design" means the same thing in Australia that it does in Boston, and he points me to a talk on the subject he gave to the thinktank in question: Emerging Concepts in Market Design. (And here's Joshua's post on the subject today, to close the loop:) What is market design anyway?
Misc. kidney exchanges and chains
At the University of Wisconsin hospital, a non-directed donor chain involving four donors and four recipients was completed in a day: At UW Hospital, four kidney transplants in one day and eight people are connected forever
Here's a 21 minute video interview of Dr. Matthew Cooper at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, about a 4 transplant non-directed donor kidney exchange chain conducted there over two days. Among the logistical issues he mentions (e.g. 8 operating room teams) are those involving protecting the privacy of all the donors and recipients (around minute 3:45). And (around 9:15, and not making any specific comparisons to other hospitals) "We take no shortcuts at the University of Maryland," he says. Here is another short video, with some OR footage. More videos here from UMMC.
Here's a 4 minute video, "United by their gifts," about the meeting of the donors and recipients in the three way NEPKE exchange I posted about earlier (Kidney exchange at NEPKE ).
There have been some delays in starting a national kidney exchange program in Australia: Waiting for Kidney eXchange "One of the driving forces behind the exchange program is Professor Paolo Ferrari. He helped introduce it in Western Australia in 2007.
"We really hope it can be rolled out nationally before an election is called," he said.
"Otherwise it will be pushed back months."
A spokeswoman for the Organ and Tissue Donation Authority said the exchange program was expected to begin in Australian hospitals in August or September.
"The first step will be to enrol potential participants in the program, followed by the clinical process of matching donors and recipients, followed by the surgical processes," she said.
The spokeswoman said all states and territories had now considered the detail of the program.
"This process, through senior medical representatives, was completed last week, paving the way for health ministers to be briefed during July."
It took the UK three years to set up its kidney exchange program. "
Here's a 21 minute video interview of Dr. Matthew Cooper at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, about a 4 transplant non-directed donor kidney exchange chain conducted there over two days. Among the logistical issues he mentions (e.g. 8 operating room teams) are those involving protecting the privacy of all the donors and recipients (around minute 3:45). And (around 9:15, and not making any specific comparisons to other hospitals) "We take no shortcuts at the University of Maryland," he says. Here is another short video, with some OR footage. More videos here from UMMC.
Here's a 4 minute video, "United by their gifts," about the meeting of the donors and recipients in the three way NEPKE exchange I posted about earlier (Kidney exchange at NEPKE ).
There have been some delays in starting a national kidney exchange program in Australia: Waiting for Kidney eXchange "One of the driving forces behind the exchange program is Professor Paolo Ferrari. He helped introduce it in Western Australia in 2007.
"We really hope it can be rolled out nationally before an election is called," he said.
"Otherwise it will be pushed back months."
A spokeswoman for the Organ and Tissue Donation Authority said the exchange program was expected to begin in Australian hospitals in August or September.
"The first step will be to enrol potential participants in the program, followed by the clinical process of matching donors and recipients, followed by the surgical processes," she said.
The spokeswoman said all states and territories had now considered the detail of the program.
"This process, through senior medical representatives, was completed last week, paving the way for health ministers to be briefed during July."
It took the UK three years to set up its kidney exchange program. "
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Signaling preferences in matching markets
Preference Signaling in Matching Markets, by Peter Coles, Alexey Kushnir, and Muriel Niederle, NBER Working Paper No. 16185, July 2010. (Here's an ungated version.)
"Abstract: Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a signaling mechanism, where each worker can send a signal of interest to one employer, facilitates matches in such markets. We find that introducing a signaling mechanism increases the welfare of workers and the number of matches, while the change in firm welfare is ambiguous. A signaling mechanism adds the most value for balanced markets."
Two of the three authors of this paper are on the AEA job market committee that instituted the AEA's job market signaling mechanism. This new working paper brings some theory to the party.
See also
Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried , " The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," revised April 6, 2010, forthcoming in Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010.
"Abstract: Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a signaling mechanism, where each worker can send a signal of interest to one employer, facilitates matches in such markets. We find that introducing a signaling mechanism increases the welfare of workers and the number of matches, while the change in firm welfare is ambiguous. A signaling mechanism adds the most value for balanced markets."
Two of the three authors of this paper are on the AEA job market committee that instituted the AEA's job market signaling mechanism. This new working paper brings some theory to the party.
See also
Peter Coles, John Cawley, Phillip B. Levine, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, and John J. Siegfried , " The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," revised April 6, 2010, forthcoming in Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010.
marketdesigner.blogspot.xxx
Sex domain .xxx approved by regulators .
"ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, which is responsible for overseeing the creation and distribution of web addresses, finally gave the go-ahead for the special .xxx domain name at a meeting in Brussels.
"ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, which is responsible for overseeing the creation and distribution of web addresses, finally gave the go-ahead for the special .xxx domain name at a meeting in Brussels.
The adult entertainment industry has long campaigned in favour of a special .xxx suffix, similar to the .com and .co.uk domain names used by other companies."
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Polyandry
Polyandry is much less common in the world than the other form of polygamy, polygyny, in which a man has two or more wives. In polyandrous households, one wife has two or more husbands. It was a form of plural marriage in resource poor regions.
Now, the NY Times reports, One Bride for 2 Brothers: A Custom Fades in India
In the remote villages of this Himalayan valley, polyandry, the practice of multiple men marrying one wife, was for centuries a practical solution to a set of geographic, economic and meteorological problems.
"People here survived off small farms hewed from the mountainsides at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and dividing property among several sons would leave each with too little land to feed a family. A harsh mountain winter ends the short planting season abruptly. The margin between starvation and survival is slender."...
"Polyandry has been practiced here for centuries, but in a single generation it has all but vanished. "...
"Polyandry has never been common in India, but pockets have persisted, especially among the Hindu and Buddhist communities of the Himalayas, where India abuts Tibet."
"People here survived off small farms hewed from the mountainsides at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and dividing property among several sons would leave each with too little land to feed a family. A harsh mountain winter ends the short planting season abruptly. The margin between starvation and survival is slender."...
"Polyandry has been practiced here for centuries, but in a single generation it has all but vanished. "...
"Polyandry has never been common in India, but pockets have persisted, especially among the Hindu and Buddhist communities of the Himalayas, where India abuts Tibet."
David Blackwell
David H. Blackwell dies at 91; pioneering statistician at Howard and Berkeley
"David H. Blackwell, 91, who rose from poverty in Southern Illinois to become one of the country's most prominent statisticians and the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, died July 8 at a hospital in Berkeley, Calif., of complications from a stroke.
"Dr. Blackwell was also the first black tenured professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he became chairman of the statistics department. ...
"While in Washington, he became interested in statistics after hearing a lecture by Agriculture Department statistician Meyer A. Girshick. After Dr. Blackwell challenged one of Girshick's assertions, the two met and became friends and colleagues.
"They wrote a 1954 book, "The Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions." It established them as leaders in the burgeoning field of game theory, which uses mathematics to understand winning strategies in situations that can be applied to economics, biology, engineering, political science and international relations. "
Friday, July 16, 2010
Consolidation and competition among economics jobs aggregators
At VoxEu, there's an announcement today (July 16) of a new service and a combining of forces: Introducing a free database of nearly all jobs for PhD economists by Raphael Auer and Richard Baldwin, founders of walras.org and Vox respectively.
They write:
"To help grow the next generation of economists, VoxEU.org has teamed with walras.org to form the world’s largest database of job openings for PhD economists. In addition to this comprehensive database of nearly all job openings for PhDs in economics and related fields, our partner walras.org also offers a free online application system allowing the exchange of all application documents and reference letters."It looks like this puts them in pretty direct competition with the combination of Econjobmarket.org with the European Economic Association. And they are both competing with software providers who deal directly with the HR departments of universities and provide university-specific web sites for handling the information flow of job applications. (The AEA's Job Openings for Economists doesn't propose to handle the application process, but of course it is another big aggregator of job ads.)
We anticipated some of this in our forthcoming paper
In that paper we wrote
"Two kinds of web applications have a presence in the market. Some departments are in institutions that use a university-wide platform, usually purchased commercially and then operated by the Human Resources department. Such university-specific systems impose high costs on applicants and references because they require individual uploading for each application and letter of reference.
"Other employers use third-party services such as EconJobMarket.org, AcademicJobsOnline.org (run by Duke’s Math Department, offering services to all sorts of departments), and others such as Academic Careers Online (http://www.academiccareers-job.com/), Economist Jobs (http://www.econ-jobs.com/), EconCareers (http://www.econcareers.com/), and LiberalArtsFacultyJobs.com. The job listing aggregator walras.org may also start such a service. The website of EconJobMarket.org (accessed March 1, 2010) indicates some consolidation: their service has been merged with that of the European Economic Association and has been endorsed by other economics organizations."
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