Public nudity: San Francisco is different

In most places, public nudity is considered repugnant. Not in San Francisco:

"Other nearby cities like Berkeley and San Jose have passed laws prohibiting public nudity, but in San Francisco it remains legal. In accordance with state law, public nudity is only illegal when accompanied by “lewd thoughts or acts” or “where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed.” But since state law prohibits police officers from being the offended party, it takes a citizen’s arrest— a rare occurrence in a city that prides itself on its open-mindedness and tolerance — to take a naked person into custody."


And even those who would like to limit it are different in SF: there is now
"...a proposed law — introduced by Scott Wiener, a city supervisor — that would prohibit nudity in restaurants and require unclad people to put a towel or other material down before sitting bare-bottomed on benches or other public seats."


All this from the NY Times: 
Protesters Bare All Over a Proposed San Francisco Law

Cramton^3 on market design

IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca Piazza San Ponziano 6, Lucca Italy
 October 4-6, 2011

 THREE LECTURES ON MARKET DESIGN
 Peter Cramton
 Professor of Economics, University of Maryland




During the week of 3 October 2011, Professor Peter Cramton will present a series of three lectures on market design. The emerging field of market design applies auctions and matching to solve resource allocation problems. The lectures focus on auction design, the branch of market design where money is used to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. Within auctions, the paper examines applications involving government regulated resources. Who should use the scarce radio spectrum and at what prices? How should electricity markets be organized? How should financial markets be regulated? And how should governments procure health care goods and services? All of these are important questions in major industries. Researchers in market design have made substantial progress in answering these questions over the last seventeen years. The efforts, although at the forefront of theory have been closely tied to practice, and involved interdisciplinary teams of economists, computer scientists, and engineers, all working to solve real problems. Despite this rapid progress, the field holds much promise to provide better answers in even more complex economic environments over the next two decades. The rewards to society from improved markets will be immense.



 Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - 2 pm
 Electricity Market Design and Climate Policy

 Wednesday, October 5, 2011 - 2 pm
Spectrum Auction Design

Thursday, October 6, 2011 - 2 pm
Medicare Auctions: A Case Study of Market Design in Washington, DC

Brain dead patients as research subjects in xenotransplantation

It turns out that economists aren't the only people willing to contemplate things that others may find repugnant... Mike Rees, the kidney surgeon who leads the Alliance for Paired Donation, also has a lively research interest in xenotransplantation, which offers the still distant prospect of using pig kidneys to cure human kidney disease. But first a lot of research needs to be done...would it be ok to use it on brain dead patients whose dead body is still kept functioning on a ventilator? Or would that be disrespectful of the dead?

The last bullfight in Catalonia

Another transaction becomes repugnant:

The last Ole! Bullfighting comes to an end in Catalonia

Almost seven hundred years of Catalan bullfighting history ended on Sunday night with the final death blow dealt by its hometown hero.

Harvard Nobel Prediction Market

Ran Shorrer asks me to post the following announcement:

It's that time of the year again!

The recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics will be announced soon, which means there's little time left for you to place your bets in the Harvard Nobel Prediction Market! Put your economics training to the test and see if your predictions can bring you fame and riches. Previous participants have walked away with sizable winnings and bragging rights.

To enter, fill out this Google Form or print and mail this paper form. Betting closes at 11:59pm EST, October 9th, 2011. Online payments should be received by the same deadline, and payments by mail must be post-marked by October 9th, 2011. Cambridge economists may also give the payment to Brenda Piquet or put the money in Daniel Pollmann's Littauer mailbox.

Submit online payments to johnczhou@gmail.com from your Amazon Payments account. To pay IN CASH, mail the printed form and the sum of your bets to

Daniel Pollmann, Littauer Center, Harvard University,
1875 Cambridge St, Cambridge MA 02138 

Check our website on Sunday, October 9th for the most popular choices, as well as for the winners soon after October 10th.

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

Update

Al Roth  -  10:40 AM  -  Public

A commenter asks if this is legal--does anyone know?

Market Design: Harvard Nobel Prediction Market

  -  Comment  -  Share

Mallesh Pai - Probably not- intrade had to move out of of the US for legality reasons- and they're the biggest prediction market I know... (I'm guessing +David Pennock will know more).

10:47 AM (edited)   

David Pennock - Not technically legal in the US, but neither are office pools. No one would ever be prosecuted for betting in this. The operator of the market might worry more, but I highly doubt something on this scale on this topic would be prosecuted. Look up betcha.com for the worst-case scenario but that was sports betting, a clear no-no.

11:02 AM   

Driving and voting while female in Saudi Arabia

Find the repugnant transaction in this story...


Saudi woman to be lashed for defying driving ban

"A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for breaking the country's ban on female drivers.
...
"The sentence comes two days after the Saudi leader King Abdullah announced women would be allowed to vote for the first time in 2015."


Update: Saudi king revokes woman's lashing sentence
""Thank God, the lashing of Sheima is cancelled. Thanks to our beloved King," said Princess Amira al-Taweel, wife of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, on her twitter account."

Full tuition and college admissions

The NY Times is shocked by the results of a survey of admissions officers: Universities Seeking Out Students of Means

"More than half of the admissions officers at public research universities, and more than a third at four-year colleges said that they had been working harder in the past year to recruit students who need no financial aid and can pay full price..."
...
"Similarly, 22 percent of the admissions officials at four-year institutions said the financial downturn had led them to pay more attention in their decision to applicants’ ability to pay.

“As institutional pressures mount, between the decreased state funding, the pressure to raise a college’s profile, and the pressure to admit certain students, we’re seeing a fundamental change in the admissions process,” said David A. Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Where many of the older admissions professionals came in through the institution and saw it as an ethically centered counseling role, there’s now a different dynamic that places a lot more emphasis on marketing.”

Dialysis: continued debate about tragic choices, and how to finance not having to make them

This recent story about who pays for dialysis for uninsured illegal immigrants reminds me of the initial stories of how Medicare came to cover dialysis, making kidney disease unique in the way it is financed. There is a special horror in denying routine life saving treatment to patients who will die without it. That is, emergency rooms aren't supposed to deny treatment to anyone, but dialysis only becomes an emergency when regular access is denied...but we haven't done a great job of figuring out the financing.

Here's the NY Times story on illegal immigrants, by Kevin Sack: Deal Reached on Dialysis for Immigrants


"Twenty-one illegal immigrants will continue to receive regular dialysis at no cost for three years under an agreement disclosed Friday by Atlanta’s public hospital, Grady Memorial, and the world’s largest dialysis provider, Fresenius Medical Care.

"The deal solves an impasse created when a previous one-year contract between Grady and Fresenius expired on Aug. 31 and the dialysis provider refused to serve patients who showed up for their regular thrice-a-week treatments.

"The patients spent the past week seeking care in Atlanta-area emergency rooms, including Grady’s, which are required by federal law to screen and treat those at risk of impairment or death.

"In some instances, ailing patients were turned away by emergency room doctors who determined that their elevated potassium levels and fluid retention were not yet severe enough to justify emergency treatment. Each renal patient’s need for dialysis is different, but those unable to artificially clean the toxic substances from their blood can die in as little as two weeks.
...
"The patients’ odyssey began two years ago when Grady closed its outpatient dialysis clinic, where many had received free treatment for years. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicare, which covers most dialysis costs for American citizens. After the immigrants filed a lawsuit and gained news media attention, the hospital agreed to pay Fresenius to care for them during a transitional period. Other than the past week, it has never ended.

"Under the new contract, Grady agrees to pay Fresenius $15,500 per patient per year for treatment at the company’s outpatient clinics. That is less than half of the $750,000 flat fee Grady paid Fresenius for the yearlong contract that just ended.

"Grady, which receives direct appropriations from two county governments, faces a budget shortfall of more than $20 million this year. It maintained in negotiations that it could not afford to pay Fresenius the previous rates."
***********

Here's a previous post on how dialysis entered Medicare:

The special (Medicare) status of kidney disease

" In Seattle, in response to financial limitations, access to dialysis was restricted through explicit rationing carried out by an anonymous lay committee — an approach that was laid bare for the American public in a Life magazine article in November 1962.² Elsewhere, decisions limiting access to dialysis were tacitly incorporated into traditional medical decision making. Dialysis highlighted the tragic choices that had to be made when fundamental societal values encountered problems of scarcity.

"

...
"In November 1971, a patient received dialysis — albeit very briefly — at a hearing of the House Committee on Ways and Means."
**************


And here's a post on the continued debate about tragic choices, even without the added distraction of immigration status: 

Medicare payments for dialysis

The New York Times describes the growing federal expenses for dialysis, and some surrounding controversy: When Ailments Pile Up, Asking Patients to Rethink Free Dialysis


"Of all the terrible chronic diseases, only one —end-stage kidney disease — gets special treatment by the federal government. A law passed by Congress 39 years agoprovides nearly free care to almost all patients whose kidneys have failed, regardless of their age or ability to pay.


"But the law has had unintended consequences, kidney experts say. It was meant to keep young and middle-aged people alive and productive. Instead, many of the patients who take advantage of the law are old and have other medical problems, often suffering through dialysis as a replacement for their failed kidneys but not living long because the other chronic diseases kill them. 

Howard Raiffa's Memoir: Analytical Roots of a Decision Scientist

Estelle and Howard Raiffa just hosted a book party, to mark the publication of his new book "Memoir: Analytical Roots of a Decision Scientist."

I guess the mark of a pioneer whose work is still of wide, contemporary interest is that, when you read his memoir, you feel he's talking about the early days, not the old days...

Incidentally, Raiffa is my PhD advisor's PhD advisor, and the last picture in the book, titled "Intergenerations of Ph.D. mentors..." is of Raiffa, Bob Wilson, and me. It was taken at Stanford on the occasion of the conference that resulted in the volume Game Theory in the Tradition of Bob Wilson, which includes the short article by Howard, "Tribute to Robert Wilson on his 65th Birthday."

Beauty can make for a repugnant transaction...

At least some Saudi women seem to be objecting to a transaction that might be agreeable to the other parties involved: Saudi women object to import of Moroccan maids as too beautiful

"Women in Saudi Arabia have innundated the government with complaints over plans to import Moroccan women as housemaids. The reason: Moroccan women are just too beautiful and may lure the Saudi husbands away.
...
"The ban on maids from Indonesia and the Philippines hit Saudi households hard, causing many to resort to hiring illegal maids over Ramadan. The Saudis are reliant on foreign workers to perform their household tasks for them and very few Saudi women will work in such menial positions despite high unemployment, as they would be looked down on by other Saudis.

"The ban came into effect following the two countries attempts to introduce regulations for the work conditions of their nationals. Trade Arabia said both countries demanded better working conditions for their employees. Saudi walked away from the negotiations abruptly and decided to look for domestic employees from countries not as concerned about imposing regulations to protect their workers. It also became clear that lower rates of pay could be offered to other nationals. "
********

See also Maid from Morocco? No thanks, say Saudi wives

HT: Nageeb Ali

Upheaval among college sports conferences

The Chronicle of Higher Ed, reporting on the recent changes in colleges athletic affiliations (with indications of more to come), had this to say: Pitt and Syracuse Join ACC in Major-Conference Shakeup

"The weekend’s upheaval comes at a time when conference affiliation has assumed unparalleled importance for many major-college programs. Media-rights contracts have driven much of the recent reshuffling: Leagues with expansive geographic reach can secure footholds in key television markets, and are able to bring in ever-higher sums from media companies with a seemingly insatiable appetite for college sports."
*********

The Atlantic Coast Conference seems likely to add more members.

Vacancy chains and reneging on / recontracting for arrangements for musical performances

Different markets have different cultures regarding how binding are different kinds of arrangements reached far in advance. A recent fall by an orchestra conductor, which forced him to withdraw, casts some light on the classical music biz: Maestro’s Injury Ignites Game of Musical Chairs

"The effects of James Levine’s accident this month and his replacement as conductor at the Metropolitan Opera have rippled across two continents. There is rage in Rome and vexation in Vienna. Genoese music lovers have been deprived of a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. At an opera house in Essen, Germany, unsung assistant conductors and a British import get to shine. Even student musicians at U.C.L.A. are affected; a famous maestro had to postpone a concert with them.

"The Met called on Mr. Levine’s standby and heir apparent as music director, Fabio Luisi, to replace him. That caused Mr. Luisi to cancel engagements next month in Rome, Genoa, Vienna and San Francisco. Substitutes for Mr. Luisi had to be found, and in some cases Mr. Luisi’s subs needed subs.

"The Tetris-like sequence of events also served as a vivid example of how haphazard classical music marquees can be: star singers, soloists and conductors come and go with regularity because of sickness or better opportunities, despite their long-term billing. Usually it’s done in a spirit of mutual back scratching and gentility. Sometimes protocol breaks down, as in this case, with public criticism from music officials in Rome and Vienna.

"Mr. Levine, who has suffered a series of physical ailments, needed emergency surgery after falling while on vacation in Vermont and will be out at least until January, the Met said. Mr. Luisi, who held the title of principal guest conductor, was instantly upgraded to principal conductor. He arrived on Sept. 11 and began rehearsals the next day. He will conduct various performances of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Wagner’s “Siegfried” through Nov. 5.

"The first casualty of Mr. Luisi’s Met engagement was a new production of “Elektra” at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, which issued a blistering statement saying that Mr. Luisi’s abandonment of his obligations on such short notice was a “regrettable matter” that had harmed the world of classical music. The house threatened unspecified action, possibly legal. Mr. Luisi was to have conducted five performances there.

"In defense of Mr. Luisi, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the Italian opera scene was notoriously unstable. “Italian companies cancel right and left,” he said. “They of all people should understand that certain situations arise.”

"The Rome company hired Stefan Soltesz, the general and artistic director of the opera house in Essen, Germany, who himself proceeded to cancel appearances at his own house to make time for Rome. Mr. Soltesz, a Strauss expert who has conducted five productions of “Elektra,” said he took the Rome job because he admired the production’s director, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, and viewed the Rome opera as on the upswing.

"Mr. Soltesz wanted to keep his options open for freelancing, a spokesman said.

"Mr. Soltesz, 62, said he had no qualms about bowing out of duties in Essen, where he conducts an enormous number of performances: up to 70 a year. He also drew a distinction between taking leave from his own house and cancelling a guest appearance, as Mr. Luisi did.


“In Essen I make the programs,” he said. “I am the boss there. It’s a big difference.” Mr. Soltesz said he would never cancel one guest appearance for another.

"In Essen, a respected German opera house, two staff conductors, Wolfram-Maria Märtig and Volker Perplies, will take over two free concerts that Mr. Soltesz was to have conducted and two performances of “Madama Butterfly.” They will also run rehearsals for the forthcoming “Tales of Hoffmann.”

"Michael Francis, a 35-year-old Briton who has made last-minute rescues a specialty, will conduct two symphony concerts on Sept. 29 and 30, giving up time he had planned to devote to studying scores. A conductor is still being sought for the opening night of “The Flying Dutchman” on Oct. 8.

"Mr. Luisi also canceled concerts with his own orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, where he holds the title of chief conductor. He was to have led performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 on Oct. 12, 13 and 14 at the fabled Musikverein. The symphony has borne the brunt of Mr. Luisi’s Met substitutions. It had to replace him several times last season when he filled in for Mr. Levine.

“It’s practically becoming routine,” said Thomas Angyan, the artistic and executive director of the Musikverein, where the symphony often plays. Mr. Angyan never has trouble finding someone to conduct at the Musikverein, he said, and within a day or two he engaged the veteran German conductor Lothar Zagrosek, who has long experience in Vienna.

HT: Muriel Niederle

Designing retirement plan default options

One of the big successes of behavioral economics has been in disseminating that decision making and information gathering are costly, so that default options matter. The WSJ seems to have taken the empirical lesson of behavioral economics to heart (even if not always on its editorial page) and reports a study of the effects of default settings.

401(k) Law Suppresses Saving for Retirement

"A 2006 law designed to boost employees' retirement-savings is having the opposite effect for some people.
"Under the law, companies are allowed to automatically enroll workers in their 401(k) plans, rather than require employees to sign up on their own. The measure was intended to encourage more people to bulk up their retirement nest eggs—a key goal in a country where millions of people aren't saving enough.

But an analysis done for The Wall Street Journal shows about 40% of new hires at companies with automatic enrollments are socking away less money than they would if left to enroll voluntarily, the Employee Benefit Research Institute found. The nonprofit performed a complex computer simulation of savings patterns drawing on data from more than 20 million 401(k) participants.

The problem: More than two-thirds of companies set contribution rates at 3% of salary or less, unless an employee chooses otherwise. That's far below the 5% to 10% rates participants typically elect when left to their own devices, the researchers said.

"Automatic enrollment is a double-edged sword," said Brigitte Madrian, a professor at Harvard University who is an expert on 401(k)s. "On the one hand, there's more participation. On the other hand, lots of employees are stuck at whatever default the employer selects.

""The total annual amount being put into 401(k) plans has increased by 13% since 2006, to an estimated $284.5 billion this year, according to consulting firm Cerulli Associates. That is largely because the rule has successfully prodded millions of people who wouldn't have saved a penny for retirement to start saving something.

"But for the 40% of new workers who would have picked a higher savings rate than the company assigned to them, billions of dollars in potential retirement savings will be left on the table, said Pamela Hess, director of retirement research at Aon Hewitt. The human-resources consulting and outsourcing company serves as a record-keeper for $296.8 billion in 401(k) plans.
...
"The Pension Protection Act of 2006, which was designed to shore up the pension system, also encouraged wider adoption of auto-enrollment in 401(k) plans. It removed obstacles such as state laws that restricted the practice and shielded employers who use certain types of investments from liability for losses suffered by participants who are auto-enrolled.

"The law has boosted auto-enrollment and participation rates dramatically. About 57% of large companies now automatically enroll new employees in 401(k) plans, up from 24% in 2006, according to Aon Hewitt. While employees are free to opt out, companies report average participation rates above 85%, compared with 67% for those without auto-enrollment, Aon Hewitt says.

"Yet 401(k) participants' average savings rates have fallen in recent years. Among plans Aon Hewitt administers, the average contribution rate declined to 7.3% in 2010, from 7.9% in 2006. The Vanguard Group Inc. says average contribution rates at its plans fell to 6.8% in 2010, from 7.3% in 2006. Over the same period, the average for Fidelity Investments' defined contribution plans decreased to 8.2%, from 8.9%.

"Vanguard estimates>about half the decline "was attributable to increased adoption of auto-enrollment."
...
"Many companies said they selected a 3% default contribution rate in part out of concern that a higher rate could prompt employees to drop out of these plans.Medtronic Inc. spokeswoman Cindy Resman said the medical-device maker opted for a 3% contribution rate because that was the prevailing rate in 2007, when the company implemented auto-enrollment."

Choice architecture in Britain: mandated choice for deceased donor registration

The BBC reports: Organ donated 'nudge' for drivers in new DVLA process

"The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency already asks if applicants want to be donors - but from Monday an online form will require that the answer is stated.

"Ministers hope it will help improve organ donation rates.

"Less than a third of people are signed up to be organ donors - despite research suggesting that nine in 10 would he happy to be one.

"The situation has prompted much debate in recent years about how best to improve rates.

"Some have called for presumed consent, where it is assumed an individual wishes to be a donor unless he or she has opted out by registering their objection.

"The government has so far rejected presumed consent and instead the Cabinet Office's behavioural insight team has suggested the driving licence idea as part of its "nudge" drive.

"The DVLA's existing scheme is already responsible for about half of the 1m new donor registrations each year.

"As well as becoming compulsory to answer the question, the section will be moved from the end to the start of the DVLA process, so when applicants from England, Wales and Scotland apply for new or replacement licences they will have to say whether they want to become an organ donor or not.

"When a similar scheme was introduced in the US state of Illinois, donor registration jumped from 38% to 60%."
*********

Whether mandated choice will improve organ donation rates (and not just registration rates) is an open question. But isn't it nice that the Cabinet Office has a behavioural insight team...  A tip of the hat to Sunstein and Thaler is in order.

My question about mandated choice is summarized in the following (somewhat out of context) paragraph from Kessler and Roth (forthcoming):

"A “mandated choice” system would also change the way in which individuals became registered donors (see Thaler and Sunstein 2008 and Thaler 2009). Under “mandated choice,” every individual who registered for a driver’s license (or potentially other state or federal documentation) would be required to indicate that he will be an organ donor or that he will not. While there is suggestive evidence that a “mandated choice” policy would (like “opt out”) generate more registration of organ donors (Johnson and Goldstein 2003, 2004), similar concerns arise about whether a change to mandated choice would lead to more donated organs and transplants. While the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act makes registering to be a donor legally binding under an “opt in” policy, failing to register as an organ donor is not a legally binding decision, whereas registering as a person who declines to donate could be legally binding on the next of kin. [Mandated choices could of course be framed so that a negative decision was merely recorded as a decision “not to register as a donor at this time,” but even this less binding formulation might inform next of kin’s beliefs about the deceased’s intentions and wishes.]  Discussions with the staff at the New England Organ Bank suggests that they are able to recover organs from about half of all non-registered potential donors in New England by approaching next of kin. This means that more than half of the people who are not currently registered under “opt in” would need to choose “yes” in mandated choice to increase the recovery rate. Consequently, it remains an empirical question whether a change to “mandated choice” would generate more organ transplants. 


(That's from
Kessler, Judd B. and Alvin E. Roth, ''Organ Allocation Policy and the Decision to Donate American Economic Review, forthcoming.)

Parking meters, old and new

Technology is coming to on-street parking. The NY Times reports on the changeover: The Last Days of the Old Parking Meter

"The city’s Transportation Department, which recently accelerated its meter retirement program, says the change will benefit city and citizen alike: the new meters read credit cards, speak seven languages, require less maintenance, and free up room on the sidewalk."

In Brookline, where I live, one can already begin to catalog some of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the old and new technologies, aside from those mentioned above, regarding credit cards in particular.

Waiting time and queues: old meters took your quarters immediately (if they were working well enough to take them at all); new meters take some time even if you are first in line, and since they serve multiple spots, you may have to wait while they take that time for the people ahead of you.

Parking at 7:45am: old meters made you start paying even if you rolled up to the curb before payment was required; new meters know that you don't have to pay until e.g. 8am, and so can sell you parking until 8:30 without charging you for the first 15 minutes until 8.

Adding time to the meter: old meters let you add another quarter to add time, e.g. if you glanced in at the coffee shop after you had already put money in the meter and noticed that there were no vacant tables, so you would have to go across the street, and wouldn't be back by 8:30.  New meters print a receipt for you to put on your dashboard, and don't let you add time to the end of the time interval you have already bought.

Other people must have noticed other advantages and disadvantages...

Misc. repugnant transactions

Sometimes some transactions are so repugnant that nothing but an armed response seems sufficient:

Multi-agency armed raid hits Rawesome Foods, Healthy Family Farms for selling raw milk and cheese
"A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control)."

HT: Zane Selvans
***********************

Workplace romance is often regarded as a repugnant transaction, and the rules that different universities try to enforce are varied. Inside Higher Ed reports:

"According to the American Association of University Professors,policies regarding relationships between students and professors vary across the country. Some institutions, such as the University of Michigan, do not expressly prohibit faculty-student relationships, but advise faculty members against them and require faculty members to notify superiors of relationships to avoid conflicts of interest. The University of Iowa prohibits faculty members from entering into romantic or sexual relationships with students they are instructing, evaluating, or supervising.
...
In recent years, several campuses have implemented “zero-tolerance” policies. In 2003, the University of California adopted a policy prohibiting romantic or sexual relationships between faculty members and students they are teaching or have a reasonable expectation of teaching in the future. Last year, Yale University adopted a policy expressly prohibiting relationships between faculty members and undergraduate students, regardless of whether there is any chance the professor will teach the student. “Undergraduate students are particularly vulnerable to the unequal institutional power inherent in the teacher-student relationship and the potential for coercion, because of their age and relative lack of maturity,” the policy states."
*************

Revisions to old laws against scalping tickets to sporting events (reselling them at much higher than face value) are under discussion in MA: For ticket resellers and fans, the game may be changing

"Massachusetts is one of five states with laws strictly limiting what resellers can charge. But with hundreds, maybe thousands, of outlets reselling tickets online and offline, the law is difficult to enforce. Plus, ticket scalping is viewed as a victimless crime.

"But by this time next year, legislation under consideration on Beacon Hill could, if passed, make the secondary market in Massachusetts a much different place for fans and licensed resellers. Some overhaul of ticket reselling regulations appears to have legislative support, but it is unclear what form it might take, or whether it would pass. Hearings are scheduled for this month.

One of the bills comes from state Representative Michael Moran, Democrat of Brighton, who has proposed legislation to make the secondary market fully legal - and perhaps more fan-friendly.

"The proposed law would remove most restrictions on reselling tickets, effectively uncapping the secondary market, and institute greater consumer protections regarding refund and cancellation policies."
*********
And finally:

England players warned about their behaviour after night out at 'dwarf-throwing' bar

"Headlines on Thursday morning alleged that Tindall, who recently married the Queen’s granddaughter, Zara Phillips, was acting inappropriately while drinking in a Queenstown bar last Sunday, where a “dwarf-throwing contest” was the primary entertainment."

If it were legal to sell organs for transplantation, what would the ads look like?

From time to time as I maintain this blog, I get a popup window from Google saying that since the blog appears to be popular I could make some money by showing ads from Google AdSense.  So far I have resisted, although an extra skim latte every week or so is tempting.

But I was recently on a site promoting deceased organ donation of transplantable organs. Apparently they are getting those lattes, since this ad appeared at the bottom of their site, giving a glimpse into an alternative universe in which organs are bought and sold:

Organ Sales & Service  We carry Lowrey & Roland Organs Service all brands 781-893-6644 www.MainStreetMusicBoston.com

And once you enter that alternative universe, you notice that even the WSJ could be there: this story (pointed out to me by Eric Budish) ran on Friday--
Trafficking in Organs, Mr. Bishop Pipes Up to Preserve a Bit of History  

""We think of ourselves, like the curator of a historical site or the park ranger at Paul Revere's house, as being stewards," says Mr. Bishop, the white-bearded, 56-year-old executive director of the Organ Clearing House, a Charlestown, Mass., company and part of a growing community of "organ rescue" operations."

Repugnance can be local: horse sausage in France

A repugnant (and even illegal) transaction in one place may be perfectly ordinary in another. Alex Peysakhovich recently came by with some horse meat sausage from a boucherie chevaline in France...

Speed of transactions in algorithmic finance

Markets suffer from congestion when there isn't enough time to make or evaluate all the offers that participants want to make. Even markets in which offers can be made very quickly can suffer from congestion, as I discovered years ago when I studied a labor market with about a six minute turnaround time between getting an offer rejected and making a new one.

In financial markets, the time required to make an offer is sometimes called the latency time, and it apparently can never be short enough: The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets

"In this high-tech stock market, Direct Edge and the other exchanges are sprinting for advantage. All the exchanges have pushed down their latencies — the fancy word for the less-than-a-blink-of-an-eye that it takes them to complete a trade. Almost each week, it seems, one exchange or another claims a new record: Nasdaq, for example, says its time for an average order “round trip” is 98 microseconds — a mind-numbing speed equal to 98 millionths of a second.

The exchanges have gone warp speed because traders have demanded it. Even mainstream banks and old-fashioned mutual funds have embraced the change.

“Broker-dealers, hedge funds, traditional asset managers have been forced to play keep-up to stay in the game,” Adam Honoré, research director of the Aite Group, wrote in a recent report.

"Even the savings of many long-term mutual fund investors are swept up in this maelstrom, when fund managers make changes in their holdings. But the exchanges are catering mostly to a different market breed — to high-frequency traders who have turned speed into a new art form. They use algorithms to zip in and out of markets, often changing orders and strategies within seconds. They make a living by being the first to react to events, dashing past slower investors — a category that includes most investors — to take advantage of mispricing between stocks, for example, or differences in prices quoted across exchanges.

"One new strategy is to use powerful computers to speed-read news reports — even Twittermessages — automatically, then to let their machines interpret and trade on them.

"By using such techniques, traders may make only the tiniest fraction of a cent on each trade. But multiplied many times a second over an entire day, those fractions add up to real money. According to Kevin McPartland of the TABB Group, high-frequency traders now account for 56 percent of total stock market trading. A measure of their importance is that rather than charging them commissions, some exchanges now even pay high-frequency traders to bring orders to their machines.

"High-frequency traders are “the reason for the massive infrastructure,” Mr. McPartland says. “Everyone realizes you have to attract the high-speed traders.”

A formerly repugnant sport

Recall that mixed martial arts are only slowly gaining acceptance. So it shouldn't be so surprising to read that professional football was once repugnant also. The New York Times reviews the book THE BIG SCRUM: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football by John J. Miller.

"On the first page of “The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football,” John J. Miller’s informative account of Roosevelt’s impact on the sport’s early years, readers are taken back to 1876 and a contest between Harvard and Yale. It was the first game Roosevelt, then an 18-year-old Harvard freshman, ever attended, and it propelled him into a lifelong love of the sport. Its physical dangers, he thought, helped build character.

"Dangerous it certainly was. In its earliest forms, football veered toward the brutishness of English rugby, and by the time of Roosevelt’s presidency, it had resulted in a rash of player deaths (18 in 1905 alone). To save the game from those who wanted to abolish it completely, Roosevelt used the “bully pulpit” to push for enormous rules changes to improve safety. But he obviously had mixed feelings. In 1895 he wrote that he wanted to eliminate “needless brutality,” but that he would rather keep the game as it was than lose it completely."