Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Public attitudes on compensation for donors
Poll: Americans Show Support For Compensation Of Organ Donors
"Federal law bans payments for organs. But given the need, we wondered what Americans thought about compensation for three kinds of donations that can be made while people are alive: kidneys, bone marrow and a portion of liver big enough to help someone whose liver is failing.
"So we asked 3,000 adults across the country as part of the NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll, and here's what they told us.
"If compensation took the form of credits for health care needs, about 60 percent of Americans would support it. Tax credits and tuition reimbursement were viewed favorably by 46 percent and 42 percent, respectively. Cash for organs was seen as OK by 41 percent of respondents.
"Among people who said some form of compensation was acceptable, 72 percent said it should come from health insurers, followed by private charities at 62 percent and the federal government at 44 percent.
"For all forms of compensation, rates of support tended to fall among older respondents.
"There's been longstanding resistance to compensating donors financially in this country. There are concerns about exploitation and also worries that even small amounts of compensation would undercut a system that depends on altruism."
HT: Steve Leider (and see Leider, Stephen and Alvin E. Roth, “Kidneys for sale: Who disapproves, and why?” American Journal of Transplantation, 10 (May), 2010, 1221-1227.)
Monday, May 21, 2012
Is market life sucking the meaning out of real life?
Are too many things available to buy? That seems to be a theme of much recent literature that, at its worst, regrets how the economy has sucked the meaning out of life ever since the invention of trade and agriculture. The idea is that economic life weakens the close bonds with kin and community we used to build while we helped each other ward off starvation.
Markets are not the only focus of that concern: the expansion of cities and the encroachment of technology are others. For technology, think of the internet and social media, but don't forget the earlier effects of the automobile and the phonograph. As for what you can buy these days with money, and the growth of markets, don't forget bottle feeding and washing machines, and women in the labor force.
But even if we have no nostalgia for the bad old days, it doesn't hurt to be aware of how the increasing scope of markets, like the growth of cities and technology, changes how we relate to one another.
In a recent NY Times Op Ed, the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who teaches at Berkeley, writes of her concerns about the increased reach of markets, The Outsourced Life. The article is accompanied by pictures of ads for all sorts of services that can now be bought and sold, from birthday party planners to cooking coaches, to upgraded accommodations in a private prison, to someone offering a service called "rent a dad."
The article announces her new book on the subject, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times
I recently received a review copy (one of the few signs that the world notices a blog).
It is a thoughtful book, on a topic in which I have a professional interest, but I wasn't encouraged when it began by regretting the loss of small town community that the author experienced as a child visiting her grandmother's farm. She visited from the city, a life her parents had chosen, and which she later chose herself. But the book is saved from nostalgia for the lost world by the acknowledgement of how much easier it would have been to take care of her elderly grandmother, years later when she was frail, if only she had lived near a city and the services that money could buy, and which a granddaughter could not easily deliver from far away.
So, and here is the interesting part of this kind of discussion, the loss of community isn't just something that happens because people choose to move to cities for the better opportunities and bigger markets they offer (even though they may regret, at least in memory, leaving the town behind). Loss of community is also something that happens to those left behind, as the towns are thinned out by those who moved on, so less community remains. Professor Hochschild and her parents chose to move away from the farm, and didn't ever really want to go back, but there's no going back even if they did want to: that old community isn't there anymore.
Of course, some of it was never really there. The book compares her grandfather's courtship of two sisters, one of whom became her grandmother and the other who apparently made a poor marriage (to "a n'er-do-well farmer"), with today's internet dating. Internet dating also doesn't always work out, it seems. Her grandmother did better with the old fashioned process, but it wasn't so great for her great-aunt.
**********
Closely related is Michael Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
(about which and whom I have blogged before). While Hoschschild's lost world is that of her grandparents' youth, Sandel regrets the changes he sees since he was young himself: here's a recent review (whose title is a summary of it's contents):.
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, By Michael Sandel: Should you pay to jump the queue – or for a new kidney? It's hard to define where cash has no place.
Sandel turns out to be a childhood friend of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who writes about Sandel's book in a May 12 column called This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone
" Seen in isolation, these commercial encroachments seem innocuous enough. But Sandel sees them as signs of a bad trend: “Over the last three decades,” he states, “we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. A market economy is a tool — a valuable and effective tool — for organizing productive activity. But a ‘market society’ is a place where everything is up for sale. It is a way of life where market values govern every sphere of life.”
"Why worry about this trend? Because, Sandel argues, market values are crowding out civic practices. When public schools are plastered with commercial advertising, they teach students to be consumers rather than citizens. When we outsource war to private military contractors, and when we have separate, shorter lines for airport security for those who can afford them, the result is that the affluent and those of modest means live increasingly separate lives, and the class-mixing institutions and public spaces that forge a sense of common experience and shared citizenship get eroded."
***********
Tim Harford shared his thoughts on Sandel on markets on Google+: He asks, "Why oh why is Michael Sandel so famous?"
***********
The role of markets in life, how these have changed over time, and peoples' perceptions of these things, are well worth the attention of economists. I initially organized my thoughts on the subject in my 2007 article Repugnance as a constraint on markets, and it's a subject I return to often in blog posts on repugnance and repugnant transactions.
**********
Markets are not the only focus of that concern: the expansion of cities and the encroachment of technology are others. For technology, think of the internet and social media, but don't forget the earlier effects of the automobile and the phonograph. As for what you can buy these days with money, and the growth of markets, don't forget bottle feeding and washing machines, and women in the labor force.
But even if we have no nostalgia for the bad old days, it doesn't hurt to be aware of how the increasing scope of markets, like the growth of cities and technology, changes how we relate to one another.
In a recent NY Times Op Ed, the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who teaches at Berkeley, writes of her concerns about the increased reach of markets, The Outsourced Life. The article is accompanied by pictures of ads for all sorts of services that can now be bought and sold, from birthday party planners to cooking coaches, to upgraded accommodations in a private prison, to someone offering a service called "rent a dad."
The article announces her new book on the subject, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times
It is a thoughtful book, on a topic in which I have a professional interest, but I wasn't encouraged when it began by regretting the loss of small town community that the author experienced as a child visiting her grandmother's farm. She visited from the city, a life her parents had chosen, and which she later chose herself. But the book is saved from nostalgia for the lost world by the acknowledgement of how much easier it would have been to take care of her elderly grandmother, years later when she was frail, if only she had lived near a city and the services that money could buy, and which a granddaughter could not easily deliver from far away.
So, and here is the interesting part of this kind of discussion, the loss of community isn't just something that happens because people choose to move to cities for the better opportunities and bigger markets they offer (even though they may regret, at least in memory, leaving the town behind). Loss of community is also something that happens to those left behind, as the towns are thinned out by those who moved on, so less community remains. Professor Hochschild and her parents chose to move away from the farm, and didn't ever really want to go back, but there's no going back even if they did want to: that old community isn't there anymore.
Of course, some of it was never really there. The book compares her grandfather's courtship of two sisters, one of whom became her grandmother and the other who apparently made a poor marriage (to "a n'er-do-well farmer"), with today's internet dating. Internet dating also doesn't always work out, it seems. Her grandmother did better with the old fashioned process, but it wasn't so great for her great-aunt.
**********
Closely related is Michael Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
(about which and whom I have blogged before). While Hoschschild's lost world is that of her grandparents' youth, Sandel regrets the changes he sees since he was young himself: here's a recent review (whose title is a summary of it's contents):.What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, By Michael Sandel: Should you pay to jump the queue – or for a new kidney? It's hard to define where cash has no place.
Sandel turns out to be a childhood friend of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who writes about Sandel's book in a May 12 column called This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone
" Seen in isolation, these commercial encroachments seem innocuous enough. But Sandel sees them as signs of a bad trend: “Over the last three decades,” he states, “we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. A market economy is a tool — a valuable and effective tool — for organizing productive activity. But a ‘market society’ is a place where everything is up for sale. It is a way of life where market values govern every sphere of life.”
"Why worry about this trend? Because, Sandel argues, market values are crowding out civic practices. When public schools are plastered with commercial advertising, they teach students to be consumers rather than citizens. When we outsource war to private military contractors, and when we have separate, shorter lines for airport security for those who can afford them, the result is that the affluent and those of modest means live increasingly separate lives, and the class-mixing institutions and public spaces that forge a sense of common experience and shared citizenship get eroded."
***********
Tim Harford shared his thoughts on Sandel on markets on Google+: He asks, "Why oh why is Michael Sandel so famous?"
***********
The role of markets in life, how these have changed over time, and peoples' perceptions of these things, are well worth the attention of economists. I initially organized my thoughts on the subject in my 2007 article Repugnance as a constraint on markets, and it's a subject I return to often in blog posts on repugnance and repugnant transactions.
**********
Sunday, May 20, 2012
NY Times debate: Is Prostitution Safer when It's Legal?
The debate Is Prostitution Safer When It’s Legal? mirrors in many ways the debate over whether legalizing compensation for kidney donors (and bone marrow donors, etc.) would be better or worse than the illegal markets that currently exist...
Jim Wilson/The New York TimesProstitutes wait for customers at a legal brothel in Nevada.
DEBATERS
INTRODUCTION
Jim Wilson/The New York TimesProstitutes wait for customers at a legal brothel in Nevada.
Some say laws against prostitution unfairly victimize women. A Canadian court recently ruled that laws preventing brothels endangered prostitutes by forcing them to work on the streets. And as the recent Secret Service scandal makes clear, in Colombia, prostitution is legal in “tolerance zones.” But in Spain, prostitution is essentially legal, and the nation has become a magnet for sex trafficking. Can legalized prostitution ever be safe and free of exploitation? Or should laws against prostitution remain?
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Maryland courts: same sex divorce isn't repugnant, even if marriage is
Two weeks ago I reported on the Maryland court case about whether a same sex couple who got married in California could divorce in Maryland. Here's the news from the court's decision yesterday: Maryland’s high court allows same-sex divorce.
"Maryland’s highest court decided Friday that even though same-sex couples aren’t yet able to marry in the state, they do have the right to divorce.
"The Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the lower court, ruling that “a valid out-of-state same-sex marriage should be treated by Maryland courts as worthy of divorce.”
"The team of lawyers representing the women argued that Maryland has always recognized out-of-jurisdiction marriages — even in cases that are expressly illegal in the state, such as uncle-niece marriages. “We felt pretty confident that this case would be treated no differently,” Zavos said.
"The appellate court agreed, finding that the parties’ same-sex marriage is not “repugnant” to Maryland “public policy,” the bar it would have to reach for the couple to be legally turned away for a divorce. The seven judges didn’t miss the opportunity in the opinion to take a jab at the Maryland General Assembly, saying that to date, its treatment of same-sex relationships might “be characterized as a case of multiple personality disorder.”
"In March, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The law is slated to take effect in January but faces a potential roadblock in November when a measure to repeal the legislation will appear on the ballot.
"Maryland’s highest court decided Friday that even though same-sex couples aren’t yet able to marry in the state, they do have the right to divorce.
"The Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the lower court, ruling that “a valid out-of-state same-sex marriage should be treated by Maryland courts as worthy of divorce.”
"The team of lawyers representing the women argued that Maryland has always recognized out-of-jurisdiction marriages — even in cases that are expressly illegal in the state, such as uncle-niece marriages. “We felt pretty confident that this case would be treated no differently,” Zavos said.
"The appellate court agreed, finding that the parties’ same-sex marriage is not “repugnant” to Maryland “public policy,” the bar it would have to reach for the couple to be legally turned away for a divorce. The seven judges didn’t miss the opportunity in the opinion to take a jab at the Maryland General Assembly, saying that to date, its treatment of same-sex relationships might “be characterized as a case of multiple personality disorder.”
"In March, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The law is slated to take effect in January but faces a potential roadblock in November when a measure to repeal the legislation will appear on the ballot.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Comparing countries through their universities
Comparing universities is hard enough, and it's harder if they are in different countries, so imagine the caveats that must accompany the attempt by Universitas 21 to create a ranking of national systems of higher education.
But it would be boring to start there, so here's their ranking:
1 United States
2 Sweden
3 Canada
4 Finland
5 Denmark
6 Switzerland
7 Norway
8 Australia
9 Netherlands
10 United Kingdom
11 Singapore
12 Austria
13 Belgium
14 New Zealand
15 France
16 Ireland
17 Germany
18 Hong Kong SAR
19 Israel
20 Japan
21 Taiwan
22 Korea
23 Portugal
24 Spain
25 Ukraine
...
There are of course lots of ways to parse the data, here are some:
"Government funding of higher education as a percentage of GDP is highest in Finland, Norway and Denmark, but when private expenditure is added in, funding is highest in the United States, Korea, Canada and Chile. Investment in Research and Development is highest in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. The United States dominates the total output of research journal articles, but Sweden is the biggest producer of articles per head of population. The nations whose research has the greatest impact are Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark. While the United States and United Kingdom have the world's top institutions in rankings, the depth of world class higher education institutions per head of population is best in Switzerland, Sweden, Israel and Denmark.
"The highest participation rates in higher education are in Korea, Finland, Greece, the United States, Canada and Slovenia. The countries with the largest proportion of workers with a higher level education are Russia, Canada, Israel, United States, Ukraine, Taiwan and Australia. Finland, Denmark, Singapore, Norway and Japan have the highest ratio of researchers in the economy.
"International students form the highest proportions of total student numbers in Australia, Singapore, Austria, United Kingdom and Switzerland. International research collaboration is most prominent in Indonesia, Switzerland, Hong Kong SAR, Denmark, Belgium and Austria. China, India, Japan and the United States rank in the bottom 25 percent of countries for international research collaboration. In all but eight countries at least 50 percent of students were female, the lowest being in India and Korea. In only five countries were there at least 50 percent female staff; the lowest being in Japan and Iran."
Here are some of my earlier posts on universities.
But it would be boring to start there, so here's their ranking:
1 United States
2 Sweden
3 Canada
4 Finland
5 Denmark
6 Switzerland
7 Norway
8 Australia
9 Netherlands
10 United Kingdom
11 Singapore
12 Austria
13 Belgium
14 New Zealand
15 France
16 Ireland
17 Germany
18 Hong Kong SAR
19 Israel
20 Japan
21 Taiwan
22 Korea
23 Portugal
24 Spain
25 Ukraine
...
There are of course lots of ways to parse the data, here are some:
"Government funding of higher education as a percentage of GDP is highest in Finland, Norway and Denmark, but when private expenditure is added in, funding is highest in the United States, Korea, Canada and Chile. Investment in Research and Development is highest in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. The United States dominates the total output of research journal articles, but Sweden is the biggest producer of articles per head of population. The nations whose research has the greatest impact are Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark. While the United States and United Kingdom have the world's top institutions in rankings, the depth of world class higher education institutions per head of population is best in Switzerland, Sweden, Israel and Denmark.
"The highest participation rates in higher education are in Korea, Finland, Greece, the United States, Canada and Slovenia. The countries with the largest proportion of workers with a higher level education are Russia, Canada, Israel, United States, Ukraine, Taiwan and Australia. Finland, Denmark, Singapore, Norway and Japan have the highest ratio of researchers in the economy.
"International students form the highest proportions of total student numbers in Australia, Singapore, Austria, United Kingdom and Switzerland. International research collaboration is most prominent in Indonesia, Switzerland, Hong Kong SAR, Denmark, Belgium and Austria. China, India, Japan and the United States rank in the bottom 25 percent of countries for international research collaboration. In all but eight countries at least 50 percent of students were female, the lowest being in India and Korea. In only five countries were there at least 50 percent female staff; the lowest being in Japan and Iran."
Here are some of my earlier posts on universities.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Why are there (still) fewer women professors than men?
A study of chemistry Ph.D. students in Britain reveals that academic careers start looking disproportionately unattractive to women compared to men as they progress through their studies. It appears that Ph.D. supervisors are largely to blame.
Here's a succinct summary: Why Women Leave Academia
"Young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men for three reasons. During their time as Ph.D. candidates, large numbers of women conclude that (i) the characteristics of academic careers are unappealing, (ii) the impediments they will encounter are disproportionate, and (iii) the sacrifices they will have to make are great."
And here's the report, and its executive summary:
The chemistry PhD: the impact on women’s retention
A report prepared by Jessica Lober Newsome for the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET and the Royal Society of Chemistry
Executive Summary and Key Findings
This research attempted to establish what accounts for the findings of a RSC survey of the career intentions
of chemistry PhD students (RSC, 2008). It was a qualitative study which aimed to pin point the factors that
discourage women more than men from planning a career in research, especially in academia.
81 chemists, via eight focus groups (six with second year students, two with third year students) and 47 telephone interviews (23 with third year students and 24 with people who had recently completed a chemistry PhD programme) participated in the research.
The research identified that the following factors, which relate to the doctoral study experience, and deter a larger proportion of women than men from remaining in research beyond their PhD.
During doctoral study, a larger proportion of female than male participants had:
Been deeply affected by what might be termed ‘standard supervision issues’ (e.g. enjoying little pastoral care and having to cope with a supervisor who lacks interpersonal/management skills);
Encountered significant supervision issues, which they felt powerless to resolve;
Experienced a lack of integration with their research group, isolation and exclusion (and more rarely,
bullying);
Been uncomfortable with the culture of their research group (about working patterns, time and
expectations and the level of competition between group members), especially where the culture was
particularly ‘macho’;
Developed concerns about poor (though normal) experimental success rates, apprehensive of what this may infer to others about their skills and competence;
Formed the impression that the doctoral research process is an ordeal filled with frustration, pressure and stress, which a career in research would only prolong; rather than short-term pain for long-term gain.
The research suggested that where women do not wish to pursue an academic career, this is because they perceived the rewards on offer insufficient to overcome the challenge and compromise entailed.
In contrast to male participants, female participants had:
Come to view academic careers as too all-consuming, too solitary and not sufficiently collaborative;
Come to the conclusion that the short-term contract aspect of post-docing could not be reconciled with other aspects of their life, particularly relationships and family;
Come to believe the competition for a permanent academic post was too fierce for them to compete successfully;
Come to believe they would need to make sacrifices (about femininity and motherhood) in order to succeed in academia;
Been advised in negative terms of the challenge they would face (by virtue of their gender).
The report concludes that the chemistry PhD programme and academic careers are modelled on masculine
ways of thinking and doing, which leaves women neither supported as PhD students nor enthused to remain in research in the longer term. Cultural as well as procedural change is required to address this.
********
In Economics, there are still fewer women full professors than men, although there are signs of change. Here's a story that takes note of the fact that three recent winners of the Clark medal are the mothers of young children... Women making gains in economics, but progress is slow
Here's a succinct summary: Why Women Leave Academia
"Young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men for three reasons. During their time as Ph.D. candidates, large numbers of women conclude that (i) the characteristics of academic careers are unappealing, (ii) the impediments they will encounter are disproportionate, and (iii) the sacrifices they will have to make are great."
And here's the report, and its executive summary:
The chemistry PhD: the impact on women’s retention
A report prepared by Jessica Lober Newsome for the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET and the Royal Society of Chemistry
Executive Summary and Key Findings
This research attempted to establish what accounts for the findings of a RSC survey of the career intentions
of chemistry PhD students (RSC, 2008). It was a qualitative study which aimed to pin point the factors that
discourage women more than men from planning a career in research, especially in academia.
81 chemists, via eight focus groups (six with second year students, two with third year students) and 47 telephone interviews (23 with third year students and 24 with people who had recently completed a chemistry PhD programme) participated in the research.
The research identified that the following factors, which relate to the doctoral study experience, and deter a larger proportion of women than men from remaining in research beyond their PhD.
During doctoral study, a larger proportion of female than male participants had:
Been deeply affected by what might be termed ‘standard supervision issues’ (e.g. enjoying little pastoral care and having to cope with a supervisor who lacks interpersonal/management skills);
Encountered significant supervision issues, which they felt powerless to resolve;
Experienced a lack of integration with their research group, isolation and exclusion (and more rarely,
bullying);
Been uncomfortable with the culture of their research group (about working patterns, time and
expectations and the level of competition between group members), especially where the culture was
particularly ‘macho’;
Developed concerns about poor (though normal) experimental success rates, apprehensive of what this may infer to others about their skills and competence;
Formed the impression that the doctoral research process is an ordeal filled with frustration, pressure and stress, which a career in research would only prolong; rather than short-term pain for long-term gain.
The research suggested that where women do not wish to pursue an academic career, this is because they perceived the rewards on offer insufficient to overcome the challenge and compromise entailed.
In contrast to male participants, female participants had:
Come to view academic careers as too all-consuming, too solitary and not sufficiently collaborative;
Come to the conclusion that the short-term contract aspect of post-docing could not be reconciled with other aspects of their life, particularly relationships and family;
Come to believe the competition for a permanent academic post was too fierce for them to compete successfully;
Come to believe they would need to make sacrifices (about femininity and motherhood) in order to succeed in academia;
Been advised in negative terms of the challenge they would face (by virtue of their gender).
The report concludes that the chemistry PhD programme and academic careers are modelled on masculine
ways of thinking and doing, which leaves women neither supported as PhD students nor enthused to remain in research in the longer term. Cultural as well as procedural change is required to address this.
********
In Economics, there are still fewer women full professors than men, although there are signs of change. Here's a story that takes note of the fact that three recent winners of the Clark medal are the mothers of young children... Women making gains in economics, but progress is slow
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The handover of power in France
Signs of the times: Hollande Sworn In as President of France
"Mr. Hollande, the seventh president of the Fifth Republic, was accompanied by his partner, Valérie Trierweiler; they will be the first unmarried couple to represent France.
"Mr. Hollande entered the Élysée along a long red carpet in the courtyard, met by Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the first incumbent president to lose re-election since 1981. Both men, in dark suits, shook hands and disappeared inside for a meeting, in which, it is said, Mr. Sarkozy handed over France’s nuclear codes to his successor. Some suggested he also handed over the password to the Élysée Twitter account
"Mr. Hollande, the seventh president of the Fifth Republic, was accompanied by his partner, Valérie Trierweiler; they will be the first unmarried couple to represent France.
"Mr. Hollande entered the Élysée along a long red carpet in the courtyard, met by Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the first incumbent president to lose re-election since 1981. Both men, in dark suits, shook hands and disappeared inside for a meeting, in which, it is said, Mr. Sarkozy handed over France’s nuclear codes to his successor. Some suggested he also handed over the password to the Élysée Twitter account
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
In 100 years (my predictions)
Ignacio Palacios-Huerta is editing a volume, In 100 Years, inspired by Keynes' 1930 essay, "Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren."
Here is my contribution: In 100 Years, and its opening and concluding paragraphs (to tempt you to read the paragraphs in between, or to save you the trouble...).
"For those of you reading this in 2112, let me introduce
myself by saying that in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries I studied the design of matching markets, which are markets in which
price alone doesn’t clear the market, and so participants can’t just choose
what they want (even if they can afford it), they also have to be chosen. These
are markets that involve application or selection processes or other forms of
courtship. Matching markets determine some of the most important events of our
lives: where we go to school, who we marry, what jobs we get, even whether we
get a lifesaving organ for transplant if we should happen to need one (see Roth
2002, 2008 for overviews). So I’ll concentrate my predictions on these things,
namely schools, jobs, marriage and family, and medicine, along with some
thoughts about the possible state of economic expertise, i.e. the things that
economists produce and sell.
...
"I’ve also spent some time studying how some kinds of transactions are regarded as repugnant, in some times and places, and how this constrains what markets we see...
...
"I’ve also spent some time studying how some kinds of transactions are regarded as repugnant, in some times and places, and how this constrains what markets we see...
...
...
...
...
...
"To summarize the predictions I’ve made here about 100 years
from now, I think that the trend of increasing prosperity will continue, but
that it will not necessarily (as Keynes predicted in 1930) bring us all lives
of leisure. Many will work harder than
ever, and some of the things some of us will do to work more efficiently—like
taking performance enhancing drugs--will go from being repugnant today to
ordinary in the future. Other things we do eagerly today, like use computers
for access to more and more data, may become repugnant in some respects, as
privacy of personal data moves to the forefront of civil rights issues. And
while medical advances will continue on all fronts, and advances in preventive
medicine will make medical care and long-lived good health more widely
available, some kinds of medicine, including reproductive medicine along with
other aspects of reproduction, will become commoditized, while others, such as
genetic manipulation of various sorts, may become repugnant. Some kinds of
education will become commoditized, but among the matching markets that we see
today, selective admissions to elite universities will remain, as will
networking and matchmaking for family formation (under a wider variety of
marital forms) and perhaps increasingly, for research collaborators and other
kinds of business partners. And there
will still be economists, and economic mysteries to unravel, including those
that will arise from the increased computerization of markets and marketplaces.
Much of market design that we struggle to understand today will have become
commoditized and be found in off the shelf software, but understanding how to
design novel markets and fix market failures will remain an active concern of
our economist grandchildren.
"Keynes, in writing about the future of economics, said “If
economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people,
on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!” Perhaps if we replace
“dentists” with “engineers,” that is still a good goal for the next hundred
years."
Monday, May 14, 2012
More on the market for economists: Harvard matters
David Warsh discusses comings and goings at Harvard's Economics department, with particular attention to economic history: History Matters
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Bone marrow registries
The NY Times reports on an effort to start a bone marrow registry in Nigeria, and to increase donation among African Americans: Finding a Match, and a Mission: Helping Blacks Survive Cancer
"Now he is trying to repay that debt, with an effort that experts say may save the lives of both Nigerians and black Americans. In February, he helped start Nigeria’s national bone-marrow registry, the first in Africa outside South Africa. He is now raising money to start a cord-blood bank there.
Millions of Nigerians have blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma, and about 4,000 black Americans die annually of them. Less than 20 percent of black Americans now find the perfect donor matches that could save their lives, while more than 70 percent of whites do. Without a registry and cord-blood bank, no Nigerians do.
“This is a slam-dunk, from my point of view,” Mr. Adebiyi said. “The U.S. registries are trying to figure out how to increase the population of minority donors; this is a solution they should be interested in.”
Becoming a donor is relatively simple nowadays; only a cheek swab is needed to test for a match. Donating rarely requires the painful hip punctures that used to be routine. Instead, an intravenous blood line runs through a cell separator after the donor takes drugs to push the stem cells into the bloodstream. The process is no more burdensome than dialysis, experts say.
But for African-Americans like Mr. Adebiyi, finding matches is particularly difficult. Blacks are less likely to register as donors; while blacks are 12.6 percent of the population, only 8 percent of registered donors are black.
“It’s lack of education about it, and mistrust of the medical system after scandals like Tuskegee,” said Shauna Melius, co-founder of Preserve Our Legacy, citing the Tuskegee, Ala., experiment in which government doctors recruited black farmers for research and let those with syphilis go untreated for decades. Her organization recruits donors at Harlem Hospital and through drives featuring black celebrities.
“Plus,” she added, “people are skeptical because you’re collecting DNA.”
Complicating the problem, blacks are more genetically diverse than whites. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens existed in Africa for 200,000 years before migrating north to Europe a little over 40,000 years ago, so all Europeans descend from the shallower end of the gene pool.
"Now he is trying to repay that debt, with an effort that experts say may save the lives of both Nigerians and black Americans. In February, he helped start Nigeria’s national bone-marrow registry, the first in Africa outside South Africa. He is now raising money to start a cord-blood bank there.
Millions of Nigerians have blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma, and about 4,000 black Americans die annually of them. Less than 20 percent of black Americans now find the perfect donor matches that could save their lives, while more than 70 percent of whites do. Without a registry and cord-blood bank, no Nigerians do.
“This is a slam-dunk, from my point of view,” Mr. Adebiyi said. “The U.S. registries are trying to figure out how to increase the population of minority donors; this is a solution they should be interested in.”
Becoming a donor is relatively simple nowadays; only a cheek swab is needed to test for a match. Donating rarely requires the painful hip punctures that used to be routine. Instead, an intravenous blood line runs through a cell separator after the donor takes drugs to push the stem cells into the bloodstream. The process is no more burdensome than dialysis, experts say.
But for African-Americans like Mr. Adebiyi, finding matches is particularly difficult. Blacks are less likely to register as donors; while blacks are 12.6 percent of the population, only 8 percent of registered donors are black.
“It’s lack of education about it, and mistrust of the medical system after scandals like Tuskegee,” said Shauna Melius, co-founder of Preserve Our Legacy, citing the Tuskegee, Ala., experiment in which government doctors recruited black farmers for research and let those with syphilis go untreated for decades. Her organization recruits donors at Harlem Hospital and through drives featuring black celebrities.
“Plus,” she added, “people are skeptical because you’re collecting DNA.”
Complicating the problem, blacks are more genetically diverse than whites. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens existed in Africa for 200,000 years before migrating north to Europe a little over 40,000 years ago, so all Europeans descend from the shallower end of the gene pool.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Compensation for bone marrow donors, continued
The latest in the controversy over compensation for bone marrow donors is that the government's petition for a rehearing has been denied: Kim Krawiec has the story, with links...
Flynn V. Holder Rehearing Denied
Friday, May 11, 2012
New Orleans school choice goes live
Recovery School District says new pupil enrollment system is getting the job done
View full sizeAmong elementary schools, Dr. Martin
Luther King Charter School, Lafayette Academy and Martin Behrman were the most
popular. Janet Wolfe was photographed teaching her second-grade class at
Lafayette Academy in October.
Of the 19,896 looking for a place in the other grades, about 73 percent got
one of their top three choices. And 59 percent got their first choice.
On the other hand, almost 16 percent of students heading into kindergarten or the ninth grade didn't get any of the choices they ranked, along with 26 percent of students in other grades. Because there are a limited number of seats in any given school and some schools are more popular than others, it was inevitable that some students would have to stay put where they already attend or be manually assigned by the district.
State officials said that in those cases, they assigned students to open seats using random lottery numbers, giving preference to those living closer to one school than another. A little more than half of the students who didn't get any school that they ranked will remain in the school they already attend.
The data also suggested that only a fairly narrow set of public schools in New Orleans have built a strong enough reputation to draw big applicant pools. The state said that on average, families ranked only 2.6 elementary schools and 2.4 high schools, even though they could have ranked as many as eight.
"It says two things," concluded Gabriela Fighetti, the Recovery District's director of student enrollment. "There are some schools that families really want to go to -- and we really need to keep improving our full range of schools so that families have more options."
Overall though, state officials are pointing to these numbers as a sign that the district's new central enrollment process, which made its debut this year, is working.
The state moved to centralize enrollment this spring after years of complaints from parents about the difficulty of finding a school in a city where so many independent charter schools have been handling the process on their own. In past years, families who wanted to try for a spot at more than one charter school -- charters now educate close to 80 percent of the city's public school students -- had to fill out separate applications and hope that one of their choices had an open seat.
Now the district is assigning seats based on how families rank their top choices, their proximity to the school and a random lottery number.
Families are being notified this week where their children will attend in the fall. Anyone can appeal their assignment, and given the significant number of pupils assigned a school they didn't ask for, that could prove a contentious, emotional process.
"If you're asking if there were wrinkles, absolutely," said Vera Triplett, CEO of the New Beginnings charter school network. "There were kids who weren't assigned to any of their choices, kids who didn't get into a school where their sibling goes, that kind of thing."
Triplett added: "I think a lot of it will be ironed out after it's brought to the district's attention."
Still, the district isn't in a position to give every family what it wants. Seats are limited, and if parents ranked only the more popular schools, they were more likely to be disappointed.
The Recovery District released a list of the top three most popular schools for different grade levels on Wednesday, but officials had not compiled complete rankings for every school in the city. Those in the top three tended to be schools with better performance scores from the state, as measured by test results and other factors.
Among elementary schools, Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School, Lafayette Academy and Martin Behrman topped the list. For just those students entering kindergarten, however, schools that are a part of the KIPP charter network proved the most popular, with KIPP Central City, KIPP McDonogh 15 and KIPP Believe in the top three slots.
Lake Area, Sophie B. Wright and Sci Academy were the top secondary schools among all applicants, while those entering the ninth grade most often chose Lake Area, Sci Academy and KIPP Renaissance.
*********************
See these previous posts on IIPSC projects.
The state-run district that governs most of the
public schools in New Orleans has finished assigning more
than 25,000 pupils who turned in applications for seats at one of 67
campuses this spring, declaring its new
central enrollment system a success. Recovery
School District officials said Wednesday that of the 3,841 students looking
for a kindergarten or ninth-grade seat -- broadly speaking, those entering the
system for the first time or making the transition to high school -- 84 percent
got into one of the first three choices they ranked on their application. About
76 percent got their top choice.
View full sizeAmong elementary schools, Dr. Martin
Luther King Charter School, Lafayette Academy and Martin Behrman were the most
popular. Janet Wolfe was photographed teaching her second-grade class at
Lafayette Academy in October. On the other hand, almost 16 percent of students heading into kindergarten or the ninth grade didn't get any of the choices they ranked, along with 26 percent of students in other grades. Because there are a limited number of seats in any given school and some schools are more popular than others, it was inevitable that some students would have to stay put where they already attend or be manually assigned by the district.
State officials said that in those cases, they assigned students to open seats using random lottery numbers, giving preference to those living closer to one school than another. A little more than half of the students who didn't get any school that they ranked will remain in the school they already attend.
The data also suggested that only a fairly narrow set of public schools in New Orleans have built a strong enough reputation to draw big applicant pools. The state said that on average, families ranked only 2.6 elementary schools and 2.4 high schools, even though they could have ranked as many as eight.
"It says two things," concluded Gabriela Fighetti, the Recovery District's director of student enrollment. "There are some schools that families really want to go to -- and we really need to keep improving our full range of schools so that families have more options."
Overall though, state officials are pointing to these numbers as a sign that the district's new central enrollment process, which made its debut this year, is working.
The state moved to centralize enrollment this spring after years of complaints from parents about the difficulty of finding a school in a city where so many independent charter schools have been handling the process on their own. In past years, families who wanted to try for a spot at more than one charter school -- charters now educate close to 80 percent of the city's public school students -- had to fill out separate applications and hope that one of their choices had an open seat.
Now the district is assigning seats based on how families rank their top choices, their proximity to the school and a random lottery number.
Families are being notified this week where their children will attend in the fall. Anyone can appeal their assignment, and given the significant number of pupils assigned a school they didn't ask for, that could prove a contentious, emotional process.
"If you're asking if there were wrinkles, absolutely," said Vera Triplett, CEO of the New Beginnings charter school network. "There were kids who weren't assigned to any of their choices, kids who didn't get into a school where their sibling goes, that kind of thing."
Triplett added: "I think a lot of it will be ironed out after it's brought to the district's attention."
Still, the district isn't in a position to give every family what it wants. Seats are limited, and if parents ranked only the more popular schools, they were more likely to be disappointed.
The Recovery District released a list of the top three most popular schools for different grade levels on Wednesday, but officials had not compiled complete rankings for every school in the city. Those in the top three tended to be schools with better performance scores from the state, as measured by test results and other factors.
Among elementary schools, Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School, Lafayette Academy and Martin Behrman topped the list. For just those students entering kindergarten, however, schools that are a part of the KIPP charter network proved the most popular, with KIPP Central City, KIPP McDonogh 15 and KIPP Believe in the top three slots.
Lake Area, Sophie B. Wright and Sci Academy were the top secondary schools among all applicants, while those entering the ninth grade most often chose Lake Area, Sci Academy and KIPP Renaissance.
*********************
See these previous posts on IIPSC projects.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
A belt plus suspenders for North Carolina on same sex marriage, while Obama comes out (in favor)
When is a repugnant transaction doubly repugnant? When a State that has a law against it passes a constitutional amendment against it, just to be clear.
North Carolina Voters Pass Same-Sex Marriage Ban
"As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution.
...
"North Carolina, a religious but also relatively moderate state on social issues, already has a law banning same-sex marriage. But Republican lawmakers pushed an amendment out of concern that the law was in danger of being struck down by judges."
***********
And, as if to make it clear that same sex marriage is in transition as a repugnant transaction, the next day (i.e. yesterday): Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal (while Mitt Romney reiterated his opposition).
"President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.
...
"Hours before the president’s announcement, Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, restated his opposition to same-sex marriage in an interview with KDVR-TV, a Fox News affiliate in Colorado.
“When these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Mr. Romney said. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights and the like are appropriate, but that the others are not.”
"Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even professional pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television, without controversy."
North Carolina Voters Pass Same-Sex Marriage Ban
"As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution.
...
"North Carolina, a religious but also relatively moderate state on social issues, already has a law banning same-sex marriage. But Republican lawmakers pushed an amendment out of concern that the law was in danger of being struck down by judges."
***********
And, as if to make it clear that same sex marriage is in transition as a repugnant transaction, the next day (i.e. yesterday): Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal (while Mitt Romney reiterated his opposition).
"President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.
...
"Hours before the president’s announcement, Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, restated his opposition to same-sex marriage in an interview with KDVR-TV, a Fox News affiliate in Colorado.
“When these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Mr. Romney said. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights and the like are appropriate, but that the others are not.”
"Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even professional pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television, without controversy."
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
How not to communicate about kidney exchange
Kidney exchange, aka kidney paired donation is a great opportunity, but it has to be communicated to patients and donors. The state of the art is practiced by surgeons like Dr. Adam Bingaman in San Antonio, who makes sure that patients and donors hear about all options before they even begin to be tested for compatibility. That way, if they are incompatible, they're not surprised to hear they still have options.
Other hospitals only mention kidney exchange after testing donors and finding them incompatible with their intended recipient. Here's a few sentences of a story that makes that clear:
"After testing, Hendon received a letter from UCLA saying she was not a good match.
“I was so sad, almost devastated,” she said. “Then at the bottom of the letter, in tiny letters, it mentioned I could still be involved in a kidney exchange. I called them the next day and they seemed surprised that I still wanted to do it and started the process.”
"Once she was approved, it was not long before she was notified that they had a recipient waiting for her kidney."
*********
The donor in question participated in this nonsimultaneous extended altruistic donor (NEAD) chain.
Other hospitals only mention kidney exchange after testing donors and finding them incompatible with their intended recipient. Here's a few sentences of a story that makes that clear:
"After testing, Hendon received a letter from UCLA saying she was not a good match.
“I was so sad, almost devastated,” she said. “Then at the bottom of the letter, in tiny letters, it mentioned I could still be involved in a kidney exchange. I called them the next day and they seemed surprised that I still wanted to do it and started the process.”
"Once she was approved, it was not long before she was notified that they had a recipient waiting for her kidney."
*********
The donor in question participated in this nonsimultaneous extended altruistic donor (NEAD) chain.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Unraveling of the second year summer associate market: derailed on the fast track
The meltdown of the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf has consequences for the lawyers they hired years in advance. Here's a story about the students who accepted summer internships a year ago...
For Law Students, Dewey & LeBoeuf Internships Evaporate
"[last week]...about 30 students learned that their plum summer jobs at Dewey & LeBoeuf had vanished.
[These students] "had expected to walk out of their final exams this week and into a summer position promised back in the fall. Like summer associate jobs at most white-shoe law firms, they would have earned around $3,000 a week, plus free meals, field trips and other goodies. It would be a cushy, two-month courtship that virtually guaranteed equally lucrative employment with Dewey after graduation.
"But now those jobs are gone, and just about every comparable opportunity was booked nearly a year ago.
"The legal industry has an unusually synchronized and suffocatingly compressed hiring schedule. Most big law firms do not have rolling applications for their summer slots. Instead, they interview students during the same two-week period right as their second year of law school begins. At that point students have received only two semesters of grades, but those grades will determine where they work the next summer — and often, for the rest of their lives. That is because firms offer permanent, postgraduation jobs to just about every summer associate, for fear of looking like their business has suddenly dropped off if they do not.
"With Dewey’s announcement, these students’ careful, fastidiously risk-averse career planning collapsed under them, and they fell off the job track not just for Dewey but for its peer firms. Of the dozens of major firms contacted for this article, only one had picked up one of these stranded summer associates, and that was because one of its partners had a personal connection to the student.
For Law Students, Dewey & LeBoeuf Internships Evaporate
"[last week]...about 30 students learned that their plum summer jobs at Dewey & LeBoeuf had vanished.
[These students] "had expected to walk out of their final exams this week and into a summer position promised back in the fall. Like summer associate jobs at most white-shoe law firms, they would have earned around $3,000 a week, plus free meals, field trips and other goodies. It would be a cushy, two-month courtship that virtually guaranteed equally lucrative employment with Dewey after graduation.
"But now those jobs are gone, and just about every comparable opportunity was booked nearly a year ago.
"The legal industry has an unusually synchronized and suffocatingly compressed hiring schedule. Most big law firms do not have rolling applications for their summer slots. Instead, they interview students during the same two-week period right as their second year of law school begins. At that point students have received only two semesters of grades, but those grades will determine where they work the next summer — and often, for the rest of their lives. That is because firms offer permanent, postgraduation jobs to just about every summer associate, for fear of looking like their business has suddenly dropped off if they do not.
"With Dewey’s announcement, these students’ careful, fastidiously risk-averse career planning collapsed under them, and they fell off the job track not just for Dewey but for its peer firms. Of the dozens of major firms contacted for this article, only one had picked up one of these stranded summer associates, and that was because one of its partners had a personal connection to the student.
Monday, May 7, 2012
American economic association finances; legacy of Mark Perlman
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the finances of academic professional societies brings back fond memories of my late Pittsburgh colleague Mark Perlman: Scholarly Groups' Choices Yield Diverging Fortunes.
""When new executive-committee members come on, I say, 'Let me explain the finances of the association,'" says John J. Siegfried, secretary-treasurer of the American Economic Association. "We have two products that subsidize everything else."
Most of that subsidy comes from the association's online database, EconLit; the other source is the association's jobs listings, which employers pay to post and which appear chiefly online. "It radically changes our business model," Mr. Siegfried says of EconLit, "though that's flattering it."
His breezy description of the association's economic model acknowledges how the quirks of history and personality can produce long-term consequences. Indeed, the economists' group owes much of its present fiscal strength to choices made decades ago. When asked how his scholarly association went about developing EconLit, Mr. Siegfried answered simply, "You have Mark Perlman."
Mr. Perlman, who died in 2006, was hailed for his encyclopedic knowledge of the discipline's philosophy, history, and institutions. He was an economist at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969, when the Journal of Economic Literature, which he founded, started publishing articles, book reviews, and a bibliography of scholarship in economics.
For several years, Mr. Perlman and association staff collected journals and manuscripts, piling them in eight-foot-high stacks in the narrow corridors of a dark, cramped space next to a beauty parlor on Forbes Avenue, near Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University.
"An earthquake in Pittsburgh would likely have led to our employees being crushed under economics journals," Mr. Siegfried wrote earlier this year in toasting the retirement of Dru Ekwurzel, who served as the association's director of publications.
In the early 1980s, Ms. Ekwurzel was instrumental in transferring tapes of journal citations, abstracts, and bibliographic material to an online information-retrieval service. Scholars would gain access to this database through a terminal and dial-up service at a subscribing library. In 1984 that database, named EconLit, made its debut at the association's annual meeting.
By the time the World Wide Web was born, the association was well positioned. In 2010, EconLit generated nearly $3.9-million in revenue from subscribing libraries and universities, or more than 40 percent of the association's budget.
The group's seven journals, available in print and online, are agenda setters for the field, but they also cost far more to produce than the income they generate. The group's annual meeting breaks even.
With a surplus of more than $1.2-million and income from EconLit and the job listings, the association chose recently to slash by more than half, to as little as $20, its fees for membership, in hopes of stemming a 13-percent decline in members since 2003.
"We have a strange situation of not hanging on by our fingernails," Mr. Siegfried says, "and I know others are."
**********
Mark passed away in May 2006.
Obituary: Mark Perlman / Prominent economist of post-World War II era
Professor Mark Perlman: Historian of economic thought
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Same-sex divorce: A predictable repugnant transaction?
A same sex couple who got married in California when same-sex marriages were briefly legal there, wants to get divorced in Maryland, where they live. Both of them have agreed on the details of property etc. But a judge has ruled they can't divorce, since they couldn't get married in Maryland...A court’s conundrum: When same-sex partners want to split
"They both want to get divorced. But a Prince George’s County judge said they could not, reasoning that because same-sex marriage is not legal in the state, neither is same-sex divorce.
"Now the highest court in Maryland will decide whether he was right, and whether the women will be required to maintain a bond they’ve tried for almost two years to sever."
"They both want to get divorced. But a Prince George’s County judge said they could not, reasoning that because same-sex marriage is not legal in the state, neither is same-sex divorce.
"Now the highest court in Maryland will decide whether he was right, and whether the women will be required to maintain a bond they’ve tried for almost two years to sever."
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Dress exchange
Joshua Gans points out to me that now there's a dress exchange called 99dresses.comhttp://www.99dresses.com/ (which seems less complicated than kidney exchange).
FREE FASHION
and never wear the same thing twice!
Get Started
It's FREE. Learn more about how it works.
1 UPLOAD
Upload your quality unwanted clothes, shoes and accessories into the Infinite Closet.2 SELL
Sell your fashion to other girls for a virtual currency called buttons.3 SPEND
Spend your buttons on anything you want in the Infinite Closet.
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