Miscellaneous Nobel related links

We've arrived in Stockholm so my blog posting may be erratic (and postings may be brief, or from blog inventory).  I'll try to have some posts related to the ceremonies in the coming days of activities.  In the meantime, here's a selection of post-announcement pre-Stockholm interviews and news stories that I bookmarked.

Joshua Gans: A Nobel Prize for Market Design, Oct. 15 on Digitopoly.

Life-saving economics 20 Oct 2012 (BBC)

Mon, 22 Oct 12

Duration:
10 mins

Professor Al Roth tells Tim Harford about the work for which he has just been awarded the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Download 5MB (right click & "save target as / link as")

From the publishing house John Wiley: Below is a selection of papers by Alan E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley, available on Wiley Online Library - all freely available online!* (and more here)

Virginia Postrel on An Economics Nobel For Saving Lives, Oct 16 on Bloomberg.

BBC's Richard Knight on Al Roth: An economist who saves lives, Oct. 20

The NY Times sensibly seeks some remarks from Parag Pathak: 2 From U.S. Win Nobel in Economics, Oct. 15

Financial Times: Practical approach secures Nobel award. Oct. 15 (gated, requires free registration, but they approve of my work:)

INFORMS, the Opeations Research/Management Science site, has a nice post by Michael Trick, with which I largely agree: An Operations Research Nobel?, Oct. 15.

Daily Beast: The Nobel Winner’s Guide to Love, Oct. 16.

Stanford news quotes me as pointing out that "Coffee is a big part of science," Oct. 15.

Jewish news service (Nov 4) quotes me as saying "One of the very nice things of this Nobel Prize for me is that I’ve gotten it for work that I am still doing right now. There are still valuable things to do, so it’s quite a thrill for me to have work recognized that is what I will go back to as soon as I stop being awarded for it."

Here's a link to a 14 November podcast of me being interviewed on the Malaysian program The Breakfast Grille

Here's a podcast of an interview on Israeli radio, which aired on November 25 on the program Goldstein on Gelt (15 minutes).

And, just to keep a busy period busier: Alvin Roth, 1 of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, has a book deal

Update: here's a nice radio interview I missed, with John Hockenberry, on the NPR show The Takeaway (he says that my metaphor about a freely rotating wheel is a good takeaway:)

What is the place of Economics in Science?

The AAAS, which publishes Science magazine, has elected a new list of Fellows, 701 in all this year, including several economists (among whom I am one, which is what brought it to my attention):

Section on Social, Economic and Political Sciences

• Howard E. Aldrich, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Univ. of California, Davis
• Herbert Gintis, Central European Univ., Hungary
• Randy Hodson, Ohio State Univ.
• Edward Paul Lazear, Stanford Univ.
• Deirdre McCloskey, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago
• Melvin L. Oliver, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
• Zhenchao Qian, Ohio State Univ.
• Alvin E. Roth, Harvard Univ.
• John Skvoretz, Univ. of South Florida
• Richard Michael Suzman, National Institute on Aging/NIH

I am a long-time subscriber to Science, but not for it's publications in Economics. So I was interested to note that the new Economics Fellows aren't in a section devoted to Economics, but rather one that is apparently devoted to Sociology, Economics, and Political Science.

That doesn't seem like an unnatural grouping, except for the fact that the other Sections seem to concentrate much more narrowly. Here's the list of all 24 Sections:

AAAS Sections

The 24 sections arrange symposia for the Annual Meeting, elect officers, and provide expertise for Association-wide projects.

For a listing of section officers, click on the sections below.

Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources (Section O)

Anthropology (Section H)

Astronomy (Section D)

Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (Section W)

Visit the AAAS Section W Web site

Biological Sciences (Section G)

Visit the AAAS Section G Web site.

Chemistry (Section C)

Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences (Section R)

Education (Section Q)

Engineering (Section M)

General Interest in Science and Engineering (Section Y)

Geology and Geography (Section E)

History and Philosophy of Science (Section L)

Visit the AAAS Section L Web site

Industrial Science and Technology (Section P)

Information, Computing, and Communication (Section T)

Linguistics and Language Science (Section Z)

Mathematics (Section A)

Medical Sciences (Section N)

Neuroscience (Section V)

Pharmaceutical Sciences (Section S)

Physics (Section B)

Visit the AAAS Section B Web site

Psychology (Section J)

Social, Economic, and Political Sciences (Section K)

Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering (Section X)

Statistics (Section U)

I'm reminded of the quote by Keynes:"If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid. " Looking at the list (Dentists have almost their own Section), I can see that we have a way to go, at least in the AAAS and Science.

Custom, Contract, and Kidney Exchange

A new paper by Kieran Healy and Kim Krawiec at Duke deals with some of the unique, nuanced emerging features of non-simultaneous kidney exchange chains: Custom, Contract and Kidney Exchange, November 8, 2012, Duke Law Journal, Vol. 62, 2012

Abstract:
"In this Essay, we examine a case in which the organizational and logistical demands of a novel form of organ exchange (the nonsimultaneous, extended, altruistic donor (NEAD) chain) do not map cleanly onto standard cultural schemas for either market or gift exchange, resulting in sociological ambiguity and legal uncertainty. In some ways, a NEAD chain resembles a form of generalized exchange, an ancient and widespread instance of the norm of reciprocity that can be thought of simply as the obligation to “pay it forward” rather than the obligation to reciprocate directly with the original giver. At the same time, a NEAD chain resembles a string of promises and commitments to deliver something in exchange for some valuable consideration — that is, a series of contracts. 

"Neither of these salient “social imaginaries” of exchange — gift giving or formal contract — perfectly meets the practical demands of the NEAD system. As a result, neither contract nor generalized exchange drives the practice of NEAD chains. Rather, the majority of actual exchanges still resemble a simpler form of exchange: direct, simultaneous exchange between parties with no time delay or opportunity to back out. If NEAD chains are to reach their full promise for large-scale, nonsimultaneous organ transfer, legal uncertainties and sociological ambiguities must be finessed, both in the practices of the coordinating agencies and in the minds of NEAD-chain participants. This might happen either through the further elaboration of gift-like language and practices, or through a creative use of the cultural form and motivational vocabulary, but not necessarily the legal and institutional machinery, of contract."
**************

Kim Krawiec has blogged about the paper herself, here.

Alex Peysakhovich defends his Ph.D. dissertation

Alex (tieless in suit), David Laibson, Drew Fudenberg, Uma Karmaker and me (via  Skype)

Skyping the post-defense champagne

Alex Peysakhovich defended his dissertation on Friday at Harvard; I skyped in from California. Alex is a man of many projects: the one he spent the most time talking about at his defense is this one:

"When Punishment Doesn't Pay: 'Cold Glow' and Decisions to Punish" (with  Aurelie Ouss).

Alex is a behavioral economist who is always looking to expand his horizons, and he'll be doing a postdoc this coming year with Dave Rand and Martin Nowak. Look for Alex (and Aurelie) on the market next year.

Welcome to the club, Alex.

Charitable contributions will fund automation of the Kidney Paired Donation Program

Here's the story: Charitable contributions will fund automation of the Kidney Paired Donation Program

The UNOS Foundation has received $750,000 in charitable contributions for the Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) program: $500,000 from United Health Foundation and $250,000 from Pfizer.

The Foundation, UNOS staff, and a KPD working group (Dr. Ken Andreoni, Dr. Rich Formica, and Dr. John Friedewald) have been working to raise $1.58 million from private sources to help fund the KPD system and to cover costs not budgeted by the OPTN. These include software programming; software licensing; educational materials for patients and donors, and user training/resources for professionals.

UNOS has worked to develop a national KPD program since 2004, led by the KPD working group of the OPTN/UNOS Kidney Transplantation Committee. Currently, more than 120 kidney transplant programs are participating. The working group is now approaching the final phase – full automation of the KPD system.

UNOS’ KPD work has been funded, in part, through the OPTN contract, but has needed additional support to accomplish the project sooner, without further pressure on the registration fee. In addition to the hours devoted to this project by the working group volunteers, the KPD project has attracted enormous volunteer support from many others in the transplant community, as well as gifts from charitable foundations and in-kind donations of software and consulting from Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon Universities, the New England Organ Bank, EDS Consulting and ILOG.

****************************
Note: A recent UNOS KPD committee conference call discussing the desirability of "full automation" was cut short when the automated conference calling software declared the hour was over...

Kidney exchange in India

Outcome of kidney paired donation transplantation to increase donor pool and to prevent commercial transplantation: a single-center experience from a developing country.

Kute VB, Gumber MR, Patel HV, Shah PR, Vanikar AV, Modi PR, Shah VR, Patel MP, Trivedi HL.

Source

Department of Nephrology and Clinical Transplantation, Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Center, Dr. HL Trivedi Institute of Transplantation Sciences (IKDRC-ITS), Civil Hospital Campus, Asarwa, Ahmedabad, 380016, Gujarat, India, drvivekkute@rediffmail.com.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Economic constraints in operating an effective maintenance dialysis program leaves renal transplantation as the only viable option for end-stage renal disease patients in India. Kidney paired donation (KPD) is a rapidly growing modality for facilitating living donor (LD) transplantation for patients who are incompatible with their healthy, willing LD.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

The aim of our study was to report a single-center feasibilities and outcomes of KPD transplantation between 2000 and 2012. We performed KPD transplants in 70 recipients to avoid blood group incompatibility (n = 56) or to avoid a positive crossmatch (n = 14).

RESULTS:

Over a mean follow-up of 2.72 ± 2.96 years, one-, five- and ten-year patient survival were 94.6, 81, 81 %, and death-censored graft survival was 96.4, 90.2, 90.2 %, respectively. Ten percent of patients were lost, mainly due to infections (n = 4). There was 14.2 % biopsy-proven acute rejection, and 5.7 % interstitial fibrosis with tubular atrophy eventually leading to graft loss.

CONCLUSION:

The incidences of acute rejection, patient/graft survival rates were acceptable in our KPD program and, therefore, we believe it should be encouraged. These findings are valuable for encouraging participation of KPD pairs and transplant centers in national KPD program. It should be promoted in centers with low-deceased donor transplantation. Our study findings are relevant in the context of Indian government amending the Transplantation of Human Organs Act to encourage national KPD program. To our knowledge, it is largest single-center report from India.

Johanna Mollerstrom on Quotas and Cooperation

What are some of the complexities associated with the design of affirmative action programs?

Johanna Mollerstrom looks into the question of how different selection procedures may influence the subsequent cooperation among those selected. Her job market paper addresses this question with a simple experiment.  It was initially motivated by questions about Scandinavian affirmative action laws as they are sometimes applied to company boards of directors, with a quota for female participation: Quotas and Cooperation.

"Abstract: Selection by quotas is an important policy measure in the affirmative action tool box. However, quotas may come with unintended side effects, for example by causing uncooperative behavior in the group formed with quota-based selection rules. In the laboratory I measure the impact of a quota on group cooperation, and examine the underlying mechanisms. Two groups are created by randomly assigning participants to either an orange or a purple group. In the unrepresentative quota treatment, orange participants are chosen as members of a selected group by performance on a simple unrelated math task whereas purple participants are chosen based solely on the quota. I compare contributions in a public good game in this unrepresentative quota treatment to behavior in a control treatment, where the orange and purple participants are treated symmetrically and all members of the selected group are chosen based on performance on the unrelated math task. My results show significantly less cooperation in the quota treatment and I furthermore find that this tendency is observed in both the meritocratically chosen orange participants and the quota-advantaged purple participants, and regardless of the color of the matched player. The reduced cooperation remains even when participants are given a rationale for the unrepresentative quota, e.g., by appealing to a fairness argument. The negative effect on cooperation from the unrepresentative quota disappears when selection is done completely randomly instead of on the basis of performance."

Johanna was an elected politician in Sweden before she was twenty, and she is on the market this year; you could hire her.

The market for photographs (or, me in a tie...)

At Getty Images, you can scroll through some photos of this morning's Nobel Symposium at the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/157157122 , or http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alvin-roth-nobel-laureate-for-economic-sciences-chats-with-news-photo/157158868 or
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alvin-roth-nobel-laureate-for-economic-sciences-listens-to-news-photo/157157125
(this one even seems to be tagged as a photo of Washington DC: http://topic.worlds-luxury-guide.com/photo/0ek7dcw86J75k?q=Washington%2C+D.C.)

(From there we went to the White House and met President Obama...)
Update: here's a picture of the President greeting Lloyd Shapley...

Further update: no White House photo of me yet, but here's one from the Swedish embassy...

Symposium at the Swedish Embassy in Washington (5 American Nobel Laureates in 2012)

Embassy of Sweden Cordially Invites You To

A Symposium with 2012 American Nobel Laureates

Thursday, November 29^th

08:30 am – 10:00 am

Coffee and registration from 08:00 am

Dr. David J. Wineland, Physics

Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz, Chemistry

Dr. Brian K. Kobilka, Chemistry

Dr. Alvin E. Roth, Economic Sciences

Dr. Lloyd S. Shapley, Economic Sciences

Moderator:  Dr. Alan I. Leshner, Chief Executive Officer,

American Association for the Advancement of Science and

Executive Publisher, Science

Embassy of Sweden

2900 K Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20007

Nikhil Agarwal investigates the medical match (and school choice)

The matching literature has been short on theoretically sophisticated investigators who are simultaneously tooled-up for the most serious kinds of empirical work and curious about the rules of the game that make markets work.  Nikhil Agarwal should put your mind at rest on that score. His dissertation committee consists of Ariel Pakes, Susan Athey, Parag Pathak and me. And his job market paper reports an investigation of a market close to my heart:  An Empirical Model of the Medical Match

"Abstract: This paper develops a framework for estimating preferences in two-sided matching markets with non-transferable utility using only data on observed matches. Unlike single-agent choices, matches depend on the preferences of other agents in the market. I use pairwise stability together with a vertical preference restriction on one side of the market to identify preference parameters for both sides of the market. Recovering the distribution of preferences is only possible in an environment with many-to-one matching. These methods allow me to investigate two issues concerning the centralized market for medical residents. First, I examine the antitrust allegation that the clearinghouse restrains competition, resulting in salaries below the marginal product of labor. Counterfactual simulations of a competitive wage equilibrium show that residents' willingness to pay for desirable programs results in estimated salary markdowns ranging from $23,000 to $43,000 below the marginal product of labor, with larger markdowns at more desirable programs. Therefore, a limited number of positions at high quality programs, not the design of the match, is the likely cause of low salaries. Second, I analyze wage and supply policies aimed at increasing the number of residents training in rural areas while accounting for general equilibrium effects from the matching market. I find that financial incentives increase the quality, but not the number of rural residents. Quantity regulations increase the number of rural trainees, but the impact on resident quality depends on the design of the intervention."

Nikhil is also doing exciting empirical work on school choice: here's the abstract from a forthcoming (and largely completed) working paper;

Sorting and Welfare Consequences of Coordinated Admissions: Evidence from New York City
with Atila Abdulkadiroglu and Parag Pathak, Coming Soon.

Centralized and coordinated application systems are a growing part of recent school choice reforms. This paper estimates preferences for schools using rank order lists from New York City's new high school assignment system launched in Fall 2003 to study the consequences of coordinating school admissions in a mechanism based on the student-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm. Compared to the prior mechanism with multiple offers and a limited number of choices, there is a 40% increase in enrollment at assigned school. The old mechanism restricted choices and placed many students close to home, while the new mechanism assigns students to schools 0.7 miles further from home on average. Student preferences trade off proximity and school quality, but are substantially heterogeneous. Even though students prefer closer schools, the new mechanism is more likely to assign students to schools they prefer and this more than compensates for the distance increase. The average welfare increases by the equivalent of 0.25 miles from the new mechanism. Students from all boroughs, demographic groups, and baseline achievement categories obtain a more preferred assignment on average from the new mechanism, suggesting that allocative changes involving assignment mechanisms need not be zero-sum.

Nikhil is on the market. You could hire him this year.

Scott Kominers on designing matching markets for diversity

Scott Kominers, who finished his Ph.D. in 2011, is on the market this year after a very productive two year postdoc at Chicago.

He has written a lot of papers, many on the frontiers of matching and market design. The one he has designated as his primary  job market paper, joint with Tayfun Sonmez, is Designing for Diversity in Matching.

The idea is that when a school has many places, some intended to facilitate the enrollment of different kinds of students, then a deferred acceptance algorithm can be implemented in a nuanced way, in which different positions may express different preferences. It turns out that this can make a big difference in how slots are filled.

"Abstract: To encourage diversity, schools often "reserve" some slots for students of specific types. Students only care about their school assignments and contractual terms like tuition, and hence are indifferent among slots within a school. Because these indifferences can be resolved in multiple ways, they present an opportunity for novel market design.

"We introduce a two-sided, many-to-one matching with contracts model in which agents with unit demand match to branches, which may have multiple slots available to accept contracts. Each slot has its own linear priority order over contracts; a branch chooses contracts by filling its slots sequentially. We demonstrate that in these matching markets with slot-specific priorities, branches' choice functions may not satisfy the substitutability conditions typically crucial for matching with contracts. Despite this complication, we are able to show that stable outcomes exist in this framework and can be found by a cumulative offer mechanism that is strategy-proof and respects unambiguous improvements in priority. Our results provide insight into the design of transparent affirmative action matching mechanisms, and show the value of a seemingly ad hoc administrative decision in the United States Military Academy's branch-of-choice program."

Scott's work is well worth following, and he's on the market, so you could hire him this year.

Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who won a Nobel for the first kidney transplant, RIP

Nobel winner Dr. Joseph Murray, famous for first successful kidney transplant dies in Boston

See my earlier posts about Dr. Murray and the first kidney transplant,

update: here's a good obit in the NY Times:Joseph E. Murray, Transplant Doctor and Nobel Prize Winner, Dies at 93

"Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who opened a new era of medicine with the first successful human organ transplant, died on Monday. He was 93 and lived in Wellesley and Edgartown, Mass."

Stephanie Hurder on Occupation Choice, Spouse Choice, and Family Labor Supply

What is the most important problem facing young people in modern economies? Maybe it is navigating the joint processes of choosing a career and choosing and being chosen by a spouse. This is the topic that Stephanie Hurder has chosen for her job market paper: An Integrated Model of Occupation Choice, Spouse Choice, and Family Labor Supply

(If that sounds like an ambitious title, it actually doesn't do full justice to the scope of Stephanie's work, which extends to fertility decisions...)

"Abstract:  I present an integrated model of occupation choice, spouse choice, family labor supply, and fertility that unifies an extensive empirical literature on career and family and provides predictions on the relationship among career, family, and marriage market outcomes. Two key assumptions of the model are that occupations differ both in wages and in an amenity termed flexibility, and that children require parental time that has no market substitute. Occupations with high costs of flexibility, modeled as a nonlinearity in wages, have a lower fraction of women, less positive assortative mating on earnings, and lower fertility among dual-career couples. Costly flexibility may induce high-earning couples to share home production, which rewards agents who are simultaneously high-earning and productive in child care. Empirical evidence is consistent with two main theoretical predictions: dual-career couples in more flexible occupations are more likely to have children, and professional women who achieve “career and family” in inflexible occupations are more likely to have lower-earning husbands or husbands less educated than themselves."
************

Stephanie’s work allows us to consider how changes in technology that make child-rearing more efficient (e.g. bottle feeding and disposable diapers) also change the labor supply of both men and women, and lead to demand for more family friendly work schedules. It also allows us to consider how these kinds of changes in women’s career aspirations and opportunities may change the demand for husbands who can efficiently produce at home as well as at work, as it changes the marriage market for women with demanding careers.

Stephanie is on the market, so you could hire her this year.

Four Harvard students on the economics job market this year (2012-13)

Moving between universities isn't a simple thing: although I'm no longer at Harvard, I'll be helping four Harvard students go on the market this year.

Postdoctoral positions seem to be playing a larger role in the economics job market than they used to; one of the four (Scott Kominers) is going on the market after completing a two year postdoc. Another student of mine (Alex Peysakhovich) is defending this semester but taking a postdoc and planning to go on the general market next year.

On the market this year are Nikhil Agarwal, Stephanie Hurder, Scott Kominers, and Johanna Mollerstrom 

I hope to post a blog about each of them in the coming days (as I did for my students last year), although this year I am busier and later. (Perhaps I'll be able to post a bit about being busy in the next few weeks as well.)  But time and the tide and the job market wait for no man, so keep an eye out for posts on these students.

I'll update this post with links to subsequent posts on these folks.
***********************

Stephanie Hurder on Occupation Choice, Spouse Choice, and Family Labor Supply

Scott Kominers on designing matching markets for diversity

Nikhil Agarwal investigates the medical match (and school choice)

Johanna Mollerstrom on Quotas and Cooperation
*****************

update: and here's where they went--

Update on those Four Harvard students on the economics job market this year (2012-13)

Anti-economics (If Michael Sandel Ruled the World)

If I ruled the world: Michael Sandel

The first sentence of the first paragraph: "If I ruled the world, I would rewrite the economics textbooks."

The first sentence of the second paragraph: "Consider the case for a free market in human organs—kidneys, for example."

Economics is important...sounds like someone should study it...

A philosopher looks at repugnant markets

The Dutch philosopher/economist Ingrid Robeyns writes about Roth and Satz on repugnant/noxious markets

She writes that "economists would benefit from explicitly introducing values in their analysis of repugnant markets (and markets in general)," and holds up the work of Debra Satz as a good example of how to go about this.


(Here are my previous posts related to the work of my now-colleague Debra Satz.)

Happy Thanksgiving (and kidney exchange)

A very happy Thanksgiving to all who read this:)

I got the following very informative greeting (sort of a year-end letter and report) from my friends at the Alliance for Paired Donation. Among the exciting things going on there is an attempt to design a new financial architecture for kidney exchange.

surrogacy

Here are three NPR stories on surrogacy, highlighting some of the legal issues around it.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150498711/surrogacy-aides-spring-from-murky-legal-waters

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150563803/ties-that-bind-when-surrogate-meets-mom-to-be

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/14/150586618/legal-debate-over-surrogacy-asks-who-is-a-parent

HT: Steve Leider

Breast milk exchange?

Ben Greiner writes:

This might be an interesting upcoming story on repugnance: Due to the general positive effects, but also the social pressure to breast feed, there seems to be a developing exchange market for breast milk. For example there are organizations like

http://worldmilksharing.net

or

http://www.hm4hb.net

or

http://www.eatsonfeets.org

who actively promote breast milk sharing, in particular also with strangers over the internet and/or facebook.

However, in particular in the U.S. mothers are starting to ask for money in exchange for breast milk. There also seem to be stories about some mothers diluting their breast milk with water to make more money out of them. Another issue is hygiene and sterilization.

So I guess in short or long there will be a discussion about whether it is ok to share or even sell breast milk, and if trade is allowed, about how to regulate this trade given baby safety risks etc.

Game theory and differential privacy

Here's a lecture on game theory and differential privacy, by Aaron Roth, an up and coming computer scientist whose work I've followed for a long time

DIMACS Tutorials - Oct 24, 2012: Aaron Roth - Game Theory and Differential Privacy