Neil Dorosin on school choice

Neil Dorosin: The Elephant in the Classroom – School Choice Exists. We Just Manage it Poorly.

Same sex marriage in France: protest and counterprotest

Protests erupt in France over same-sex marriage

"More than 100,000 protesters organized by Catholic groups staged separate demonstrations in French cities over the weekend to protest against government plans to legalize same-sex marriage next year.

"Most of them took to the streets on Saturday, backed by the French Catholic Church and joined by several senior clerics, and several thousand more paraded with ultra-traditionalist Catholics in Paris on Sunday."

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Topless activists clash with an anti-gay marriage protest in France

Market designers at Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Microsoft

The Economist recently celebrated the contributions of Preston McAfee, Hal Varian, Steve Tadelis and Susan Athey: Micro stars, macro effects: Meet the economists who are making markets work better

Video of Nobel prize awards ceremony

I'm almost recovered from my trip to Stockholm:) Here is the video of the Nobel presentation ceremonies. Economics starts around 1:12. with intro in Swedish by Thorsten Persson, and 1:16 in English
http://www.svtplay.se/video/892980/prisutdelningen-i-konserhuset

And here are the iconic pictures from the Nobel website:

Update: the Nobel Foundation website now has short video clips of both me and Lloyd receiving our prizes:
Alvin Roth receives his prize
Lloyd Shapley receives his prize

Martin Shubik

The celebration of Lloyd Shapley at the recent Nobel week naturally makes people think of his long term collaborator Martin Shubik. There's a nice discussion of his work by the archivists at the Duke University libraries, which houses his papers: The Martin Shubik Papers: From Early Game Theory to the Strategic Analysis of War

"While Shubik was born in New York City in 1926, he received his early education in England. After moving to Canada, he graduated with a B.A. in mathematics and subsequently with an M.A. in political economy from the University of Toronto in 1947. Equipped with this background, Shubik arrived at Princeton University in 1949, where the archival record begins. He received a Ph.D. in economics in 1953 under the supervision of Oskar Morgenstern, one of the founding fathers of game theory. The influence of his supervisor becomes apparent in Shubik’s collection, not only through the class notes Shubik took of Morgenstern’s lectures and in the correspondence with him throughout the years, but also indirectly through Shubik’s life-long contributions to game theory and its application to economic problems. And, like Morgenstern, Shubik frequently voiced a critical attitude towards purely theoretical work.

"Shubik’s collection is a treasure-house of primary resources on economics, especially for researchers interested in the early years of game theory. Shubik was part of an inspiring group of students during his stay at Princeton, including Harold Kuhn, John McCarthy, John Milnor, John Nash (Nobel Prize, 1994), Norman Shapiro, and Lloyd Shapley (Nobel Prize, 2012), who were pioneers in the field of game theory and would continue to shape the history of American mathematical economics during the second half of the 20th century. Innumerable drafts of Shubik’s collaborative works, often accompanied by correspondence and research notes by his co-authors, afford an inspiring set of resources evoking that historical period. The collection contains Shubik’s and Shapley’s drafts and notes on their joint works on game theory, from their early papers in the 1950s to their collaboration during the 1970s at the RAND corporation. The collection also allows for personal glimpses into Shubik’s life. For example, Shubik’s life-long friendship and professional collaboration with Shapley is reflected in the extensive correspondence throughout their academic careers. Similarly, Shubik’s exchanges with Nash (sometimes through humorous cards and joke letters) offer a unique source for historians interested in the early years of game theory and the history of modern economics."

Market design is a team sport

Muriel Niederle has been posting some pictures from Stockholm, and here are some of mine...

First, the final slide from my Nobel lecture:

It turns out that parts of the teams for kidney exchange, school choice and medical matches made it to Stockholm, and those folks look a little different in tails and gowns:

School choice: Parag Pathak, Al Roth, Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Neil Dorosin

Medical matches: Elliott Peranson, Al Roth, Muriel Niederle

Kidney Exchange: Frank Delmonico, Al Roth, Mike Rees, Itai Ashlagi

David Warsh on Lloyd Shapley and his colleagues

After a head feint towards another topic, David Warsh writes about Lloyd Shapley and his colleagues David Gale, Herb Scarf, and Martin Shubik.

"The book I yearn to read some day is a deep examination about the way that psychology and strategic behavior came to economics in the twentieth century, in the guise of game theory. So far its leading characters pop up as individuals, either the subjects of biographies (John von Neumann in books by Steve Heims  and Norman Macrae) or recipients of Nobel Prizes – John Nash eighteen years ago (not long thereafter the subject of Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind), and now Lloyd Shapley. If you had gotten up early yesterday morning, you could have seen, streaming live from Stockholm, via the Internet, the 89-year-old Shapley, an old man grasping a sheaf of notes, attempting to deliver a stripped-down talk about one aspect of his work, intermittently puzzled and confident, until a wave of applause relieved him of the need to persevere.

Against long odds, Shapley won the game that senior players sometimes call “Beat the Reaper.” Considering that he and Nash met as young men in the extraordinary hothouse that was the Princeton University Department of Mathematics in the days soon after World War II he is fortunate indeed. In a setting dominated by the polymath von Neumann, he and Nash quickly shouldered aside the founding father and divided up among themselves and their friends the competing programs that game theorists have pursued ever since.

You have to admire the alacrity with which the committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences acted, pairing Shapley, of the University of California at Los Angeles, with the vigorous, young Alvin Roth, who just left Harvard for Stanford University (a stripling at 60.) They did much the same in 1996, with William Vickrey, 82, of Columbia University; and, in 2007, with Leo Hurwicz, 90 of the University of Minnesota, pairing them in each case with much younger men. In Hurwicz’s case they beat the Reaper by less than a year; Vickrey died a few days after learning of his award, his heart burst from the renewed excitement of the chase. "

...

"The problem with the prizes is that they obscure the networks that have led to them, with countless others left out. Characteristically, the last slide of Roth’s lecture yesterday contained the photographs of fifteen or twenty collaborators who helped turn market design into one of the most exciting fields in economics: surgeons, medical administrators, educators, junior colleagues.  Such a slide, had it been prepared to accompany Shapley’s lecture, would have included a very different dozen or two collaborators, beginning with the mathematician’s famous father, the Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, who was a story in his own right, having successfully described in 1918 the size of the Milky Way galaxy and determined our sun’s position in it, only then to fight and lose a lifelong battle with Edwin Hubble about what lay beyond the boundaries of our galactic home (nothing, Shapley said). Three other contemporaries whom the younger Shapley met first atPrinceton, back in the day, would stand out.

There would be David Gale, who died in 2008. at 86, Shapley’s mathematician collaborator on the 1962 paper “College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage,” which was the beginning of the skein of work for which this year’s prize was given.  Had he lived a little longer, Gale might well have shared in the award. But there seemed nothing unfulfilled about Gale’s life, which was described inthis excellent article by the University of California at Berkeley (where he taught for forty years), as a passionate father, puzzle-monger, avid skier, tennis player, traveler and jazz aficionado. (He kept an office in the Ecole Polytechnique inParis as well.)

Then there is Herbert Scarf, 82, ofYale University, Shapley’s co-author on a key paper in 1974, “On Cores and Indivisibility.”  Scarf’s contribution to the study of traditional one-sided markets, which is the way the process of kidney exchange is understood, was discussed at some length in the long citation that accompanied the Nobel award. Unexamined, however, was Scarf’s forty-year quest to achieve a satisfying mathematical description of economies in which increasing returns, meaning falling costs, play a prominent role. Such increasing returns, or economies of scale, exist everywhere in the modern world, at least up to a point. Yet a satisfying framework for examining them so far had eluded mathematical economists, including Scarf.  The editor of his collected papers quotes a Chinese poem in this connection: “An old war-horse may be stabled, yet still it longs to gallop a thousand miles; and a noble-hearted man, though advanced in years, never abandons his proud aspirations.”

Finally there is Martin Shubik, 86.  Shubik, too, collaborated with Shapley often over the years; their 1971 paper on the “assignment game” was a key step in the  clear statement of the line of work for which the prize was given. “He was a superb mathematician, and I had a good economic intuition,” Shubik says of Shapley; “together we made a very good mathematical economist.” But Shubik has work of which he is more proud.  His 1959 article, “Edgeworth Market Games,” was the first to relate a truly economic concept (the contract curve) to a game-theoretic concept (the core),according to Eric Gordon, and so formed a bridge which game theorists have been crossing ever since.  By the time he and Shapley stated the connection formally ten years later, in “On Strategic Market Games,” Shubik’s future was assured.  It was Shubik who apparently campaigned successfully for Shapley for this year’s prize."

Allocating top level domain names

While I was away, Peter Cramton has been busy with an interesting allocation problem: Update on Applicant Auction Conference.

He also includes the following links:

"To better understand what the Applicant Auction is about please take a look at the following two posts on CircleID:

Making the Most of the Draw: The Applicant Auction Conference

Applicant Auction for Top-Level-Domains: Resolving Contention Fairly, Efficiently, and Transparently

Finally if you want to get into the technical details of bidding incentives and bidding strategy take a look at our research paper on the topic:

Detailed research paper explaining the plan  [Presentation, Short Version]"

Gangnam Stanford Style

After dinner speech

After the Nobel banquet, a two minute speech.

Update: here it is on a local file...

Muriel Niederle is blogging about experimental and behavioral economics

Here's her first post, posted from Stockholm:

Experimental Economics Coming of Age

Interview by the Nobel foundation

Here's a 25 minute interview, which starts a bit slowly, but in which I get to talk about matching: Video interview with Alvin E. Roth

Around minute 19 I'm asked about free markets and I talk about how free markets have rules that let them operate freely. I suggest the metaphor of a wheel that can rotate freely, because it has well oiled bearings: "wheels don't occur naturally, they're human creations. And so are markets."

Nobel lectures in Uppsala

Nobel lectures in Uppsala: many of the science lectures are heard again at Uppsala University on Dec 13.

Saint Lucia Day in Stockholm tomorrow.

It is St. Lucia day in Sweden tomorrow. What should I expect?

Here are some clues:  Early in the morning,
It has become tradition to surprise the Nobel Prize winners early in the morning when they are still in bed at their hotel, with a singing Lucia procession. One year though, a winner got really angry and upset, so since then they all get to know about it in advance... 

Late at night there's a dinner and a ball at Stockholm University, and, apparently, induction into the Order of the Frog

Perhaps there will be dancing at the Ball: Here's a story from an English language Swedish newspaper, interviewing one of the many student volunteers who are taking excellent care of us this week.

"When asked which of the recipients she would like to dance with, she smiles and answers “Alvin E. Roth.”
"He is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
"“He seems really laidback. Today, at the rehearsal, he showed up in torn jeans and a knitted cardigan. So, of the winners, I would actually like to dance with him the most.”
"If Dalman doesn’t get to dance with him tonight, she will get a second chance on Thursday.
"It may mark the end of her Nobel duties, but once she is done organizing the unofficial end of the Nobel Week, the Lucia Ball, she might end up taking a twirl with her favourite laureate.
"One winner always attends the event, and this year it's a Alvin E. Roth who will attend.
"So, that’s lucky."

Nobel Economics Prize Lectures by Lloyd Shapley and Al Roth

The Nobel lectures for the Economics Prize were given on Saturday December 8, and are now available online.  Lloyd lectured first, and I followed. We were both introduced by Tomas Sjostrom.

Lloyd Shapley's lecture: Play

My lecture (Al Roth) Play

Here's my banquet speech (although I deviated a little from the prepared text). and here are

Alvin E. Roth's Diploma 
Lloyd S. Shapley's Diploma 

Where do Nobel laureates come from, and other statistics...

Some nonpartisan stats, and some more partisan ones...

http://visualizing.org/visualizations/how-much-did-you-know-about-nobel-prizes-and-nobel-laureates

http://www.thejournal.ie/chocolate-nobel-prizes-infographic-632579-Oct2012/

holykaw.alltop.com/nobel-prizes-by-country-infographic


New York Jews won’t stop winning Nobel Prizes
"On Monday in Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Sciences will present the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Bronx-reared Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, and the Nobel in economics to Queens-raised Alvin Roth. Lefkowitz, a graduate of the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, and Roth, soon to depart the faculty of Harvard for Stanford, are the 39th and 40th graduates of New York City public high schools to win a Nobel Prize."

The Nobel Prize award ceremony: tomorrow, Monday

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 2012

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, on 10 December every year – the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. At the ceremony, the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and the Prize in Economic Sciences are awarded to the Nobel Laureates.

Live Webcast from Stockholm!

atch the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, 10 December 2012, 4:20 p.m. (CET) – 6:00 p.m. (CET).

That's 10:20am for you East Coast Americans, and 7:20am for you Californians...probably here: http://www.nobelprize.org/ 

AEA signaling, and coffee, viewed from Stockholm

At a dinner hosted by the Economics Prize Committee in Stockholm, conversation turned to the signals just transmitted by the American Economic Association, from new Ph.D. economists to potential employers. Each of the Swedish universities represented by those sitting nearest to me, including the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala, had received signals, and had decided to interview at least one candidate based on having received a signal.

Incidentally, 1,285 candidates sent their two signals to 666 employers this year, and these signals were sent out on Dec 3, and confirmation emails were sent to candidates on Dec 4. If you were one of those candidates, good luck, and please fill out the attached survey.

 Dinner was held in the "Ghost Castle" of the University of Stockholm, which houses two impressive art collections, of paintings, and of glassware.  Here's a picture I like, showing that coffee has long played a role in serious discussions.

Some light hearted Swedish TV fare during Nobel week

Check out two of the videos that have played this week on Swedish tv, to see me try on a suit, or how Swedish tv interpreted my work at Stanford.


Not to mention this and some other pics at Den ekonomiske ingenjören Alvin Roth

Nobel lectures in Economics tomorrow (Dec 8): early in the U.S.

Prize Lectures in Economic Sciences

LIVE WEBCASTSaturday 8 December, 1:00-2:15 p.m. CET

Information about Alvin E. Roth's Prize Lecture
Information about Lloyd S. Shapley's Prize Lecture
More information about the prize



 Note that 1:00PM Central European Time is 7:00am on the East Coast of the United States and 4:00am on the West Coast. But I think the lectures will be available on the Nobelprize.org website for more leisurely viewing later.