Pet food on the farm in Switzerland: dogs and cats for human consumption

Sven Seuken alerts me to some food choices in Switzerland that are legal  so long as they are non-commercial: Dog And Cat Meat Is Being Served Up By Farmers In Switzerland - And It's Legal

"According to Tages Anzeiger newspaper, farmers in the Appenzell and St Gallen areas regularly dine on the animals, as is popular in China, Korea and Vietnam.

"One farmer, speaking under anonymity for fear of reprisals from animal rights activists, said it was "nothing unusual" to eat dog or cat meat.

...

"While there are no official figures of how many of the common pets end up on dinner plates, the practice is legal - provided the animal is killed humanely and the meat is not sold commercially.

"Yet while dining on what many of us regard as treasured companions is permitted, it is largely looked down upon."

Nice sentence about unraveling of college admissions

I'm not sure that I would give the same advice on college admissions that Frank Bruni gives to his niece in his Sunday NYT op-ed, but I admire this graceful sentence about the unraveling of that particular matching process:

"Last week was the deadline to apply to many colleges and universities, though the admissions dance — the dreaming, scheming, waiting and worrying — has really become a year-round, nonstop phenomenon, starting well before the final stretch of high school. Leslie’s a junior and has already visited half a dozen campuses, to see how they feel."

That's from How to Choose a College

Time to end the war on drugs?

Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy, in the WSJ, consider the case for decriminalizing drug use, and drug sales.
Have We Lost the War on Drugs?

They seem to suggest that the major effect of drug laws on demand work by keeping street prices high. But their argument makes sense even if you think that social opprobrium and risk of prison are important parts of the high price.

Here are what struck me as the key paragraphs:

"Some evidence is available on the effects of Portugal's decriminalization of drugs, which began in 2001. A study published in 2010 in the British Journal of Criminology found that in Portugal since decriminalization, imprisonment on drug-related charges has gone down; drug use among young persons appears to have increased only modestly, if at all; visits to clinics that help with drug addictions and diseases from drug use have increased; and opiate-related deaths have fallen.

"Decriminalization of all drugs by the U.S. would be a major positive step away from the war on drugs. In recent years, states have begun to decriminalize marijuana, one of the least addictive and less damaging drugs. Marijuana is now decriminalized in some form in about 20 states, and it is de facto decriminalized in some others as well. If decriminalization of marijuana proves successful, the next step would be to decriminalize other drugs, perhaps starting with amphetamines. Gradually, this might lead to the full decriminalization of all drugs.

"Though the decriminalization of drug use would have many benefits, it would not, by itself, reduce many of the costs of the war on drugs, since those involve actions against traffickers. These costs would not be greatly reduced unless selling drugs was also decriminalized. Full decriminalization on both sides of the drug market would lower drug prices, reduce the role of criminals in producing and selling drugs, improve many inner-city neighborhoods, encourage more minority students in the U.S. to finish high school, substantially lessen the drug problems of Mexico and other countries involved in supplying drugs, greatly reduce the number of state and federal prisoners and the harmful effects on drug offenders of spending years in prison, and save the financial resources of government.

"The lower drug prices that would result from full decriminalization may well encourage greater consumption of drugs, but it would also lead to lower addiction rates and perhaps even to fewer drug addicts, since heavy drug users would find it easier to quit. Excise taxes on the sale of drugs, similar to those on cigarettes and alcohol, could be used to moderate some, if not most, of any increased drug use caused by the lower prices."

Marriage markets and credit markets

 With attitudes about money being an important ingredient of marital compatibility, is it any wonder that a readily available index for one is (apparently) increasingly being used to judge the other? The NY Times is on the story: Even Cupid wants to know your credit score


"The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.

"It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.

“Credit scores are like the dating equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease test,” said Manisha Thakor, the founder and chief executive of MoneyZen Wealth Management, a financial advisory firm. “It’s a shorthand way to get a sense of someone’s financial past the same way an S.T.D. test gives some information about a person’s sexual past.”
...
"A handful of small, online dating Web sites have sprung up to cater specifically to singles looking for a partner with a tiptop credit score. “Good Credit Is Sexy,” says one site,Creditscoredating.com, which allows members to view the credit scores of potential dates who agree to provide the numbers.

"On another site, Datemycreditscore.com, a member posted on the Web site’s home page that others should to “stop kidding” themselves and realize that credit scores do matter."

Death and privacy (and transplantation and market design)

The latest issue of the AJT Report, a news summary in the American Journal of Transplantation, concerns The Unintended Consequences of Privacy, reporting on a recent decision by the Social Security Administration to decline to share some data about deaths, due to privacy concerns.

Apparently this decision will mean that the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) will no longer be able to disclose to transplant centers the deaths that occur of patients on the waiting list for deceased donor organs, or after transplantation.

This could turn into a big problem, unless it is resolved soon, because information about deaths is critical for managing the transplant system at all levels.

"According to Patricia W. Potrzebowski, PhD, executive director of the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS), “SSA never had the authority
to release state death records through the public DMF. This is because state records are governed by state statutes and regulations. State statutes and regulations vary as to who may access death record information. In some states, death record information is publicly available; in others, even the fact of death is held in strict confidence.”
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It is becoming increasingly clear that privacy is a big issue in market design in general. The AJT report coincidentally juxtaposes the two issues by including some Nobel news at the end of the report.

Israel bans excessively skinny models

Israel bans excessively skinny models: New law taking effect with start of 2013 requires models to have Body Mass Index (BMI) of at least 18.5.

"Too thin is no longer "in" when it comes to the fashion industry in Israel as with the start of 2013 the so-called “models law” has come into effect, banning underweight models in advertisements.

The law, approved by the Knesset in March, requires models to have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of at least 18.5, considered to be the minimum for a healthy person.

Robert Aumann on Shapley and Roth and matching and market design

Bob Aumann writes in the February 2013 Notices of the American Mathematical Society (in a column hosted by Elaine Kehoe): Shapley and Roth Awarded Nobel Prize in Economics

After summarizing Shapley's work, Aumann (who shared the 2005 Nobel Economics prize) concludes "On each of these counts, Shapley has done more than all the previous game theory Nobelists, even when taken together."

I should add that I find myself moved to be saluted by Aumann in the same article (and not just because he praises me too extravagantly:). When I was a young game theorist in the 1970's, Bob Aumann and Bob Wilson were for me the welcoming faces of game theory, and I resolved, if I thrived, to try to be as supportive of young people as they were. I hope I've succeeded in that too.

Not every new discipline has the welcoming, community-of-scholars culture that game theory enjoyed in those days. I hope that market design continues to thrive in this way (as well as being a team sport).

My guess from my limited personal experience is that the "culture" of a discipline is particularly important when it is still new...that might be something for historians and sociologists of science to look into.

Roberto Serrano on Lloyd Shapley

I had the unexpected pleasure of running into Roberto Serrano and Vince Crawford in Stockholm, where they were guests of the Nobel Foundation.

 Now here is a forthcoming paper by Roberto, on Lloyd Shapley's contributions:

R. Serrano, “Lloyd Shapley’s Matching and Game Theory,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, forthcoming.

High bids for tuna at Tsukiji fish market celebrate the new year

Bluefin tuna sells for record $1.76 million at Tokyo auction, 3 times previous record

"A bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million at a Tokyo auction Saturday, nearly three times the previous high set last year
...
"In the year’s first auction at Tokyo’s sprawling Tsukiji fish market, the 222-kilogram (489-pound) tuna caught off northeastern Japan sold for 155.4 million yen
...
The winning bidder, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., which operates the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said “the price was a bit high,” but that he wanted to “encourage Japan,” according to Kyodo News agency. He was planning to serve the fish to customers later Saturday.

"Kimura also set the old record of 56.4 million yen at last year’s New Year’s auction, which tends to attract high bids as a celebratory way to kick off the new year — or get some publicity.

Advice on interviewing at the job market meetings

Good luck to all those interviewing at the job market meetings in San Diego!

Here's some advice, written by an historian, that applies well to economics too (and probably any academic job market): Advice for the Job Season: Interviewing

"My primary advice for interviewing is to tell candidates that THE SEARCH COMMITTEE MEMBERS WANT YOU TO DO WELL!!!
...
"I promise you, we did not just slog through hundreds of pages of recommendation letters and your prose, pick you out of hundreds of applicants, fly to some god-forsaken icy city, and swill cheap coffee and bagels in a cold hotel room waiting for you because we are eager to humiliate you. While it is possible that there is someone in that room who doesn’t like your work, the majority of the committee has gone to the mat to get you onto the interview list, and those search committee members are secretly praying that you will hit a home run. They are on your side.

"You may well not know which members those are, though, so do not make any assumptions about who are your friends and who are potential enemies on a committee. Treat everyone as interested colleagues. Even the old jerk in the corner asking impossible questions might be on your side. And if not, the chances are good that everyone else in the room recognizes that s/he’s an old curmudgeon, and are hoping that you will handle her/him with aplomb.
The committee members want you to do well, so help them out. Almost certainly there will be faculty members from different fields in the room who only know your field generally. So explain immediately what you do, and why it is important to someone outside your specialty. Do not make them plead with you to articulate why what you do is significant. (Clearly, they think it is, or they would not have brought you in for an interview."

Costs of early admissions--to colleges

For starters, here's a November 15 column from the Chronicle of Higher Ed that I hesitated blogging about, since the URL seems to suggest it's just a draft. But it's been out for a while now despite that (http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/draft-do-not-publishthe-costs-of-early-admission-programs-are-many/32792)
The Costs of Early-Admission Programs Are Many

The author, Louis Hirsh, was an admissions director at Deleware, and he recounds some of the costs of unraveling from the University's perspective.

There is no a virtue in giving teachers and counselors less time to write recommendations, especially when their letters would be more useful if they were written after they had seen more of their student’s senior year work.

Meanwhile, at admissions offices the growing number of early-notification applicants compresses the work of several months into several weeks. How ironic that we spend much of the year imploring students to write thoughtful applications only to hobble ourselves with early deadlines that make it impossible to give those applications the careful consideration that they richly deserve.

Defenders of early notification say that it relieves stress to be able to sit down for a holiday meal in December and know that you already have a college admission in hand. I don’t doubt that. I also agree that those who get “no” answers at least know where they stand, and can turn their attentions elsewhere.

The problem is that for many the answer is not “yes” or “no,” but “maybe.” If yours is a very selective college, the majority of your early applicants will become deferrals who are caught in an admissions limbo, an extended wait list, if you will. What about those students and their stress levels?

As anxious—and sometimes irate—parents and counselors call to ask about the decision and their student’s chances for eventual admission, your staff spends an inordinate amount of time in January and February talking to disgruntled people. That is bad for morale, and it certainly isn’t how you want your colleagues spending their time.

***************
In the meantime, Harvard Magazine reports
"EARLY ACTION ACCELERATES. The College received 4,856 early-action applications for admission to the class of 2017, up 15 percent from 4,228 last year, when the program resumed after a four-year hiatus. Most other Ivy League schools also reported more early applicants this year, as students seek an admissions edge."

Supreme Court Clerks--some hiring already for 2014

The Above the Law blog has the scoop: Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2013 and OT 2014, which also has some links to background material on clerking for the Supremes...

Eating horse meat in France: could it become repugnant even there?

Alex Peysakhovich sends along the following evidence that there are those in France who find eating horsemeat repugnant...and take out ads on buses. Of course the chevalines (horse butchers) are fighting back with stickers of their own...

Repugnant transactions at year's end...

Each of the stories below is about a transaction still regarded as repugnant in England, Israel, and Australia, respectively, but for which things may be different in the coming year...including the final story from Russia, about an effort to make U.S. adoptions illegal (so that Russian orphans would remain so...)

Gay marriage plans are totalitarian, says Archbishop of Westminster

Record number turn out at Boxing Day hunts after Tories admit defeat on ban

Israel to Review Curbs on Women’s Prayer at Western Wall

Women who donate their eggs deserve compensation

Putin Signs Bill That Bars U.S. Adoptions

**************
And here are some stories about transactions that are less repugnant than they used to be...

Same sex marriage becomes legal in Maine
"Voters approved the new law in November, making Maine one of the first three states, along with Washington and Maryland, to allow same-sex marriage by popular vote. The law has already taken effect in Washington State; Maryland’s will do so on Tuesday.
"Same-sex marriage was already legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia, but those laws were enacted either by lawmakers or through court rulings."

in vitro fertilization (IVF): "For a while, the press kept track of each new I.V.F. birth: one more reported before the end of 1978; four by the middle of 1980; the first in the United States at the end of 1981. In 1982, Lesley gave birth to another daughter, Natalie; she was the world’s 40th test-tube baby. And then people stopped counting. I.V.F. had moved almost imperceptibly in the public mind from unethical to frightening to just a bit unusual — and then, finally, to something so ordinary it wasn’t even noticed anymore."

Celsius' temperature scale (and other delights at Uppsala University)

While in Sweden I had a delightful visit to Uppsala University.

It was there, in the 1700's (as the University was  already nearing its 300th anniversary) that Anders Celsius undertook the meteorological research that required his invention of the temperature scale that bears his name. Except not quite in the form we know it today.  Here's a picture I took of one of his original thermometers, through the display case in a University museum: If you can click through and look at the enlargement, you'll see that the top of the scale (far left), which marks the boiling point of water, is marked 0 degrees, while the middle of the scale, which marks water's freezing point, is marked 100. (Celsius apparently felt that solids were 'more' than gases...). The reversal to what we know today as the conventional Celsius scale came in 1745, shortly after his death.

***********

It turns out that Uppsala University has other interesting museums, and in one of them I took a picture of what is said to be an example of the first circulating bank note...

More photography business in Stockholm

My recent trip to Sweden made me of interest to a variety of professional photographers, and in turn gave me a glimpse into the ways they earn their livings. Here's the website of the Swedish photographer Otto Westerlundh. If you scroll down his web page you can get some idea of the wide variety of pictures he shoots. He took some pics of me at a reception in Stockholm.

Speaking of photos, below is one my wife took with her phone, at the rehearsal for the Nobel award ceremony. You can see me practice receiving the award from a stand-in for the Swedish king. You can also pick out the Californians from among the laureates: my Stanford colleague Brian Kobilka is the other fellow in jeans...(The same photo, more or less, later in the day at the actual ceremony is here.)

Towards decriminalizing drugs?

The Economist reports on remarks by the outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderón: "Impossible" to end drug trade, says Calderón

"Mr Calderón’s comments sum up what seems to be a growing consensus: stopping or even seriously reducing drug consumption has so far proved impossible, so it is time to focus on ways of making that consumption less harmful. That sort of thinking has been fashionable for a long time on the demand side, with innovations such as needle exchanges and methadone replacement now common in many rich countries. The next step is to explore legal ways of managing the supply side, as Colorado and Washington have recently voted to do.

"Sitting presidents such as Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala are pushing for a rethink. As a result of this agitation the Organisation of American States, a regional body, is compiling a report on drug policy which is expected to explore alternatives to the current regime. It will be interesting to see if Mr Calderón, who is widely expected to take up a post at Harvard after leaving the presidency in December, gets bolder still in his retirement."

HT: László Sándor

Returning items at stores in the US and Europe: two different equilibria?

A recent article about the policies adopted by American stores regarding returns, particularly of gifts, has gotten me thinking about the different equilbria which (I am under the impression) exist in Europe and the U.S.

Most U.S. stores have a no questions asked return policy. Subject to some limitations, you can return an item, for any reason, i.e. it doesn't have to be broken. The limitations may include things like time elapsed since purchase, whether the item has been used, etc. But policies are more lenient on items received as Christmas gifts (and here's the story that made me think of all this: Navigating Retail Holiday Return Policies. In many cases you can get your money back, in some cases you might just get credit for another purchase.

My impression is that in Europe you can return items for repair, but not for exchange.

Why are the policies different?  It seems to me that they may both be in equilibrium, so that it is hard to switch from one to another.

If an American store were to adopt a no return policy, that might seem to signal something about the unobserved quality of their goods, and it would shift sales to competitors who maintained easy return policies. And easy returns promote sales, since there is less risk in buying something, bringing it home, and seeing how it looks.

But if a European store were to adopt an easy return policy, while its competitors did not, then it would invite adverse selection of shoppers who were planning to return things (e.g. returning a gown after wearing it once). These shoppers plague American stores too, but they are spread among all stores and are a cost of doing business. But a European store that was the first to adopt an easy return policy would attract all the bad apples...

Perhaps European readers can tell me if my impressions are correct about the differences in store policies across the water...

Kidney exchange in Canada

Moving to chains in Canada too...


Heartbeat: A chain of faith, a gift of life: Revolutionary organ exchange program can involve a domino chain of up to 10 people across Canada, and it drastically reduces wait times for transplant recipients

 "Nemeth was feeling increasingly ill and didn’t have that long to wait.

"Luckily, she didn’t have to. In early 2012, at her doctor’s urging, she joined the Living Donor Paired Exchange program.

"In the registry, donor-recipient pairs whose organs are incompatible with each other can be matched with others in the same situation and the organs swapped to complete transplants. There are Good Samaritans — non-directed anonymous donors — who simply donate a kidney out of altruism also entered in the registry. Algorithms determine matches to optimize use of rare blood and antibody types: swaps that result can involve up to five-pair chains — up to 10 people in cities across Canada all intricately linked in a complex “domino” transplant.

"The registry was founded as a pilot project in three provinces, including B.C., in 2009. It has since gone national and is overseen by Canadian Blood Services, which conducts three (formerly four) searches or “runs” a year.

"To date, there are about 145 registered pairs.

"More than 140 transplants have been performed, with the first cross-country multi-hospital swap in June 2009. Nemeth’s own chain involved three pairs: done at St. Paul’s and in Winnipeg.

"The program not only shortens waits and saves lives, but it also saves money: dialysis costs $60,000 a year while a kidney transplant is around $25,000 plus $6,000 a year for medication.

"Even before the national registry, provincial hospitals like St. Paul’s were doing ad hoc local swaps for just these reasons.

“We were basically doing these on the back of an envelope,” Dr. Landsberg said, adding St. Paul’s did its first regional domino transplant around 2006.

"But the national registry has been a true game-changer. Because of it, he said, “the number of difficult to match patients who were stacked on that wait-list and who I predicted would be on there forever have been able to get transplants.”

"And despite the tenuous nature of the chains, so far, he said, “We’ve never had a donor back out.”

The global strategic maple syrup reserve

The global strategic maple syrup reserve has been breached, here's the NY Times story: In $18 Million Theft, Victim Was a Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel

And here is the site of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers

I used to bring small bottles of New England maple syrup with me as American themed house gifts when I traveled overseas...but it turns out that Canada is the big producer (I guess the Canadian flag is a clue...)