Real estate ads in Britain: "no upward chain"

Some time ago I blogged about how transactions in tight real estate markets might produce chains (or even cycles) of transactions, in which some owners might have to buy a house before they could vacate theirs (and in slow markets in which some owners might have to sell their house before they could buy one).

It turns out that right now in England, a not-so-rare feature of ads to sell houses is the phrase "No upward chain." What it means, apparently, is that this house is available to be bought/sold right now, without the owner having to wait to buy a new house before closing on the deal.

HT: Brit Grosskopf

Art project on matching in Berkeley today

File this under "I'm not sure what to make of this"

SONYA RAPOPORT

"ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS?" Data Gathering Event 

One Day Only!

Sunday, February 10th, 2013 from 1 to 4 pm

Martina }{ Johnston would like to invite you to a one-day special Data Gathering Event for artist Sonya Rapoport's project "ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS?" on Sunday, February 10th, 2013 from 1 to 4 pm.

Sonya Rapoport will be presenting a new interactive project and invites viewers to come and participate in a simple matching experiment under controlled conditions. The results of this experiment will become part of "ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS?" and will be exhibited at the Fresno Art Museum in May of this year.

"ImPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS?" is structured by Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley's "Market Design and Matching Theory", which won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics. This theory explores how people, institutions, and companies find and select each other to create stable matches. The work takes the form of a series of collages; each consists of a black and white photograph of a "pattern painting" that Rapoport created and exhibited in the late 60's, overlaid on a contemporary newspaper advertisement, and juxtaposed with a short text appropriated from the media.

Based in the Bay Area, Sonya Rapoport has exhibited her conceptual and new media artwork internationally. She recently had retrospective exhibitions at the Kala Institute in Berkeley and Mills College Art Museum. She received her MFA from UC Berkeley in 1949. Many of her web-based digital pieces can be experienced on her website, and she maintains an active blog about her work.

We hope to see you on Sunday, February 10th!

*Martina }{ Johnston is an artist-run house gallery located at:
1201 6th St., 2nd Floor, 
Berkeley, CA 94701
510.221.8315
martinajohnston@gmail.com
www.martinajohnston.org

Hoxby and Avery on a glitch in matching low income high achieving students to selective colleges

Caroline Hoxby and Chris Avery report that there are low income students whose achievements predict that they would do well in selective colleges, but who never apply:

The Missing 'One-Offs': The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students

Caroline M. Hoxby 

Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Hoover Institution; Stanford University

Christopher Avery 

Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
December 2012

NBER Working Paper No. w18586 
Abstract:      
We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. Moreover, high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective institutions are admitted and graduate at high rates. We demonstrate that these low-income students' application behavior differs greatly from that of their high-income counterparts who have similar achievement. The latter group generally follows the advice to apply to a few "par" colleges, a few "reach" colleges, and a couple of "safety" schools. We separate the low-income, high-achieving students into those whose application behavior is similar to that of their high-income counterparts ("achievement-typical" behavior) and those whose apply to no selective institutions ("income-typical" behavior). We show that income-typical students do not come from families or neighborhoods that are more disadvantaged than those of achievement-typical students. However, in contrast to the achievement-typical students, the income-typical students come from districts too small to support selective public high schools, are not in a critical mass of fellow high achievers, and are unlikely to encounter a teacher or schoolmate from an older cohort who attended a selective college. We demonstrate that widely-used policies–college admissions staff recruiting, college campus visits, college access programs–are likely to be ineffective with income-typical students, and we suggest policies that will be effective must depend less on geographic concentration of high achievers.

Same sex marriage legislation under consideration in Britain, France and Rhode Island

Three legislature, three bills, three pictures...



Gay Marriage Bill Approved in Rhode Island House Vote (now on to the State Senate)

And across the sea, Thousands Rally in Paris For Same-Sex Marriage (as the legislature prepares to consider a bill supported by the new government).

and
British House of Commons Approves Gay Marriage (not wit)hout a lot of dissent from the governing party

update: and it's not over til it's over:

Tory rebels may scupper gay marriage in the Lords

David Cameron faces another bitter battle over his plans to introduce gay marriage, with more than half of Conservative peers expected to vote against the move.

Michael Sandel on "The Perils of Thinking Like an Economist"

It seems to me his title  "The Perils of Thinking Like an Economist" may be missing a comma.

I enjoy trying to follow his train of thought, though as time goes on he seems to be digging himself in deeper and deeper. See my previous posts on Michael Sandel here.

HT: László Sándor

Marsilius Lecture in Heidelberg Feb 7: Kidney Exchange and other market and near-market approaches to transplantation

Marsilius-Vorlesung: "Kidney Exchange and other market and near-market
approaches to transplantation"
Prof. Alvin Roth, Nobelpreis für Ökonomie 2012
Stanford University/USA
Recent advances in the organization of kidney exchange have increased the opportunities
for patients to receive live donor kidney transplants even when their own donors are
incompatible. But kidneys for transplant remain a scarce resource around the world. I will
discuss various ways in which the economics of market design can contribute to easing the
shortage, and how it can inform the debate about what to do next.


Das Marsilius-Kolleg der Universität Heidelberg lädt
herzlich ein zur Marsilius-Vorlesung mit
Alvin Roth
Nobelpreis für Ökonomie 2012
am Donnerstag, 7. Februar 2013, 16.00 Uhr
in der Alten Aula der Universität Heidelberg
Grabengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg
Programm
Musikalischer Auftakt
Begrüßung
Bernhard Eitel
Rektor der Universität Heidelberg
Einführung
Jörg Oechssler, Fellow am Marsilius-Kolleg
Marsilius-Vorlesung
“Kidney Exchange and other market and near-market
approaches to transplantation“
Alvin Roth, Stanford University, USA
Musikalisches Intermezzo
Verleihung der Marsilius-Medaille
Musikalischer Abschluss
Anschließend Empfang in der Bel Etage
Vortragssprache: Englisch

Google translate:

The Marsilius Kolleg, University of Heidelberg invites
cordially invited to Marsilius Lecture with
Alvin Roth
Nobel Prize for Economics 2012
on Thursday, 7 February 2013, 16.00 clock
in the Great Hall of the University of Heidelberg
Grave 1, 69117 Heidelberg
program
musical prelude
welcome
Bernhard Eitel
Rector of the University of Heidelberg
introduction
Jörg Oechssler, Fellow at the Marsilius Kolleg
Marsilius Lecture
"Kidney Exchange and other market and near-market
approaches to transplantation "
Alvin Roth, Stanford University, USA
musical interlude
Awarding the medal Marsilius
musical statements
Followed by a reception in the Bel Etage
Lecture Language: English

http://www.marsilius-kolleg.uni-heidelberg.de/md/einrichtungen/mk/veranstaltungen/mk_einladung_roth_171212_02.pdf

My talk at U of Birmingham: 3 minute summary

I gave a public lecture and a department seminar: here's a three minute summary of the public lecture.

ESRC Game Theory Workshop: Matching Under Preferences, Feb 6 at the LSE

http://www.maths.lse.ac.uk/ESRC_Game_Theory_Workshop.html

 Wednesday, February 6, 2013, London School of Economics

ESRC Game Theory Workshop
"Matching Under Preferences"

The 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design". The LSE Department of Mathematics has a strong research group on Game Theory and Discrete Mathematics. At the occasion of the Nobel prize, it organises this workshop, sponsored by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on "Games and Economic Behaviour".

The highlight of this workshop is a popular talk by Alvin Roth himself: "Who Gets What? The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design", and its summary shows the practical importance of the topic of the workshop.

Speakers:

Sophie Bade (Royal Holloway)	Lars Ehlers (Université de Montreal)	Aytek Erdil (Cambridge)
Flip Klijn (Institute for Economic Analysis, Barcelona)	David Manlove (Glasgow)	Alvin Roth (Stanford)

Location: Shaw Library (6th floor, Old Building, LSE)

Maps of the LSE campus can be found here: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/mapsAndDirections/findingYourWayAroundLSE.aspx

Everybody is welcome and participation is free. However, due to the expected popularity of the event, in particular the talk by Alvin Roth at 4:10pm, it is compulsory to register on a FIRST REGISTERED, FIRST SERVE basis by email to Rebecca Lumb at R.C.Lumb@lse.ac.uk.
Please note that participation for the following talks is now fully booked and reservations can no longer be taken:
Erdil at 2pm; Bade at 2:45pm; Roth at 4:10pm.Refreshments and lunch will be provided to registered participants.

Schedule and Abstracts

(2-page downloadable PDF)

10:05 welcome

10:15 Flip Klijn (Institute for Economic Analysis, Barcelona)
"A Many-to-Many Rural Hospital Theorem"

Abstract:
We show that the full version of the so-called "rural hospital theorem" generalizes to many-to-many matching problems where agents on both sides of the problem have substitutable and weakly separable preferences. In contrast with the existing literature, we reinforce our result by showing that when agents' preferences satisfy substitutability, the domain of weakly separable preferences is also maximal for the rural hospital theorem to hold.
(Joint work with Ayse Yazici.)

11:00-11:30 coffee break

11:30 Lars Ehlers (Université de Montreal, Canada)
"Strategy-Proofness Makes the Difference: Deferred-Acceptance with Responsive Priorities"

Abstract:
In college admissions and student placements at public schools, the admission decision can be thought of as assigning indivisible objects with capacity constraints to a set of students such that each student receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not allowed. In these important market design problems, the agent-proposing deferred-acceptance (DA-)mechanism with responsive strict priorities performs well and economists have successfully implemented DA-mechanisms or slight variants thereof. We show that almost all real-life mechanisms used in such environments--including the large classes of priority mechanisms and linear programming mechanisms--satisfy a set of simple and intuitive properties. Once we add strategy-proofness to these properties, DA-mechanisms are the only ones surviving. In market design problems that are based on weak priorities (like school choice), generally multiple tie-breaking (MTB) procedures are used and then a mechanism is implemented with the obtained strict priorities. By adding stability with respect to the weak priorities, we establish the first normative foundation for MTB-DA-mechanisms that are used in New York City.
(Joint work with Bettina Klaus.)

12:15 David Manlove (Glasgow)
"Junior Doctor Allocation and Kidney Exchange: Theory and Practice"

Abstract:
Matching problems typically involve assigning agents to commodities, possibly on the basis of ordinal preferences or other metrics. These problems have large-scale applications to centralised clearinghouses in many countries and contexts. Moreover, these problems have received much exposure in recent months due to the award of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley.
In this talk I will describe the matching problems featuring in two centralised clearinghouses in the UK that have involved collaborations between the National Health Service and the University of Glasgow. One of these deals with the allocation of junior doctors to Scottish hospitals, and the other is concerned with finding kidney exchanges among incompatible donor-patient pairs across the UK.
In each case I will describe the applications, briefly outline the theoretical underlying problems, discuss the algorithmic techniques for their solution, and give an overview of results arising from real data connected with the matching schemes in recent years.
(Joint work with Rob Irving and Gregg O'Malley.)

13:00-14:00 lunch (buffet at the Shaw Library)

14:00 Aytek Erdil (Cambridge)
"Prioritizing Diversity in School Choice"

Abstract:
Promoting diversity in schools has recently emerged as an important policy goal. Typically school choice programs take into account student preferences and allocate scarce schools on the basis of priorities, using stability as the solution concept. Therefore a notion of prioritizing diversity is essential. We introduce a rich class of priorities which capture intuitive notions of diversity. Substitutable priorities with ties not only ensure existence of stable assignments, but also allow students of same types to be treated equally. Moreover we describe an algorithm which finds an optimal stable assignment.
(Joint work with Taro Kumano.)

14:45 Sophie Bade (Royal Holloway)
"Pareto Optimal, Strategy Proof, Non-Bossy and Anonymous Random Matching Mechanisms"

Abstract:
Take any Pareto optimal, strategy proof and non-bossy matching mechanism for a housing problem. Define a uniform randomization over this mechanism by drawing the assignment of agents to the roles in the mechanism from a uniform distribution over all possible such assignments. I show that any such uniform randomization is equivalent to random serial dictatorship. According to random serial dictatorship the probability of a matching is calculated as the fraction of all orders of dictators according to which said matching arises divided by the grand set of all possible orders of dictators. This extends the Abdulkadiroglu and Soenmez' (1998) celebrated equivalence result between the uniform randomization over Gale's top trading cycles mechanism and random serial dictatorship to the entire set of all Pareto optimal, strategy proof and non-bossy matching mechanisms. 15:30-16:05 coffee break

15:30-16:00 coffee break

16:10 Alvin Roth (Stanford)
"Who Gets What? The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design"

Abstract:
What are markets and marketplaces? How do they work? How do they fail? How can we fix them when they are broken? In recent years economists have stepped forward as market designers to try to craft answers to these questions. These questions are particularly difficult for matching markets, which are markets in which you cannot just choose what you want, but also have to be chosen. If a market has an application or selection procedure then it is a matching market, and matching markets determine some of the most important transitions in life. Who goes to which schools and universities? Who gets which jobs? Who gets scarce organs for transplant? I'll illustrate with examples of recent market designs, in school choice, labor markets, and kidney exchange.

17:15-18:30 reception in the Senior Common Room (5th floor)

---

This workshop is part of an ESRC sponsored series of one-day workshops. At LSE these are organised by Olivier Gossner and Bernhard von Stengel.

School choice in Chicago and England, and some ideas about comparing manipulabiliby

The current (February 2013) issue of the AER has the following paper by Parag Pathak and Tayfun Sonmez, which combines some incisive observation with some new theory:

School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation

Parag A. Pathak and Tayfun Sönmez Abstract:

"In Fall 2009, Chicago authorities abandoned a school assignment mechanism midstream, citing concerns about its vulnerability to manipulation. Nonetheless, they asked thousands of applicants to re-rank schools in a new mechanism that is also manipulable. This paper introduces a method to compare mechanisms by their vulnerability to manipulation. Our methodology formalizes how the old mechanism is at least as manipulable as any other plausible mechanism, including the new one. A number of similar transitions took place in England after the widely popular Boston mechanism was ruled illegal in 2007. Our approach provides support for these and other recent policy changes.  "

Here's their story of school choice in England (where I am today):


"In England, forms of school choice have been available for at least three decades.  The nationwide 2003 School Admissions Code mandated that Local Authorities, an operating body much like a US school district, coordinate their admissions practices. This reform provided families with a single application form and established a common admissions timeline, leading to a March announcement of placements for anxious 10 and 11 year-olds on National Offer Day. The next nationwide reform came with the 2007 School Admissions Code. While strengthening the enforcement of admissions rules, this legal code also prohibited authorities from using what they refer to as ‘‘unfair oversubscription criteria’’ in Section 2.13:

In setting oversubscription criteria the admission authorities for all 
maintained schools must not: give priority to children according to the order of other schools 
named as preferences by their parents, including ‘first preference first’ arrangements.

A first preference first system is any ‘‘oversubscription criterion that gives priority to children according to the order of other schools named as a preference by their parents, or only considers applications stated as a first preference’’ (School Admissions Code 2007, Glossary, p. 118). The 2007 Admissions Code outlaws use of this system at more than 150 Local Authorities across the country, and this ban continues with the 2010 Code. The best known first preference first system is the Boston mechanism, and since 2007 it is banned in England.  The rationale for this ban, as stated by England’s Department for Education and Skills, is that ‘‘the ‘first preference first’ criterion made the system unnecessarily complex to parents’’ (School Code 2007, Foreword, p. 7). Moreover, Education Secretary Alan Johnson remarked that the first preference first system ‘‘forces many parents to play an ‘admissions game’ with their children’s future.’’

Opt-out for organ donation faces opposition in Maryland

Religious groups oppose Maryland organ donation bill

"Maryland residents would have to opt out of the state's organ donation system under legislation before the General Assembly, angering religious groups that oppose it for ostensibly placing the state's law above God's.

"The measure would require Marylanders to opt out of organ donation when they applied for a driver's license or state ID, as opposed to the current system, in which they can volunteer to opt in.

"The government does not have a lien on our bodies," said Catholic League President Bill Donohue. "The whole idea of opting out is offensive, because the predicate here is that the state has some claim on our organs."

"The Catholic League joined Orthodox Jewish groups to defeat a similar New York bill in 2010.

"It cheapens the whole culture because the way we look at human life from conception to natural death becomes coarser and coarser," Donohue said. "The premise is that somehow the government owns your body unless you opt out ... if we accept that, what's next?"

"The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ron Young, D-Washington and Frederick counties, would require the Motor Vehicle Administration to notify people applying for or renewing driver's licenses or IDs that they will be an organ donor unless they expressly choose not to. It doesn't specify how the MVA must notify applicants. Donor organs and tissue can be used for transplants, therapy, or medical research and education.

"A House version is being sponsored by Del. Galen Clagett, D-Frederick County. Neither Young nor Clagett returned calls.

...

"About half of Maryland adults are registered organ donors, ranking it 27th among states, according to a 2012 report by organ donation group Donate Life.

"Libby Wolfe, executive director of Donate Life Maryland, said 2,300 people in Maryland are awaiting a donation, with 116,000 waiting nationwide. Donate Life Maryland opposes the "presumed consent" bill because countries with opt-out systems have seen a decrease in donors.

"If Maryland passes the bill, it would be the first state to have such a law. The legislatures in Virginia and New Jersey are also considering bills to create presumed-consent organ donation systems, according to the University of North Carolina Kidney Center, which tracks transplant-related bills."

I predict a surge in demand for kosher beef in Britain...

...after reading this in the Telegraph: Tesco beef burgers found to contain 29% horse meat

"In Tesco Everyday Value Beef Burgers, horse meat accounted for approximately 29 per cent of the meat. The supermarket announced last night that it was removing all fresh and frozen burgers from sale immediately regardless if they had been found to contain horse meat.
...
"More than a third (37 per cent) of the products tested in Ireland contained horse DNA, while the vast majority (85 per cent) also contained pig DNA.
...
"Prof Alan Reilly, the chief executive of the FSAI, said: “While there is a plausible explanation for the presence of pig DNA in these products, due to the fact that meat from different animals is processed in the same plants, there is no clear explanation for the presence of horse DNA in products emanating from meat plants that do not use horse meat.”

I speak at Birmingham Feb 4

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/business/departments/economics/events/2013/february/prof-al-roth-nobel-prize-winner-guest-lecture.aspx

Prof Al Roth, Nobel Prize Winner - Guest Lecture

Location

Great Hall - Aston Webb Building

Date(s)

Monday 4th February 2013 (18:00-19:00)

Who Gets What: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design: A Guest Lecture by Professor Al Roth, 2012 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, Stanford University, US.

Please complete the online form to register your interest to attend.

Recent Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Al Roth provides an open, guest lecture for the University of Birmingham’s College of Social Sciences on Monday 4^th February 2013.

Register to attend.

Described as “an economist who saves lives”, Roth’s application of economics and the idea of “matching algorithm” is enabling a creative use of his research – including life-saving work.

His research has been applied to:

Kidney Donation Exchange – matching incompatible patient-donor pairs with others, in as wide a network as possible (and no money changing hands)

Public Schools – by matching students to high schools based on preferences

Medical Students – matching medics to hospitals where they complete residency programmes

Professor Al Roth will deliver a guest lecture, together with an opportunity to ask questions. Refreshments will also be available after the lecture.

Please complete the online form to register your interest to attend.

Further information:

Doors will open at 5.45pm for a prompt 6.00pm start.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the popularity of this event, the lecture will now be taking place in the Great Hall in the Aston Webb Building.

If you would like any information about the event please contact Guvinder Kaur Rajaniag.rajania@bham.ac.uk.

For live updates from the event, follow the College of Social Sciences’ twitter page@CoSS_Birmingham.  

The American Gastroenterological Association takes note of the Nobel for market design

The redesign of the match for Gastroenterology fellows is one of the projects mentioned in the Nobel documentation on p23), and the AGA takes note of that: Al Roth Wins Nobel Prize and AGA Recognized in Announcement. (Two key names on that project are Debbie Proctor and Muriel Niederle.)

The D.C. Circuit Rules that the Law Clerk Hiring Plan is History

Notice Regarding Law Clerk Hiring By D.C. Circuit Judges for the 2014-2015 Term

Although the judges of this circuit would uniformly prefer to continue hiring law clerks pursuant to the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, it has become apparent that the plan is no longer working. Because participation in the plan is voluntary, a significant percentage of all United States circuit judges must agree to follow it if it is to work appropriately. During the past few years, a significant and increasing number of circuit judges around the country have hired in advance of the plan’s interview and offer dates, and it is likely that they will continue to do so. As a result, continued adherence to the plan is no longer fair and equitable to either students or judges.

We stand ready to work with the judges of the other circuits to develop an appropriate successor to the current plan. In the meantime, however, the judges of this circuit will hire law clerks at such times as each individual judge determines to be appropriate. We have agreed that none of us will give “exploding offers,” that is, offers that expire if not accepted immediately. Rather, when a judge of this circuit gives a candidate an offer, the candidate will have a reasonable time to consider the offer and interview with other judges before accepting or declining. Additional practices applicable to individual judges may be found on the judges’ OSCAR pages.

• Online System for Clerkship Application and Review (OSCAR)

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

See these previous posts for an account of its (unexpectedly long) death throes: http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/search/label/clerks 

College admissions in China

Yan Chen and Onur Kesten have a new version of their paper on school choice mechanisms, inspired by the Chinese college admissions experiencewith what they call the "parallel mechanism": From Boston to Chinese Parallel to Deferred Acceptance: Theory and Experiments on a Family of School Choice Mechanisms

Abstract: We characterize a parametric family of application-rejection school choice mechanisms,
including the Boston and Deferred Acceptance mechanisms as special cases, and spanning the parallel mechanisms for Chinese college admissions, the largest centralized matching in the world. Moving from one extreme member to the other results in systematic changes in manipulability, stability and welfare properties. Neither the ex-post dominance of the DA over the Boston equilibria, nor the ex-ante dominance of the Boston equilibria over the DA in stylized settings extends to the parallel mechanisms. In the laboratory, participants are most likely to reveal their preferences truthfully under the DA mechanism, followed by the Chinese parallel and then the Boston mechanisms. Furthermore, while the DA is significantly more stable than the Chinese parallel mechanism, which is more stable than Boston, efficiency comparisons vary across environments."

The paper focuses on what they call the parallel mechanism, which falls between the Boston "immediate acceptance" and the Gale-Shapley "deferred acceptance" algorithms:

"While the sequential mechanism used to be the only mechanism used in CCA prior to 2003, to alleviate the problem of high-scoring students not accepted by any universities and the pressure to manipulate preference rankings under the sequential mechanism, the parallel mechanism has been adopted by 22 provinces by 2012. In the parallel mechanism, students can place several “parallel” colleges for each choice. For example, a student’s first choice can contain four colleges, A, B, C and D, in decreasing desirability. Colleges consider student applications, where allocations among the parallel colleges are temporary until a student is rejected from all the parallel colleges he has listed. Thus, this mechanism lies between the Boston mechanism, where every step is final, and the DA, where every step is temporary until all seats are filled. [An alternative interpretation of the parallel mechanism is that it approximates serial dictatorship with tiers (Wei 2009). Note, however, in the college admissions context when colleges have identical preferences, serial dictatorship and DA are equivalent.]"
...
"Transitioning from sequential to the parallel mechanisms, five provinces7 have adopted a hybrid between the sequential and parallel mechanisms, called the partial parallel mechanism. In Beijing, for example, a student can list one college as her first choice which retains the sequential nature, but three parallel colleges as her second choice. While variants of the parallel (and the partial parallel) mechanisms, each of which differs in the number of parallel choices, have been implemented in different provinces, to our knowledge, they have not been systematically studied theoretically or tested in the laboratory. In particular, when the number of parallel choices varies, how do manipulation incentives, allocation efficiency and stability change? In this paper, we investigate this question both theoretically and experimentally. We call the entire class of parallel (and partial parallel) mechanisms the Chinese parallel mechanisms, the simplest member of this class the Shanghai mechanism.
To study the performance of the different mechanisms more formally, we first provide a theoretical analysis and present a parametric family of application-rejection mechanisms where each member is characterized by some positive number e in{1,2,...}of parallel and periodic choices through which the application and rejection process continues before assignments are finalized.
As parameter e varies, we go from the familiar Boston mechanism (e = 1) to the Chinese parallel mechanisms (e in { 2,...}), and from those to the DA (e = infinity)."

The price of lunch for a good cause...we could do it by skype...on eBay today

Here's the eBay auction that will determine who I have lunch with at some future date.
I'll be checking on it this evening, to find out my price. (Right now I look like a bargain.)
It's  a fund raiser for Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley.
It's a good cause, so if you are in the area, think of a lunch in person. And if you are somewhere else, I'd be happy to arrange a lunch for an hour or so over skype at some mutually convenient time (you could be eating dinner while I eat breakfast...)

Here's part of the eBay description (which may be why I'm going at a bargain price:)
"When asked to be one of the celebrities for the JFS “Lunch With…” auction, Roth wrote “you should put up a warning to bidders that I’m not the kind of economist who can predict the future course of the economy, or even explain the financial crisis or the euro situation…” 

Dating is so 20th century (and how about marriage?)

Two recent articles on online dating sites both think that internet dating is changing courtship and marriage, by making it too easy to meet people.

The NY Times focuses on dating culture, and suggests that internet communication itself may remove some of the signaling that used to take place when dating was more formal, and the fact that multiple people can be dated contemporaneously may work to reduce investment in each date:  The End of Courtship?


"Traditional courtship — picking up the telephone and asking someone on a date — required courage, strategic planning and a considerable investment of ego (by telephone, rejection stings). Not so with texting, e-mail, Twitter or other forms of “asynchronous communication,” as techies call it. In the context of dating, it removes much of the need for charm; it’s more like dropping a line in the water and hoping for a nibble.

“I’ve seen men put more effort into finding a movie to watch on Netflix Instant than composing a coherent message to ask a woman out,” said Anna Goldfarb, 34, an author and blogger in Moorestown, N.J. A typical, annoying query is the last-minute: “Is anything fun going on tonight?” More annoying still are the men who simply ping, “Hey” or “ ’sup.”

...
"Online dating services, which have gained mainstream acceptance, reinforce the hyper-casual approach by greatly expanding the number of potential dates. Faced with a never-ending stream of singles to choose from, many feel a sense of “FOMO” (fear of missing out), so they opt for a speed-dating approach — cycle through lots of suitors quickly.

"That also means that suitors need to keep dates cheap and casual. A fancy dinner? You’re lucky to get a drink.

“It’s like online job applications, you can target many people simultaneously — it’s like darts on a dart board, eventually one will stick,” said Joshua Sky, 26, a branding coordinator in Manhattan, describing the attitudes of many singles in their 20s. The mass-mailer approach necessitates “cost-cutting, going to bars, meeting for coffee the first time,” he added, “because you only want to invest in a mate you’re going to get more out of.”
...
"THERE’S another reason Web-enabled singles are rendering traditional dates obsolete. If the purpose of the first date was to learn about someone’s background, education, politics and cultural tastes, Google and Facebook have taken care of that."
********************

Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, the concern is that as it becomes easier to meet people, the incentive to work to maintain existing relationships may be diluted: A Million First Dates--How online romance is threatening monogamy

"The positive aspects of online dating are clear: the Internet makes it easier for single people to meet other single people with whom they might be compatible, raising the bar for what they consider a good relationship. But what if online dating makes it too easy to meet someone new? What if it raises the bar for a good relationship too high? What if the prospect of finding an ever-more-compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, in which we keep chasing the elusive rabbit around the dating track?"

Repugnant organization of academic journals?

A new mathematics journal is raising questions about whether it might be promoting repugnant transactions. Timothy Gowers, one of the editors of Forum of Mathematics, CUP’s new open-access journal has a blog post called Why I've joined the bad guys, in which he discusses the fact that the journal will fund itself by charging the authors of articles.

He begins as follows:

"If you are not already familiar with this debate, the aspect of Forum of Mathematics that many people dislike is that it will be funded by means of article processing charges (which I shall abbreviate to APCs) rather than subscriptions. For the next three years, these charges will be waived, but after that there will be a charge of £500 per article. Let me now consider a number of objections that people have to APCs.

"It is just plain wrong to ask authors to pay to get their articles published.
There are many variants of this argument. For instance, an analogy is often drawn with vanity publishing: do we want vanity publishing for mathematical articles?

"Let me begin with the “it is just plain wrong” part. A number of people have said that they find APCs morally repugnant. However, that on its own is not an argument. "


HT: Will Dearden

Women soldiers in combat

The road to a top job in the American armed forces lies in the combat branches, and soldiers can be forgiven for wanting combat experience. Women soldiers (and sailors and airmen? Is there a gender neutral word for soldiers in the Air Force?) are no exception, but have been excluded from "combat" assignments. (Of course, particularly in anti-insurgent and anti-terrorist warfare, where there are no front lines, women soldiers have increasingly often been thrust into combat.)

It appears that this is another repugnance that is fading away (not without opposition): Formally Lifting a Combat Ban, Military Chiefs Stress Equal Opportunity

"WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday formally lifted the military’s ban on women in combat, saying that not every woman would become a combat soldier but that every woman deserved the chance to try.
...
"In the most vocal official opposition to the changes, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is set to become the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, warned that some in Congress may seek legislation to limit the combat jobs open to women.

“I want everyone to know that the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which I am the ranking member, will have a period to provide oversight and review,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement. “During that time, if necessary, we will be able to introduce legislation to stop any changes we believe to be detrimental to our fighting forces and their capabilities. I suspect there will be cases where legislation becomes necessary.”

"Pentagon officials said that the different services would have until May 15 to submit their plans for carrying out the new policy, but that the military wanted to move as quickly as possible to open up combat positions to women. Military officials said that there were more than 200,000 jobs now potentially open to women in specialties like infantry, armor, artillery and elite Special Operations commando units like the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers.

"If a service determines that a specialty should not be open to women, Pentagon officials said that representatives of the service would have to make the case to the defense secretary by January 2016."

Tim Harford talks about kidney transplants and kidney exchange

Tim Harford talks about kidney transplants and kidney exchange in his new BBC Pop-Up Economics podcast that you can listen to here (about 15 minutes).