High school matching in New York City

Two stories caught my eye about the results of the recent high school match in New York City.

The first reminded me of the recent paper on college applications by Chris Avery and Caroline Hoxby
which finds that students from rural areas are less likely to apply to highly selective colleges than are equally well qualified students from high schools that more traditionally send students to top colleges

Disparities Found in N.Y.C.'s System for Matching Students to Schools
"Low-achieving students were less likely to rank as first choice a school rated an A or B on New York City's school-quality system, and nearly twice as likely to choose one graded C, D, or F. The first-choice schools of students in the bottom 20 percent in math and language arts achievement also had 10-percentage-point lower average graduation rates than the first-choice schools of higher-achieving students, 68 percent versus 78 percent.
"The gaps between everybody's first-choice schools and the schools where they are matched are about the same, but the starting points for low-achieving students are much lower," said Lori Nathason, a research associate at the research alliance, who spoke about the study at the policy conference."

Another story caught my eye because it has to do with the high school that I attended:

"Parents refuse to send their kids to the only zoned high school in the area, the C-rated Martin Van Buren High School, until it shakes its poor reputation.
In a twist, Alvin Roth — a graduate of Van Buren — won the Nobel Prize in October for creating the algorithm on which the city’s public high school admissions process is based."

Marketing gurus: how would you advertise the need for organ donors?

You can see how the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services does it at http://organdonor.gov/index.html

How American transplant policy is made: some policies put out for public comment

A view of the OPTN policy-making process for organ transplants can be glimpsed by looking at some of the many recent proposals put out for public comment. Here are a few...

1

Proposal to Substantially Revise The National Kidney Allocation System (Kidney Transplantation Committee)

Proposal (1.81 MB)

9/21/2012 - 12/14/2012

7

Proposal to Clarify Priority Status for Prior Living Organ Donors Who Later Require a Kidney Transplant (Kidney Transplantation Committee)

Proposal (313 K)

3/16/2012 - 6/25/2012

8

Proposal to Establish Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) Policy (Kidney Transplantation Committee)

Proposal (669 K)

3/16/2012 - 6/25/2012

9

Proposal to Include Bridge Donors in the OPTN Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) Program (Kidney Transplantation Committee)

Proposal (646 K)

3/16/2012 - 6/25/2012

Job markets in Korea

I had an interesting discussion yesterday at the Korean Finance Ministry about the interconnectedness of job markets and child care...

Google translate caption: Was hyeonohseok Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Strategy and Finance to discuss the policy last year, won the Nobel Prize in economics, Professor Ross Elliot Alvin (Alvin Elliott Roth) and job creation.

Tub thumping about market design in Seoul

Soo Lee and I discuss market design in Seoul: this photo is from this newspaper account (in Korean).




Here's another photo,(apparently I gesticulate...Google translate renders the title as [Photo] tub-thumping Nobel Prize winning economist Elvin Ross)


In this final photo, the translated caption helpfully indicates which one of us is the Korean prime minister.

Nobel economists met the prime minister Prime Minister (left first) and songjaejo jeonghongwon economy TV representatives (third) won the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics, Professor Alvin Ross and talk. / Heomunchan reporter

Seoul is an impressive city, and it seems that there may be lots of opportunities for market design in Korea's thriving economy. Soo and I had an interesting set of meetings yesterday at the Ministry of Education. Today we'll visit the Finance ministry, and later I'll give a talk on kidney exchange at the Samsung Medical Center...

Stanford's endowment: I benefit directly from parts of it

An unusual thing about American universities is that they are largely financed by philanthropy. The oldest universities tend to have very big endowments. Some of those endowments yield income for general revenues, while others have very specific purposes.

Here's an article from the Stanford Benefactor about some of the endowments that have helped me personally settle in to my new job at Stanford: How to Bring a Nobel Laureate to Stanford

Global Financial Conference in Seoul

Soohyung Lee and I will discuss market design at the 2013 Seoul Global Financial Conference, April 2-3.

Organs and executed prisoners: Jay Lavee goes to Taiwan

Jay Lavee, the Israeli transplant surgeon behind some of Israel's new legislation (and who I met in person for the first time at Duke),  recently returned from Taiwan, and forwarded these links:

The first is to this story in the Tapei Times:

"Two issues surrounding organ transplants in Taiwan were spotlighted by foreign experts and Taiwanese legislators: using executed prisoners as organ donors and post-transplant medication insured by the NHI.
Jacob Lavee, director of the heart transplant unit at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, said he used to hold up Taiwan on various occasions as a prominent example of a nation that had stopped taking organs from executed prisoners, who are considered unwilling donors, until he regretfully discovered Taiwan had resumed using such organs two years ago.

"The Department of Health’s Bureau of Planning head Shih Chung-yuan (石崇原) said in response that “although there is no law banning the use of organs taken from executed prisoners, the government does not encourage it and has stopped soliciting organ donations in the prison.”

"Concerning the current lawless state of organ transplants performed abroad, Shih said that in 2009, an amendment to the Organ Transplant Act (人體器官移植條例) was proposed that would require all organ recipients, in Taiwan or abroad, to register with local authorities, but it was not passed.
Tien also called for stricter regulation for organ transplants performed abroad, saying that since the majority (88.6 percent) of Taiwanese organ recipients went to China for organ transplants that are often from questionable and unethical organ sources, but continue to be insured by the NHI for post-transplant medication, “it almost seems like all Taiwanese who contribute to the NHI are complicit with the illegal and unethical organ-harvesting crimes perpetrated in China.”
***********

Here's a related story from NTD news: Taiwan's Health Department Wants to Criminalize Organ Trade


Taiwan’s health department said on Thursday it plans to modify its organ transplant laws to criminalize organ trade and brokerage.

The main concern is illegally obtained organs in China, where authorities have been accused of killing prisoners of conscience for their organs. China is the main destination for Taiwanese patients who obtain organs overseas.

[Hsu Ming-neng, Director, Bureau of Medical Affairs, Department of Health]:
“We want to minimize the occurrence of using organs with questionable sources. We plan to discuss the amendment of organ transplant laws [during the upcoming legislative period] and we want everyone’s support.”

Hsu Ming-neng spoke during a forum in Taipei on Thursday organized by the Department of Health. On the panel was a group of five doctors and investigators from around the world. They visited Taiwan this week to highlight transplant abuse in China.

Dr Jacob Lavee from Israel discovered his patients were going to China for rapid transplants. Some were promised an organ on a certain day—something that suggests China has an “on-demand” organ supply.

He has since worked to get Israel to stop transplant tourism to China.

[Jacob Lavee, MD, Advisor, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting]:
“Those brokers who intermediate between local candidates and overseas [donors in China], that should be taken care of. That’s what we’ve done in Israel and that’s the way we’ve succeeded in Israel to stop completely the flow of Israeli patients to China.”

US-based doctor, Jianchao Xu, says a combined effort is necessary to stop forced organ harvesting in China.

[Jianchao Xu, MD, Medical Director, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting]:
“I think the public, medical community, the political field and the legal community all need to take action, because this isn’t something that doctors alone can accomplish.”

Independent investigators and human rights activists have accused the Chinese regime of profiting from forced organ harvesting. The largest groups of victims identified are persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. Detained House Christians and Uyghur minorities are also believed to be amongst those killed for their organs.

NTD News, Taiwan

Organs and Inducements at Duke

I was talked into going to what turned out to be a wonderful conference.  The modal participant was a law professor, but here's a photo of economists and a surgeon:

Judd Kessler, Jay Lavee, Al Roth, Avi Stoler

Kim Krawiec posts about the conference at the Faculty Lounge: I reproduce her post below...

"Organs & Inducements

I, of course, meant to post this in advance of the symposium, but underestimated the amount of time and attention last minute details would consume (what’s that phrase about older but not wiser?).  So I’m just getting to it now. 

Anyway, I think that the event was a big success and I will have more to say about it in the coming days.  For now, I’ll just post the symposium abstract, along with a thanks to all the many wonderful participants who made this event a success. 

More to follow . . .

Symposium Abstract:

The need for human organs for transplantation far outstrips supply. As a result, a large literature has developed debating possible means to address the gap. Suggestions range from procurement system improvements and changes in the consent regime, in the case of cadaveric organ donation, to inventive exchange systems (such as swaps and NEAD chains) and financial incentives of various sorts, in the case of live organ donation.

In Organs and Inducements, contributors build on existing debates on mechanisms designed to bridge the gap between organ demand and supply, to address deeper questions regarding inducements to donate.   Among the varied possible mechanisms of persuasion and incentives at society’s disposal, what are the relative advantages and disadvantages of each?  What are the larger ethical, economic, sociological, and psychological issues raised by these different types of inducements, including non-financial inducements?  Why are some accepted by the law and society at large, while others are not?  Do the lines we’ve drawn among permissible and impermissible inducements make sense, given the concerns those rules are meant to address?"

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

Update: here's a further post today by Kim K., on the origins of the conference (and why they chose the word "inducements" rather than "incentives": More Organs & Inducements 

Video of my recent talk at the SIEPR economic summit

Here I was: speaking on Friday March 15, 2013.

"Horse meat is the Tatar's Viagra"

While horse meat may be repugnant in some places, the controversy over horse meat in Russia is over how to prepare it: Appreciation of the Horse, Well-Cooked

"In parts of Russia and throughout Central Asia, horse is a central feature in traditional cuisine and is considered almost mandatory on special occasions.
...
"Mr. Nasyrov buys much of his horse meat from trusted local producers in Tatarstan, the heavily Muslim region east of Moscow where, he said, residents ascribe even greater attributes to eating horse.

“Horse meat,” he said, “is the Tatar’s Viagra.”
*******************

You can buy canned horse meat here.

Furniture in Foshan

When I spoke in Foshan China, I got an opportunity to see one of the big furniture markets in that city, this one run by the Louvre Group:

Beijing East Linden Co.

While in Beijing I visited the East Linden Company, which is making a market for intellectual property by producing a high-tech searchable database of traditional medicines. Visiting them felt a lot like visiting a Silicon Valley start up (e.g. they run their own automatic translation server, and you can search their database by starting with a molecule...)

The chairwoman, Madame Yanhuai Liu graciously agreed to let me take this photo of her, next to two pictures in her office of her mother and father, a general who went on the Long March.

My names in Chinese transliteration

Irwin Rose, Irvine Ross, and Elvin Ross all appear in the Google Translate version of this story  (2012诺奖得主：中国经济需要市场设计   2012 Nobel laureate: Chinese economy needs a market design) about a talk I gave in Beijing.

Here's one version of my name in Chinese, which I gather lends itself to the "Ross" pronunciation:

Stanford's student senate rejects an anti-Israel divestment resolution

The Stanford Daily has the story of the contentious and lengthy debate: Undergraduate Senate votes against divestmentbill

The resolution failed handily: the newspaper account also gives in passing a picture of Stanford's diverse student Senate:
"[the divestment] bill did not pass, with seven senators in opposition, five abstaining and one in support of the bill.
"Senator Janhavi Vartak ’15 voted in favor. Senators Anna Brezhneva ’15, Brandon Hightower ’15, Garima Sharma ’15, Bindra, Miller, Olivos and Pham voted against. Senators Fadavi, Bacon, Crouch, Haveles and Menjivar abstained."

A number of faculty members and well known personalities from the wider world sent messages both for and against divestment. The SD has that story too: two market designers were mentioned as being against the proposal. The full statements of many of those who went on record as opposing divestment can be found on the page of the Stanford Israel Alliance  Mine is here, and Yoav Shoham's is a short scroll down..

Matching and Market Design: Bob Wilson and Mary Kline

Matching is important, and I returned from a trip to China just in time to attend the wedding of the Dean of Design, my advisor Bob Wilson, and Mary Kline.

Mazel tov, Bob and Mary!

Call for papers: May 4 Bay Area Behavioral and Experimental Economics Workshop

Call for Papers

Bay Area Behavioral and Experimental Economics Workshop

Saturday May 4, 2013, University of San Francisco

The Bay Area Behavioral Economics and Experimental Workshop (BABEEW) will be hosted this year by the University of San Francisco on Saturday, May 4^th 2012, in Fromm Hall (http://www.usfca.edu/campusmap/).

The objective of the workshop is to provide an opportunity for Bay Area researchers in behavioral economics and related fields to share their latest research.

All interested researchers are invited to submit an abstract for presentation. We would also appreciate it if you could advertise this call for papers in your department and inform interested faculty members and students.

There will be breakfast, coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner paid for by the sponsors*. We reserved the Koret Rec Center parking lot free all day (!) (http://tinyurl.com/ParkingBABEEW2013). Participants will need to cover any other travel or accommodation expenses. Hotel at a walkable distance: Stanyan Park Hotel (let’s say it is full of old times charm).

Deadlines

The deadline for submitting an abstract (250 words or less) is Friday, April 5^th 2013. Acceptance decisions will be e-mailed to registered participants by Friday, April 19^th. The workshop program will be e-mailed to registered participant by April 25^th.

To submit and register: http://tinyurl.com/BABEEW2013

BABEEW Scientific Committee

Alessandra Cassar              Univ. of San Francisco

Dan Friedman                     UC, Santa Cruz

John Ifcher
                        Santa Clara University

Linda Kamas
                    Santa Clara University

John Morgan                       UC, Berkeley

Charles Sprenger                Stanford University

*We gratefully acknowledge funding from the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP), the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), and the International Confederation for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics and Economic Psychology (ICABEEP).

Exchanges for digital goods

The NY Times has the story: Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music


"In late January, Amazon received a patent to set up an exchange for all sorts of digital material. The retailer would presumably earn a commission on each transaction, and consumers would surely see lower prices.

"But a shudder went through publishers and media companies. Those who produce content might see their work devalued, just as they did when Amazon began selling secondhand books 13 years ago. The price on the Internet for many used books these days is a penny.

"On Thursday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published Apple’s application for its own patent for a digital marketplace. Apple’s application outlines a system for allowing users to sell or give e-books, music, movies and software to each other by transferring files rather than reproducing them. Such a system would permit only one user to have a copy at any one time.

"Meanwhile, a New York court is poised to rule on whether a start-up that created a way for people to buy and sell iTunes songs is breaking copyright law. A victory for the company would mean that consumers would not need either Apple’s or Amazon’s exchange to resell their digital items. Electronic bazaars would spring up instantly.

“The technology to allow the resale of digital goods is now in place, and it will cause a dramatic upheaval,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps, a technology consulting firm. “In the short term, it’s great for consumers. Over the long term, however, it could seriously reduce creators’ incentive to create.”

Treadmill desk

Not for everyone, but I enjoy mine when I'm in my office at Stanford:

Sun Yat-Sen Business School in Foshan, China

Nobel Economics Laureate Alvin Roth Visiting Foshan, China

Source：External Liaison Office     Hits：26     Time： 2013-03-06 08:45

Hosts
Sun Yat-sen Business School, Time WeeklyForum
Market Design, China Opportunity – Transformation, Promotion and Market Design

Time
14:00 – 17:00, March 20, 2013Venue
Louvre International Furniture Exhibition Center, Foshan, China
Topics
1. Market Design in Chinese Style
2. Market Design, Matching Theory and Enterprise OperationKeynote Speakers
1. Alvin Roth, Professor of Harvard Business School, 2012 Nobel Economics Laureate
2. Yadong LUO, Emery Findlay Distinguished Chair and Professor of Management, University of Miami, International Dean of SYSBS

Schedule:
13: 30 – 14: 30  Reception
14: 30 – 14: 40  Conference Welcome
14: 40 – 15: 40  Keynote Speech
15: 40 – 16: 00  Coffee Break
16: 00 – 17: 00  Round Table Forum

Keynote Speakers


Alvin Roth

Alvin Elliot Roth is an American economist and George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Roth has made significant contributions to the fields of game theory, market design and experimental economics, and is known for his emphasis on applying his economic theory to solutions for "real-world" problems.

In 2012, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yadong LUO

Dr. Yadong LUO is International Dean and Distinguished Honorary Professor of SYSBS. He is the Emery M. Findley Distinguished Chair of Graduate Business Studies and Professor of Management at University of Miami. He is also an elected Fellow of Academy of International Business.

LUO has emerged as the world's top research scholar in international management since the mid-90s. He has published over 150 articles in major refereed journals in international business and management, including AMJ, ASQ, AMR, SMJ, JIBS, JAP, Org. Science, among others. He also authored more than a dozen books and about a hundred other publications. His research interests include global corporate strategy, global corporate governance, international joint ventures, and management in emerging economies, among others.

LUO's research record includes seminal pieces on important and timely topics, such as co-opetition in international business, business-government relationships, cross-cultural cooperative strategies, multinational enterprises in emerging markets, and international expansion of emerging market enterprises. He currently is a consulting editor of JIBS, editor of JWB, and senior editor of MOR. He is the recipient of a dozen research and teaching awards at U. of Miami and U. of Hawaii where he taught before joining UM.