Friday, July 11, 2014

Guns on campus: both a protected and a repugnant transaction?

On July 1 the new Idaho law explicitly allowing guns on college campuses went into effect.  Weapons on campus are now allowed in several states, and explicitly prohibited in others, so it is both a protected transaction and a repugnant one. Below is a sampling of stories.

Gov. Butch Otter signed a law making Idaho the seventh state to allow concealed weapons on college campuses.
"Idaho now joins six other U.S. states that allow the “concealed carry” of weapons on public college and university campuses. All 50 states have laws permitting the carrying of concealed guns in public, but the restrictions differ significantly from state to state. In 21 states carrying a concealed weapon on campus is affirmatively banned."

Here's an (outdated) map showing which states are which as of 2013.

Outgunned, for Now

When May I Shoot a Student?

Here's the concealed weapons FAQ from the Idaho attorney general.

And here's the relevant section of the law:

18-3309. Authority of Governing Boards of Public Colleges and Universities Regarding Firearms 
(This Law Becomes Effective July 1, 2014)

(1) The board of regents of the university of Idaho, the boards of trustees of the state colleges and universities, the board of professional-technical education and the boards of trustees of each of the community colleges established under chapter 21, title 33, Idaho Code, hereby have the authority to prescribe rules and regulations relating to firearms.

(2) Notwithstanding any other provision of state law, this authority shall not extend to regulating or prohibiting the otherwise lawful possession, carrying or transporting of firearms or ammunition by persons
licensed under section 18-3302H or 18-3302K, Idaho Code.

 (a) However, a person issued a license under the provisions of section 18-3302H or 18-  3302K, Idaho Code, shall not carry a concealed weapon:

 (i) Within a student dormitory or residence hall; or

 (ii) Within any building of a public entertainment facility, provided that proper signage is  conspicuously posted at each point of public ingress to the facility notifying attendees of  any restriction on the possession of firearms in the facility during the game or ev

Thursday, July 10, 2014

A long kidney chain at U. Alabama Birmingham

A long nonsimultaneous kidney exchange chain, which began in December, is underway at the University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital. Here's an update: Nation’s largest single-site kidney transplant chain, underway at UAB

PRESS RELEASE chain by the numbers"Twenty-one living donors have changed the lives of 21 recipients so far as part of the nation’s longest ongoing single-center paired kidney transplant chain, which is under way at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. The UAB kidney chain is scheduled to resume with six more transplants the week of July 7."

More information, including an informative video at http://www.uab.edu/kidneychain/

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Harold Kuhn 1925-2014


"Harold Kuhn, a Princeton University mathematician who advanced game theory approaches to economics, died of congestive heart failure on July 2. He was 88 years old.
...
"While Kuhn was working on his dissertation, he began exploring the emerging field of game theory, which focuses on the behavior of decision makers whose choices affect each other. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he was involved in organizing many conferences in game theory. John Nash was a classmate, and in 1994 Kuhn was invited by the Nobel Prize committee to chair a panel discussion of Nash’s work on the occasion of Nash’s award of the Nobel Prize in economics.

“Game theory blossomed in Princeton in the mid-20th century. Kuhn was a key member of a brilliant group that ushered it in, which included the genius John von Neumann and Nobel Prize winners John Nash, Lloyd Shapley and Robert Aumann, amongst other greats,” said Dilip Abreu, a professor of finance and economics at Princeton. “Kuhn’s now-standard formulation of extensive form games completely eclipsed von Neumann’s own, and his results on imperfect recall, mixed and behavioral strategies continue to stimulate, intrigue and delight.”


More here:
"Kuhn wrote a dissertation in geometric group theory advised by Professor Ralph Fox. Concurrently, he began a long collaboration with Professor Albert Tucker and fellow graduate student David Gale exploring and developing the emerging fields of nonlinear optimization and game theory, which focuses on the behavior of decision makers whose choices affect each other. Another fellow student was John Nash, and in 1994, Kuhn was invited by the Nobel Prize committee to chair a panel discussion of Nash's work, on the occasion of Nash's award of the Nobel Prize in economics.

In 1951, Kuhn and Tucker described what are known as the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions for nonlinear programming, now an economics staple that address optimization within constraints. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Kuhn was involved in organizing conferences in game theory. "

Here are two pictures I snapped of Kuhn, one with his wife Estelle, and one with the late Bill Lucas, at a festival in honor of Lloyd Shapley at Stony Brook in July 2003.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Midway Market Design Workshop, July 9–11, 2014 University of Chicago Booth School of Business

This has been a good summer for market design conferences, and here's another:

Midway Market Design Workshop


July 9–11, 2014

University of Chicago Booth School of Business
ORGANIZERS
ALI HORTAÇSU, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
ERIC BUDISH, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
SCOTT DUKE KOMINERS, HARVARD SOCIETY OF FELLOWS
NICOLE IMMORLICA, MICROSOFT RESEARCH
JASON HARTLINE, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
This conference will bring together researchers from economics and computer science to study the design of online and offline markets in a variety of settings. Rigorous modelling of incentives, strategic behavior, and asymmetric information will be the common thread among these researchers. Diverse applications ranging from securities trading to school choice mechanisms will be considered.

Wednesday, July 9

11:00am  12:00pm
Market Design: Topics and Techniques
Microsoft Research
12:00pm  1:00pm
Breakout Session
1:00pm  2:00pm
Lunch
2:00pm  3:00pm
Breakout Session
3:00pm  4:00pm
Empirics of Multi-Unit Auctions
University of Chicago
4:00pm  5:00pm
Breakout Session

Thursday, July 10

9:00am  9:50am
Inverse Optimization for the Recovery of Market Structure from Market Outcomes: An Application to the MISO Electricity Market
Wilfrid Laurier University
9:50am  10:40am
Semi-Robust Estimation and Redesign of Manipulable School Choice Mechanisms: the Case of Seoul
University of Chicago
10:40am  11:10am
Break
11:10am  12:00pm
Pragmatic Algorithmic Game Theory
University of British Columbia
12:00pm  1:00pm
Lunch
1:00pm  1:50pm
Managing Congestion in Dynamic Matching Markets
Stanford University
1:50pm  2:10pm
Break
2:10pm  3:00pm
Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence
University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business
3:00pm  3:50pm
Double Auction with Interdependent Values: Incentives and Efficiency
Stanford University

Friday, July 11

9:00am  9:50am
Need for Speed? Exchange Latency and Market Quality
VU University Amsterdam
9:50am  10:40pm
Price Constraints, Speed Competition, and Market Quality
College of Business at Illinois
10:40am  11:10am
Break
11:10am  12:00pm
The High-Frequency Trading Arms Race: Frequent Batch Auctions as a Market Design Response
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
12:00pm  1:00pm
Lunch
- See more at: http://bfi.uchicago.edu/events/midway-market-design-workshop#sthash.hkWGY3Te.dpuf