Coping with Difficult Decisions – An Experimental Economics Perspective. Workshop in Dusseldorf in October

Ido Erev and Uri Gneezy will be speaking, and so will I.  The occasion is the formal ending of a long project begun by Reinhard Selten.

Here's the call for applications:

Call for Applications: Coping with Difficult Decisions – An Experimental Economics Perspective

Applications are invited for a Mini-School on “Coping with difficult decisions” to be held in Düsseldorf, Germany on October 20th, 2015. We are seeking advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to join us for what we hope will be a fruitful scientific exchange.

The workshop is designed to foster an exchange of ideas between scholars interested in decision-making in complex problems. Problems may be considered complex either because of uncertainty as to how a well-defined goal can be achieved, or because a goal is itself not easy to define. The perspective will be mainly that of experimental economics, but theoretical and empirical aspects are equally welcome. 

The tentative elements of the Mini-School, running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., are as follows: 

- The staff of the Research Center “Rationality in the Light of Experimental Economics” (Bonn) will give an introductory lecture on selected methodological issues in complex experiments with examples from their research results.

- A number of the participating young researchers will have the opportunity to present their own research results in short talks, followed by brief discussions. 

- Afterwards, there will be small-group lunches during which participants will be given the opportunity to discuss their planned research. 

- All participants will be invited to present a poster at a poste r session. 

All participants are also invited to take part in an afternoon symposium, scheduled 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. It will feature presentations by Prof Ido Erev (Technion), Prof Uri Gneezy (UC San Diego), and Prof Alvin Roth (Stanford University), and conclude with a panel discussion. The symposium constitutes the second part of the closing workshop of the Research Center “Rationality in the Light of Experimental Economics” founded by Prof Reinhard Selten in 2006 and funded by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. 

We expect that applicants will typically be from the fields of Economics, Finance, Management and Organizations, and Psychology, but students from other areas, such as Computer Science,are also welcome. 

Applicants should 
- provide their CV, 
- make clear their particular connection to the topic of the Mini -School, 
- briefly sketch their potential contribution. 

The maximum number of participants is 32. Limited funding (€200 for European and €600 for non- European students) is available for travel and accommodation. When applying, please indicate whether you would need funding. 

Applications should be sent to rilexecon@uni-bonn.de 
not later than September 20th . 

Tie breaking in unbalanced matching markets--a new paper by Itai Ashlagi and Afshin Nikzad.

What matters in tie-breaking rules? How competition guides design, by Itai Ashlagi  and Afshin Nikzad

August 2015

Abstract

School districts that adopt the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism to assign students to schools face the tradeoff between fairness and efficiency when selecting how to break ties among equivalent students. We analyze a model with with random generated preferences for students and compare two mechanisms differing by their tie-breaking rules: DA with one single lottery (DA-STB) and DA with a separate lottery for each school (DA-MTB). We identify that the balance between supply and demand in the market is a prominent factor when selecting a tie-breaking rule. When there is a surplus of seats, we show that neither random assignments under these mechanisms stochastically dominates each other, and, the variance of student’s assignments is larger under DA-STB. However, we show that there is essentially no tradeoff between fairness and efficiency when there is a shortage of seats: not only that DA-STB (almost) stochastically dominates DA-MTB, it also results in a smaller variance in student’s rankings. We further find that under DA-MTB many pairs of students would benefit from directly exchanging assignments ex post when there is a shortage of seats, while only few such pairs exist when there is a surplus of seats. Our findings suggest that it is more desirable that “popular” schools use a single lottery over a separate lottery in order to break ties, while in other schools there is a real tradeoff.

Migrants aren't widgets: refugee resettlement is a matching problem

Here's an op-ed published in Politico Europe today over my byline:

OPINION

Migrants aren’t widgets

An American Nobel economist’s pressing advice for Europe.

By ALVIN E. ROTH

 

9/3/15, 2:04 PM CET

The Mediterranean isn’t an effective barrier between Europe and refugee crises in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Europe could turn this challenge into a manageable opportunity to protect refugee lives as well as its own economy. But European countries must first agree on a strategy recognizing that refugees are not widgets to be distributed or warehoused. They are people trying to make choices in their best interest. Those decisions are often a matter of life and death.

August began with news of Abdul Rahman Haroun, the Sudanese man who, after having already risked his life to reach Europe by boat, put his life in peril again, coming within yards of successfully crossing the “Chunnel” on foot to reach England and claim asylum before being arrested. Then, on August 27, 71 men, women and children, at least some of whom were Syrian, were found dead in a truck near Vienna. These refugees also had already somehow safely reached Europe, but boarded a smuggler’s truck to make it to another European destination. Instead, they suffocated and perished.

These stories are shocking but not surprising. The developing world hosts over 80 percent of asylum seekers, but a growing number are making their way to industrialized countries. These refugees are trying to get to specific countries within Europe. Sweden, for example, received 81,325 asylum seekers in 2014, or 8,365 refugees per one million Swedes. In contrast, while Greece had 34,422 boat arrivals in 2014, only 9,435 applied for asylum in Greece. That’s only 859 per one million Greeks.

Greece and Italy have weak economies and weaker asylum systems. So refugees continue to risk their lives and conceal their identities until arriving at a chosen destination, which means some European countries are getting far more refugee arrivals than others. In July, the Luxembourg presidency of the EU tried to get member states to pledge to relocate 40,000 refugees throughout Europe. While that would be a small fraction of asylum seekers, governments agreed to take in only 32,256 “redistributed” refugees.

Refugee relocation is what economists call a matching problem, in the sense that different refugees will thrive differently in different countries. Determining who should go where, and not just how many go to each country, should be a major goal of relocation policy.

Far more refugees will want to go to countries with thriving economies than those countries have been willing to take. But economic strength isn’t the only factor.

Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS, the refugee organization that helped resettle my wife, Emilie, when her family fled from Egypt, told me that “refugees go and integrate where they have family, where they have community, or where they think they can support themselves — in that order.”

The issue matters not just because we want refugees to do well, but because it’s hard to keep them where they don’t want to be. In the U.S., where refugees may relocate at will, this is especially clear.

As Hetfield says, “Many Somali refugees initially settled around the country subsequently migrated to Lewiston, Maine. Lewiston has a weak economy but an established Somali community. Consequently, efforts to resettle these refugees elsewhere in the U.S. were less effective than they could have been. Their preferences should have been taken into account from the start.”

In Europe, rules are less clear. Asylees in one EU country must often wait years before they can work in other EU countries. But even if they could effectively be prevented from relocating (and can they be?), preventing refugees from acting in their own best interest is not in Europe’s best interest either. Shouldn’t the goal be to integrate refugees into the economy where they can be the most productive? If that is a goal, the information and preferences of the refugees themselves about where they could thrive shouldn’t be ignored.

My wife, Emilie, is living proof that refugees, when resettled in a conducive environment, can be a boon to their adoptive countries. After getting her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, Emilie helped pioneer a new discipline, cognitive engineering, focused on understanding the kinds of information that people need to solve the problems they face and making that information available to them. This work helps make many complicated systems safer. Others like her would gladly add their own contributions if given the chance.

We have learned in America that refugees can be assets, but that we could do a better job of integrating them into our economy. It will be hard for that to happen in Europe until there is a shared vision for an orderly process to allow refugees to go where they know they will do best.

Alvin Roth, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on matching and market design, is a professor at Stanford University, and author of “Who Gets What and Why: The Hidden World of Matchmaking and Market Design” (HarperCollins, 2015).

Do payments systems like bitcoin change which transactions are treated as repugnant?

Rod Garratt of the NY Fed and UC Santa Barbara explores the idea that distributed payment systems like Bitcoin might change the manner in which some transactions come to be effectively regarded as repugnant:

A Distributed Version of Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets

"But who decides what is repugnant? In democratic societies, these decisions are ultimately made by the lawmakers, who are influenced by their constituents. Of course, it’s possible that an influential minority could exert undue influence on this process, but let us, for the sake of argument, say that the process is perfectly democratic, so that acts deemed repugnant actually reflect the majority’s wishes. What this basically means is that, in a democratic society, classifying things as repugnant, or declassifying them, requires some form of public debate and consensus formation. 

Or does it? Instead of relying on laws that punish repugnant behavior, it is conceivable that individuals or institutions might intervene directly, by preventing the payments from occurring in the first place. For the most part, existing payment platforms do not impose restrictions on the types of transactions that they facilitate beyond the requirement that the transactions be legal. However, it is worth noting that in addition to requiring that transactions be legal, credit card companies also reserve the right to limit activity that they, at their own discretion, deem potentially harmful to their brands (see rules documents from Visa, Section 1.3.3.4, and MasterCard, Section 5.9.7). 

In the last few years, a new type of payment system has emerged: the distributed public ledger. This new technology facilitates payments in terms of virtual currencies, most notably Bitcoin. The Bitcoin protocol uses a “proof-of-work” process that decentralizes clearing and settlement. Agents, known as miners, compete to win the right to validate transactions. Without delving into details, the important aspects are that (1) a miner’s probability of winning the right to process transactions is proportional to how much computing power he or she assigns to the task and (2) miners can choose which transactions to validate. This means that a miner can avoid validating transactions that he or she considers repugnant and that, if a majority of miners agreed, such transactions can be significantly delayed or even prevented. 

Virtual currencies like Bitcoin create a new opportunity for expressing views on repugnance that allows individuals to impede or even prevent transactions that they deem repugnant."

...

"There is at least one example where something like this has already occurred. Satoshi Dice is an online gaming site that uses bitcoin as its primary form of payment. In the spring of 2013, members of the Bitcoin community started to complain about these transactions and reportedly started excluding them from the transaction blocks that they were processing."

Axel Ockenfels is celebrated in the German press as an inderdisciplinary market designer

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung celebrates Axel Ockenfels as one of 24 German economists who matter.

Die Mauer muss weg--Axel Ockenfels hat die Grenzen seines Fachs nie akzeptiert. Deshalb überschreitet er sie in seiner Arbeit konsequent.

Google translate:
"The Wall must fall--Axel Ockenfels has never accepted the boundaries of his craft. Therefore, it exceeds them consistently in his work."

Deceased organ donation in India

The Times of India has the story:  Many pledge, but long way to harvest

"Almost one lakh people have signed up for organ donation dur ing the annual organ donation day campaign of the Times of India, over the last three years. That could translate into several lakhs of lives transformed or saved if all the pledged organs could be retrieved. However, the organ donation process is yet to be streamlined and not all donors are able to donate their organs because of the lack of infrastructure and adequate awareness.

"Thousands have registered as donors in a span of a fortnight. But experience has shown that of thousands of people who pledge, only a few are likely to convert into donations after brain death.
...
"One of the most glaring inadequacies in the organ donation programmes is the lack of a national registry for organ donation, a centralised registry in the form of an electronic database, readily available to personnel involved in organ donation. Some states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala which have successful organ donation programmes in place have taken the initiative to set up their own centralised registry for organ donation, but a national-level database is still missing more than two decades after the Transplantation of Human Organs Act was enacted in 1994. In 2011, the 1994 law was amended to mandate various kinds of registries to track the organ transplantation system.The rules to implement the amendments were framed in March last year. Servicing large national-level registries would need support and financial commitment from the government. But almost Rs 150 crore allocated for it remained unutilized.
...
"Several people working to boost organ donation have pointed out that along with a registry for donors, there is the need for a recipients' registry too. The concept of cadaveric organ donation is built upon public trust which expects a system in place to ensure fair distribution of the organs donated. A centralized registry for recipients helps to build this trust as it guarantees fair allocation of organs for transplant. Lot more people would be willing to donate if they knew that there are strict rules dictating how transplant surgeons and coordinators determined who should be placed on the waiting list for organs and if the system was fully transparent, stated volunteers who work on campaigns for organ donation.
...
"Transplantation procedures are restricted almost entirely to private hospitals and thus remain beyond the poor and middle classes' reach. Even in public hospitals, where transplantations are infrequent, a liver transplant costs about Rs 12 lakh.With post-transplant costs of around Rs 10,000 a month, for immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the new organ, such procedures remain inaccessible for the poor. If no system is put in place by the government to help fund the cost of transplants, India's organ transplant programme would become one accessible only for a small section of those rich enough to afford the surgery and treatment costs. There is an urgent need for the government to come up with financial support to make transplant surgeries accessible for all who need them, even the poor."

Scott Kominer's market design course at Harvard

Market design is available again at Harvard, taught this year by Scott Kominers.

You can find his syllabus/reading list here.

And below is the course announcement:

Market Design

---

Economics 2099 -- Harvard University -- Fall 2015 

Description:

This course explores the theory and practice of market design. Key topics include auctions, labor market matching, school choice programs, online markets, organ exchange systems, financial market design, and matching with contracts. The first half of the course will introduce market design and its technology; subsequent weeks will discuss recent papers alongside their classical antecedents.

Information on Logistics, Requirements, and Readings:

See the course syllabus (posted July 27, 2015).

Assignment Deadlines:

A short abstract of the research proposal will be due on October 6, 2015, and a short summary will be due on November 10, 2015. The final proposal will be due on December 10, 2015 (the last day of Reading Period).

Schedule:

Date	Topic	Guest(s)
September 8, 2015	Introduction/Overview
September 15, 2015	The Market Designer's Toolbox
September 22, 2015	School Choice	Nikhil Agarwal, Parag Pathak
September 29, 2015	Generalized Matching
October 13, 2015	Auction Theory
October 20, 2015	Internet Markets	Ben Edelman, Andrey Fradkin
October 27, 2015	Auctions in Practice
November 3, 2015	Organ Allocation	Carmen Wang
November 10, 2015	Dynamic Allocation	Neil Thakral, Utku Ünver
November 17, 2015	Markets for Intellectual Property
November 24, 2015	New Horizons	Mike Luca, David Parkes, Ben Roth
December 1, 2015	Student Talks/Course Wrap

Internal Harvard Website:

https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/4770.

A new journal for market design

Peter Biro brings to my attention the announcement of a new journal that seems to be focused at least partly on market design.  The journal's website and some of the editors (although not the ones I know) are associated with the University of York's Centre for Mechanism and Institution Design, which lists among its interests many areas in which elegant theory has led to practical design. I don't know more about the journal yet, and not all of the links work, but the composition of the Editorial Board suggests that it may have a chance of becoming an important journal, particularly if they have a plan for attracting good papers...

Here's the announcement...

Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design An open-access journal in mechanism and institution design
Main page	Submit a paper	Society
Editorial Board Editor Zaifu Yang Managing editors Tommy Andersson Yuan Ju Paul Schweinzer Associate Editors Peter Biro Randall Calvert Kim-Sau Chung Michael Suk-Young Chwe Xiaotie Deng Lars Ehlers Aytek Erdil Alex Gershkov Sayantan Ghosal Claus-Jochen Haake John Hatfield Paul Healy Jean-Jacques Herings Sergei Izmalkov Fuhito Kojima Gleb Koshevoy Dinard van der Laan Jingfeng Lu Jinpeng Ma David Manlove Debasis Mishra Rudolf Müller Tymofiy Mylovanov Sérgio Parreiras David Pérez-Castrillo Frank Riedel József Sákovics Alejandro Saporiti Ella Segev Arunava Sen Akiyoshi Shioura Ning Sun Dolf Talman Akihisa Tamura Jacco Thijssen Walter Trockel Utku Ünver James Walker David Wettstein Charles Zheng Acknowledgments	The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design is published by the Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design.The first issue of the journal is planned for 2016. Aim and scopeThe Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design aims to publish original articles that deal with the issues of designing, improving, analysing and testing economic, financial, political, or social mechanisms and institutions. It welcomes theoretical, empirical, experimental, historical and practical studies. It promotes clarity of thought and constructive, rigorous and logical research. We particularly encourage less experienced researchers such as recent PhD graduates to submit their work to the Journal and are sympathetic towards those papers that are novel and innovative but which, being outside the main paradigms, have been unsuccessful elsewhere. We hope that the published articles will be interesting and valuable to a broad audience from the areas of economics, finance, politics, law, computer science, management, history, mathematics, government, and related disciplines. The journal is an open-access, independent, peer-reviewed, non-profit, English-language journal with the purpose of disseminating and sharing the latest knowledge and understanding of the subject widely. For further information, please contact Tommy Andersson, Yuan Ju, Paul Schweinzer, or Zaifu Yang.

Design Mechanisms and Institutions that Improve Efficiency, Equality, Prosperity, Stability and Sustainability in Society.

Economics is useful, diverse and fun: new video from the American Economics Association

Do you advise students on careers? The AEA has produced a video for prospective economists. The video is here and here. Below is the description:

August 28, 2015 The American Economics Association has launched an informational video entitled "A career in Economics . . . it's much more than you think." The 9-minute film is aimed at prospective or first-year students who may be investigating economics as a career option but are unclear how broadly a degree in economics can be applied. The film makes effort to dispel entrenched misconceptions about who economists are and what they do. Economics can be broadly defined as the study of human behaviors aimed at finding solutions to help improve peoples' lives. Viewers are reminded that a degree in economics doesn't have to be about finance, banking, business, or government, . . . it can be useful to all individuals and can lead to many interesting and fulfilling career choices. The video features four individuals offering insights on how economics can be a tool for solving very human problems and they provide some interesting perspectives on how they chose economics as a career path. The film also helps raise awareness about the need for more diverse voices in the field of economics. Marcella Alsan, a physician of infectious disease, discusses why she needed to pursue a degree in economics to improve the lives of her patients. Randall Lewis, a research scientist at Google, uses economics and "big data" as tools to improve the functioning of markets. Britni Wilcher, a PhD student of economics, offers insight on some misconceptions about economists and factors influencing her career path decision. Peter Henry, dean at the NYU Stern School of Business, points to the true nature of economics and the importance of diverse voices informing the field. All economics departments and placement offices are invited to share this video with their students. Available free at the AEA website and on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/135871291

Law and market design at Duke

It looks like Kim Krawiec et al. are up to something interesting at Duke.

Duke Law Project on Law and Markets focuses on strengths and limits of markets

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August 10, 2015Duke Law News

Duke Law faculty and students are undertaking a yearlong study of topics at the intersection of law and markets to investigate foundational questions about how law can address market inequalities, how market forces might be effective in areas where laws are ineffective, and the philosophical underpinnings of market-driven and regulatory approaches to various issues.

The Duke Law Project on Law and Markets, led by Professors Kimberly Krawiec and Joseph Blocher, includes faculty workshops, a colloquium for faculty and seminar students, a speaker series, and a symposium that will result in a volume of relevant scholarship in the journal Law and Contemporary Problems.

“Our goal is to bring the community together around a broad topic and to really think hard about it,” said Krawiec, the Kathrine Robinson Everett Professor of Law. “Joseph and I were excited about law and markets because of work that the two of us had been doing separately about the role of markets as they relate to law.”

Krawiec, a scholar of corporate law, securities, and derivatives, also studies non-traditional and taboo markets, such as those for babies — via sperm and egg donation, surrogacy, and adoption — and for transplant-ready human organs. In some of his recent works Blocher, a scholar of constitutional and property law, has contemplated interstate and sovereign border markets as a possible solution to a range of economic and political problems.

About 30 faculty members took part in the project’s first event on June 1, a discussion of a controversial 1970 article on blood donation, which argued that a system based on altruism is superior to a market-based system regulated by self-interest. “We had a very lively, two-hour discussion,” said Blocher. “It was a great kick-off.”

Other summer workshops have included a discussion of markets and environmental regulation led byJonathan Wiener, the William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law and Professor of Environmental Policy and Professor of Public Policy, and one on the relationship between economic development and other freedoms led by Barak Richman, the Edgar P. and Elizabeth C. Bartlett Professor of Law and Professor of Business Administration.

The wide range of topics is, in many ways, the point of the overall inquiry, Krawiec said.

“It’s related to a broader notion of market design, which is popular with economists,” she said. “Lawyers have a role to play, because many of the objections to having markets operate in certain areas are things that can be dealt with by law.” The law, for example, can address inequalities by providing subsidies, she said.

“Markets involve more than money changing hands. A market is a mechanism for allocating scarce resources, and the law has a lot to say about how that should operate, given the various public policy goals we have.” That’s true, she said, of organ donation, “which is not a literal market, because it’s illegal to trade in organs.”

The Project on Law and Markets was inspired by the Duke Project on Custom and Law that occurred over the course of the 2011-2012 academic year and resulted in a symposium issue of the Duke Law Journalwith articles on such topics as customs in the art market, norms in kidney exchange programs, and how the Internal Revenue Service draws on custom to under-enforce portions of the tax code. The initiative sparked a number of scholarly collaborations and Blocher and Krawiec hope that success will be replicated in the current project.

“We’re hoping to connect people who might not otherwise be connected in dealing with problems of law, problems of scarcity, problems of inequality,” said Blocher. “Obviously the work that Jennifer Jenkins andJames Boyle do regarding the public domain and what goes into and what stays out of the market is hugely important and interesting, but other scholars might not connect it to their work. It might just be seen as a sort of walled-off, intellectual property issue.” Boyle, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, is a leading scholar of intellectual property and the founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which Jenkins ’97 directs. 

The two-credit Law and Markets Colloquium will engage students in discussion of assigned readings and workshop presentations on law and markets. Along with the faculty workshops and symposium, it is likely to expose a range of assumptions and differences of opinion about the role of law and the role of markets, said Blocher. “People are going to have very different, maybe irreducible, normative visions about what’s good and proper for the use of money or other market incentives. But like any question of law, markets, or justice, we don’t anticipate a single answer.”

“It’s more about unearthing the questions we should be thinking about,” said Krawiec.

Assisted dying: the debate in England

The Telegraph has the latest:
‘There is nothing sacred about suffering’, insist faith leaders in assisted dying call--Bishops, priests and leading Rabbis break ranks with mainstream religious case opposition to assisted dying

"Religious teachings that elevate suffering and pain as something “sacred” should not be used to prevent terminally ill people taking their own lives, leading Christian and Jewish clerics have insisted.

"An alliance of bishops, priests and rabbis have broken ranks with the religious establishment to voice support for plans to change the law to allow a form of assisted suicide in the UK for the first time.

"In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, they argue that far from being a sin, helping terminally ill people to commit suicide should be viewed simply as enabling them to “gracefully hand back” their lives to God.

"There is, they insist “nothing sacred” about suffering in itself and no one should be “obliged to endure it”, they insist.

"Signatories of the letter, in support of a bill to be debated by MPs next month, include Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who stunned the Church of England last year when he announced that he had changed his mind on the issue.
...
"MPs are due to debate an Assisted Dying Bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Rob Marris next month.

"It would allow people thought to have no more than six months to live and a “settled intention” to end their life to be allowed be given a lethal dose of drugs on the authority of two doctors.

While most of the major religious groups in the UK have voiced opposition, some polls suggest a majority of people who identify themselves with a faith are in favour of relaxing the law."

Some histories of organ transplantation

I can't vouch for any of these...most are un-refereed internet pages...some starting with events reported from quite long ago, regarding skin and bones, for example.

From organdonor.gov: Timeline of Historical Events Significant Milestones in Organ Donation and Transplantation

http://www.organtransplants.org/understanding/history/


http://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/learn/about-transplantation/history/

http://www.donatelifeny.org/all-about-transplantation/organ-transplant-history/

https://www.unos.org/transplantation/history/

http://www.mtf.org/news_history_of_transplantation.html


Here's a journal article, whose history begins with kidneys...
Organ transplantation: historical perspective and current practice

C. J. E. Watson1,* and J. H. Dark, 

Br. J. Anaesth. (2012) 108 (suppl 1): i29-i42.

doi: 10.1093/bja/aer384 

"A brief history of transplantation
Kidney transplantation
Since Jaboulay and Carrel developed the techniques
required to perform vascular anastomoses at the turn of
the last century, there has been a desire to treat organ
failure by transplantation. Jaboulay was the first to
attempt this in 1906, treating two patients with renal
failure by transplanting a goat kidney into one and a pig
kidney into the other; in both cases, he joined the renal
vessels to the brachial vessels.1 Both transplants failed
and both patients died. At that time, there was no alternative
to death if renal failure developed, and it would be
another 38 yr before the first haemodialysis machine was
invented. The first use of a human kidney for transplantation
followed in 1936 when Yu Yu Voronoy, a Ukrainian
surgeon working in Kiev, performed the first in a series of
six transplants to treat patients dying from acute renal
failure secondary to mercury poisoning, ingested by its
victims in an attempt to commit suicide. All the transplants
failed, in large part because of a failure to appreciate the
deleterious effect of warm ischaemia; the first kidney was
retrieved 6 h after the donor died.
One limitation to transplantation then, as now, was the
lack of suitable donor organs. The initial pioneers had used
animal organs or organs from long deceased humans. In
the 1950s, there came a realization of the need to avoid
excessive ischaemic injury and kidneys from live donors
began to be used. Some of these were from the relatives of
the recipient; others were unrelated patients having a good
kidney removed for other reasons. The surgical technique
also needed refinement; while a kidney based on the thigh
or arm vessels might be technically straightforward, and possibly
adequate for the short-term treatment of acute renal
failure, it was not a realistic solution for the long term.
That solution came from France in 1951 and involved
placing the kidney extraperitoneally in an iliac fossa, where
the external iliac vessels are easy to access and the
bladder is close by for anastomosis to the donor ureter;
this is the technique still used today.
Having overcome the technical issues of vascular anastomosis
and placement of the kidney, there remained the
problem of the immune response. Medawar’s work during
and after the Second World War studying the rejection of
skin grafts had demonstrated the potency of the immune
system.2 At that time, attempts to control the immune
system using irradiation had proved either ineffectual or
lethal. The first successful transplant therefore came about
by avoiding an immune response altogether, which Joseph
Murray’s team achieved by performing a kidney transplant
between identical twins.3 There then followed a series of
identical twin transplants around the world, with the first in
the UK being performed in Edinburgh by Woodruff and
colleagues4 in 1960."

Do participants try to strategize in strategy-proof mechanisms? Alex Rees-Jones surveys medical students about the NRMP.

One of the papers I heard at the recent SITE conference at Stanford was this one, reporting a survey of medical students engaged in the NRMP.

Suboptimal Behavior in Strategy-Proof Mechanisms:Evidence from the Residency Match 
Alex Rees-Jones
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
August 10, 2015

Abstract: Strategy-proof mechanisms eliminate the possibility for gain from strategic misrepresentation of preferences. If market participants respond optimally, these mechanisms permit the observation of true preferences and avoid the implicit punishment of market participants who do not try to “game the system.” Using new data from a flagship application of the matching literature—the medical residency match—I study if these potential benefits are fully realized. I present evidence that some students pursue futile attempts at strategic misrepresentation, and examine the causes and correlates of this behavior. These results inform the assessment of the costs and benefits of strategy-proof mechanisms, and demonstrate broad challenges in mechanism design.

From a survey of graduating medical students: "I find that 17% of students self-assess their preference reporting strategy to be nontruthful, with 5% directly attributing this nontruthful behavior to strategic considerations."

Many dialysis patients are not referred to transplant centers in their first years on dialysis (incentives matter...)

Too Few Kidney Dialysis Patients Referred for Organ Transplant, Study Finds
Only about one in four in Georgia get further evaluation

"Although a kidney transplant is considered the best hope for people struggling with end-stage renal disease, a new study conducted in Georgia found three-quarters of these patients weren't even evaluated for a possible transplant within their first year of dialysis.

That finding flies in the face of U.S. regulations that require all dialysis centers to fully inform these patients about all available treatment options. Those options include kidney transplantation, a typically less expensive intervention than ongoing dialysis and one that also promises greater longevity and a better quality of life, the researchers noted.

What's more, the team found a huge variation in statewide referral rates. Some dialysis centers failed to send even a single first-year patient for a transplant consultation, while others referred 75 percent of their new patients."
**********

Is unified enrollment school choice coming to Indianapolis?

"Caitlin Hannon gave up her job and her Indianapolis Public School Board seat for an idea that, while a pretty good bet to give her a future role in education in the city, is far from a slam dunk to succeed.
She’s taken the leap from suggesting as unified enrollment system as a board member to starting one herself. Her goal goes beyond just matching families with the best schools for their children."

Here's the rest of the story, by Scott Elliott at Chalkbeat...

Hannon’s goal: Help parents make choices and give schools useful data
Caitlin Hannon touts a common application system's benefits for families, charter schools and IPS

"Hannon said her goal is to create a single application parents could use to request schools for the 2017-18 school year. Her plan is to have it ready in late 2016 before the district normally begins gearing up its magnet school lottery.
Her vision is a system parents can use to learn about schools, rank them by preference and request children be assigned to their favorites.
A unified enrollment system is not a unique idea. New Orleans is a well known example among a handful of cities that have tried it."

Storytellers prefer heroes, although research and development is done by teams...

I've spent some time helping my publisher(s) sell my book Who Gets What and Why since it came out in early June, so I have a renewed appreciation of how journalism works.

Stories are important. The easiest stories have heroes, and since books have authors, authors are even more likely to be painted as heroes in news stories about their book than in other kinds of stories. That's not crazy: authors are in many ways the heroes of the story of their book, even if the story in the book involves lots of people.

And off course, stories about science are more often stories about teams than about heroes.

Mentions of collaborators are relentlessly edited out of short pieces. That's one reason I liked writing a book (although, as it turns out, even books have editors who fight against "excessive detail"). But I've been very fortunate in my collaborators, and I was able to tell some of their stories.

If you haven't been keeping up, here are some of the stories about Who Gets What and Why that I've blogged about since the book came out: http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/search/label/WGWaW 

Some pictures from the Econometric Society World Congress in Montreal

There were many market design talks in Montreal this week: see if you can identify these well known market designers..

Organ donation in Qatar

Here's a story from Al Jazeera:
Finding organ donors among Qatar's Muslim community
The Qatari government offers a series of incentives to those who donate their organs.

"In late 2012, the head of HMC's Organ Transplant Committee, Dr. Yousuf al-Masalamani, told the local Al Arab newspaper that expatriates made up 99 percent of people on Qatar's donor registry.

A report by Doha News last year said that of 20,000 new donor registrants that summer, less than 1,000 were Arab, including Qatari nationals.

Yosri said that superstitions and misunderstandings about religious opinions on the matter were behind low sign-up rates among those of Arab origin or Muslim faith.

"Some people believe that by signing up to give their organs after death, they are tempting fate and they will die … That's silly, obviously nobody is going to die before their time," Yosri told Al Jazeera, adding many were unaware of religious edicts encouraging the practise.

"I give most Muslims, who are unsure, a leaflet containing a fatwa by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and the next day they've made their mind up and they're telling me they want to donate," Yosri said, referring to a religious decree by the Qatar-based Egyptian religious scholar, widely followed in Muslim-majority countries.
...
"Beyond religious arguments, the Qatari government offers a series of incentives for those who donate their organs. Living donors, who give parts of their liver or a kidney, benefit from comprehensive medical insurance for life, discounted plane tickets and compensation for loss of income during medical procedures.

"Families of deceased donors are given social care and support, as well as financial help to cover the cost of transferring the body to their home country.

A privacy-preserving market design intervention to avoid Tay Sachs disease

Scott Kominers draws my attention to a 1987 news note in JAMA, with a privacy-sensitive market design for keeping people's sensitive genetic information private.

Tay Sachs disease is a lethal recessive-gene disease: when two carriers of the relatively rare gene have a child, they risk having a child who will be born with the disease. Genetic screening offers a chance to alert potential marriage partners if they both carry the gene. But in some of the Jewish communities in which the gene is relatively more common, there was a reluctance to be tested, for fear of being stigmatized as a carrier of the disease. An organization called Dor Yeshorim was formed to offer the following service:

 "All those taking the blood test would be assigned a number, and their test results filed at the screening center by number alone; names would not be recorded. Nor would those being tested be informed of the results, thus eliminating the anxiety of stigmatization. When a match was proposed, the matchmaker would call the screening center, revealing only the prospective couple's numbers. The matchmaker would then be informed whether the proposed match would involve two Tay-Sachs carriers.

"If the match were not to involve two carriers, marriage plans could proceed. If both parties were identified as carriers, the matchmaker would be told only that the two families should contact the center to verify the couple's numbers. The families would then be informed that both of the children were carriers and referred to counseling. Thus, carriers would learn their status only if they were to be matched with other carriers. Then both families could report that the match had failed to come about for other reasons and could look for new matches.

 by Beverly Merz, "Matchmaking Scheme Solves Tay-Sachs Problem," JAMA Nov 20, 1987, 2636-7 (Medical News and Perspectives)

The Hal and Al Show: Hal Varian interviews me about "Who Gets What — and Why," at Google (video)

I got to chat with Hal Varian at Google last week (Aug 10), about my book, Who Gets What and Why, and how computer science and economics come together in market design. Here's the video (55 minutes).




And here's a photo, taken by Yair Sakols