Preliminary program for the January 2017 American Economic Association meetings in Chicago

The AEA program has largely taken shape: 2017 Annual Meeting

Knuth award to Noam Nisan

Mazel tov to Noam Nisan!

Hebrew University's Nisan Cited for Fundamental and Lasting Contributions to Theoretical Computer Science

New York, September 8, 2016 —The 2016 Donald E. Knuth Prize will be awarded to Noam Nisan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for fundamental and lasting contributions to theoretical computer science in areas including communication complexity, pseudorandom number generators, interactive proofs, and algorithmic game theory. The Knuth Prize is jointly bestowed by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF). It will be presented at the 57th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2016) in New Brunswick, NJ, October 9–11.

Nisan’s work has had a fundamental impact on complexity theory, which examines which problems could conceivably be solved by a computer under limits on its resources, whether it is on its computation time, space used, amount of randomness or parallelism. One of the major ways in which computer scientists have explored the complexity limits is through the use of randomized algorithms. Nisan has made major contributions exploring the power of randomness in computations. His work designing pseudorandom number generators has offered many insights on whether, and in what settings, the use of randomization in efficient algorithms can be reduced.

Nisan has been a major player in Algorithmic Game Theory, and, through his 1999 paper with Amir Ronen, has laid the foundation of Algorithmic Mechanism Design. A mechanism is an algorithm or protocol that is explicitly designed so that rational participants, motivated purely by their self-interest, will achieve the designer's goals. This is of paramount importance in the age of the Internet, with many applications from auctions to network routing protocols. Nisan has designed some of the most effective mechanisms by providing the right incentives to the players. He has also shown that in a variety of environments there is a tradeoff between economic efficiency and algorithmic efficiency. Nisan is a co-editor of Algorithmic Game Theory, a fundamental text in the field.

He is also a leading authority in communication complexity, an area of computer science research that examines the amount of information that needs to be transferred between parties for computational problems. With Eyal Kushilevitz, Nisan co-authoredCommunication Complexity, an authoritative text in the field.

Nisan is professor of computer science and engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also a graduate of Hebrew University, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He received the 2012 Gödel Prize (with Elias Koutsoupias, Christos Papadimitriou, Amir Ronen, Tim Roughgarden and Éva Tardos), the 1990 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “Using Hard Problems to Create Pseudorandom Generators,” and the 2004 Michael Bruno Memorial Award.

The Donald E. Knuth Prize is named in honor of Donald Knuth of Stanford University who has been called the “father of the analysis of algorithms.”

Airbnb consider market design changes to reduce discrimination

The NY Times has the story:
Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

"Airbnb, based in San Francisco, said that it would institute a new nondiscrimination policy that goes beyond what is outlined in several anti-discrimination laws and that it would ask all users to agree to a “community commitment” starting on Nov. 1. The commitment asks people to work with others who use the service, “regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age.”

In addition, the company plans to experiment with reducing the prominence of user photos, which have helped signal race and gender. Airbnb said it would also accelerate the use of instant bookings, which lets renters book places immediately without host approval."
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There is a strong market design subtext to this story: Peter Coles, Airbnb's (new) chief economist, used to work at Harvard Business School, where some of his former colleagues conducted an experiment that helped focus on the possible discrimination problem.
Here's the current version of that paper:

Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy:Evidence from a Field Experiment
 Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky
 September 4, 2016

 Abstract
Online marketplaces increasingly choose to reduce the anonymity of buyers and sellers in order to facilitate trust. We demonstrate that this common market design choice results in an important unintended consequence: racial discrimination. In a field experiment on Airbnb, we find that requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names. The difference persists whether the host is African-American or White, male or female. The difference also persists whether the host shares the property with the guest or not, and whether the property is cheap or expensive. We validate our findings through observational data on hosts’ recent experiences with African-American guests, finding host behavior consistent with some, though not all, hosts discriminating. Finally, we find that discrimination is costly for hosts who indulge in it: hosts who reject  guests are able to find a replacement guest only 35% of the time. On the whole, our analysis suggests a need for caution: while information can facilitate transactions, it also facilitates discrimination.

The NBER market design lectures from the 2016 Summer Institute (Videos)

This summer the "methods lectures" at the NBER summer institute were on market design. Videos of the five lectures (each about 45 minutes long) are here.

Summer Institute 2016 Methods Lectures

July 26, 2015
Lecturers: Al Roth, Parag Pathak, Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi

Reading List

Al Roth
Game Theory and Market Design

You can download this video from here

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Parag Pathak
Design of Matching Markets

You can download this video from here

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Atila Abdulkadiroglu
Research Design meets Market Design

You can download this video from here

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Nikhil Agarwal
Revealed Preference Analysis in Matching Markets

You can download this video from here

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Itai Ashlagi
Matching Dynamics and Computation

You can download this video from here 


And you can see a short introductory video in which I am interviewed about market design here (and for the time being on the NBER home page, http://nber.org/). 

The California Growers Association, and Proposition 64 (to legalize recreational use of marijuana)

Humboldt County is a great place to see tall trees, which is a relaxing way to spend some time.

But there are other things growing high up California's north coast, and the California Growers Association is divided over whether any further changes in marijuana licensing laws would be a good thing or not. The Humboldt Independent has the story:
Growers Association Still Divided Over Proposition 64, by Keith Easthouse

"With three months to go before voters decide the matter, the California Growers Associations remains divided over the statewide legalization initiative known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act.

“Thirty-one percent say yes, 31 percent say no and 38 percent are undecided,” Hezekiah Allen, CGA’s executive director, said last week in reference to the group’s latest online survey of its membership.
...
"While CGA is a statewide organization, the bulk of its roughly 700 members — who include cultivators, manufacturers and retailers — come from three regions: The North Coast, with 161 members; the Sierra Foothills, with 145 members; and the Bay Area, with 145 members.

“Our membership [includes] the smaller, independently owned, value-added operations. We want a marketplace for those types of businesses,” Allen explained in an interview earlier this year.

The fact that there are provisions in Prop. 64 that are seen as overly friendly to big business interests and not friendly enough to small farmers lies at the heart of the doubts some members have about the measure."
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See my earlier post

The California marijuana market: the hippies now have to compete with the agribusinesses

Budapest in three photos

The parliament building, the Holocaust memorial by the river, and a shop with excellent, diverse flavors of ice cream...

MIÉRT GYERE EL? von Neumann lecture in Budapest on Who Gets What and Why, Sept 6

MIÉRT GYERE EL?
"We cordially invite you to the 2016 John von Neumann Award Ceremony and the public lecture held by the awardee on the 6th September. The title of the lecture will be "Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design”. 2012 Nobel laureate Professor Roth is going to talk about the matching markets hidden around us, from kindergarten choice through kidney transplantations to college football, and about how to make them work.

The lecture is organized by Rajk László College for Advanced Studies with the contribution of Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (KTI). The lecture will be held in English."
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Here's a news story announcing the event
Alvin E. Roth kapja az idei Neumann János-díjat
Google translate: Alvin E. Roth will receive this year's John Von Neumann Prize

The students at Rajk László College, who choose the recipient of this annual award, have done a good job in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann_Award

School choice discussion in Indianapolis

The Indy Star has the story:
Will Indy adopt central enrollment system for schools?

"A group is developing a one-stop enrollment system for Indianapolis schools but will the city’s largest education provider take part?

Indianapolis Public Schools leaders are weighing whether to join Enroll Indy, a nonprofit with plans to launch a unified enrollment process for IPS schools and charter schools within the district’s boundaries by next year.

The goal: Help parents find a school for their children in a city with growing options that feature charter schools, innovation network schools, magnet programs and more.

So far, IPS hasn’t made any commitments, though moving toward such a system is among the district’s priorities, IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee said.

“Whether Enroll Indy is the best fit for IPS to go down that path is to be determined,” Ferebee told IndyStar. “The concept itself could definitely benefit our families.”

Advocates for a central enrollment system say the way parents now shop for schools is disorganized. To find the best fit, parents must juggle different application deadlines and know what programs are out there, a daunting task with the city now playing host to more than 40 charter schools.

Wealthier families can find the process easier to navigate, placing lower-income families at a disadvantage, organizers say.

“If we’re going to say we have choice,” said Caitlin Hannon, Enroll Indy’s founder, “everybody should have equitable access to that choice.”

Hannon, a former IPS School Board member, said the group is hoping to launch its first application process next fall for the 2018-19 school year. But first it needs buy-in from the city’s schools, and Hannon started making her pitch to IPS this month.

A 2015 report by the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice found that the city’s schools are in “intense competition to enroll students.”

“There is no incentive for IPS, for example, to tell parents about charter schools. Or for Ball State University to ensure families understand the IPS magnet school application,” according to the report. “In both cases, doing so would not be in their best self-interest. For families, though the distinction between authorizers is less important. Parents are looking for the best school for their child, regardless of who runs it. For them, not having the information in one easy-to-access place doesn’t make sense.”

Families would apply through Enroll Indy to any participating school, where they’d rank their school preferences and be matched with a program.

Hannon said families would be asked their priorities, such as location and where siblings attend. Students are then matched to the school “they want the most that they can get into, based on those priorities,” Hannon said.

“I like to explain it as all schools lotteries happening at the same moment…,” she said.

An analysis of a similar system run in Denver Public Schools found not enough seats existed in high-performing schools to serve demand. That meant students often were assigned to lower-performing schools than initially requested.

But the system would come with perks, Hannon said. Parents would no longer have to hold spots for their children at multiple schools, making it easier for administrators to plan staffing needs...."

Market designers in Silicon Valley and beyond

Here's a story that mentions a handful number of economists doing market design inside tech firms:
 Goodbye, Ivory Tower. Hello, Silicon Valley Candy Store

It begins with this picture of Peter Coles (Airbnb's chief economist), whose quote about candy stores is echoed in the headline.

And here's a quote from Hal Varian:
"Understanding how digital markets work is getting a lot of attention now, said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. But, he said, “I thought it was fascinating years ago.”

Sotheby's to Offer John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Sotheby's to Offer John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

"For John F. Nash, the accolade of the Nobel Prize was a transformative event, particularly in the context of his struggles with mental illness. During an interview at a 2004 meeting of Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences, Nash acknowledged that the Nobel Prize “had a tremendous impact on my life, more than on the life of most Prize winners because I was in an unusual situation. I was unemployed at the time...And so I was in a position to be very much influenced by the recognition of my earlier work...I had become widely known, but in a sense it wasn’t officially recognized. I was quoted very frequently in the literature of economics and mathematics, but it’s quite different to get official recognition”.

With its gold medal in its original red morocco case, accompanying calligraphic diploma with an original watercolor drawing by Bengt Landin, the original box and attaché case for the diploma, and official letters from the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is one of the most complete documentations of the Nobel Prize to ever be offered for auction (estimate $2.5/4 million)."

A perfect match--documentary on the medical match by Dr Trisha Pasricha

Here's a description of a forthcoming documentary on the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), the resident match : A Perfect Match. And here's a piece on the doctor-filmmaker behind it, Dr. Trisha Pasricha, who graduated from Vanderbilt's medical school and went through the 2016 match: The Envelope, Please.

Apparently the film is scheduled for release around the time of the 2017 match, so look for it in March (Match Day will be March 17, 2017).

Reinhard Selten (1930-2016)

Reinhard Selten, a pioneer in both game theory and experimental economics, passed away last week. Rosemarie Nagel and Eyal Winter wrote this morning with the news. Here is an obituary from the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Trauer um berühmten Ökonom
Wirtschaftsnobelpreisträger Reinhard Selten gestorben
Der Mathematiker und Ökonom Reinhard Selten ist tot, wie die F.A.Z. aus seinem Umfeld erfuhr. Er war der bisher einzige Deutsche, der jemals den Ökonomie-Nobelpreis erhalten hat. 
Google translates the headline this way:
"Mourning famous economist
died Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten
The mathematician and economist Reinhard Selten is dead, as the FAZ learned from his environment. He was so far the only German who has ever received the Nobel Prize in economics."

That obit comes with this undated  photo:

Here's a picture of the two of us that Axel Ockenfels took in Cologne in 2006

Reinhard Selten and Al Roth

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Update: further obituaries
Reinhard Selten, German Nobel economist, dies aged 85

Reinhard Selten, Game Theorist Who Won Nobel Prize, Dies at 85
"Reinhard Selten was born on Oct. 5, 1930, in Breslau, a German city before World War II and now called Wroclaw in present-day Poland. His father ran a magazine-lending business, which the Nazi regime forced him to sell because he was Jewish.
"Selten and his mother were Protestant, yet his father’s Jewish roots forced Selten to leave school at 14 and he was refused entry to a trade. They left Breslau and became refugees in the German states of Saxony and Hesse as well as in Austria, where he worked as a farm hand after the war. His life in a village in Hesse required walking 3 ½ hours to and from school, during which he solved mathematical problems, he said in his biography for the Nobel Foundation.

“My situation as a member of an officially despised minority forced me to pay close attention to political matters very early in my life,” he said. “I had to learn to trust my own judgment rather than official propaganda or public opinion. This was a strong influence on my intellectual development.”
...
"Selten and his wife, the former Elisabeth Langreiner, were proficient in Esperanto, an invented language devised in the 19th century to assist international communication."


Reinhard Selten, Deutschlands einziger Ökonomie-Nobelpreisträger ist tot
Google t: Reinhard Selten, Germany's only Nobel laureate in economics is dead
"Reinhard Selten was like many older men with disheveled white hair and a little too big, held by suspenders suit. He chose his words carefully. But his eyes lit up when he talked about current projects, for example, a new experiment on decision theory. Even many years after his retirement, he devoted himself every day for two to three hours of research. Therefore he remained scientific coordinator and founder of the Laboratory of Experimental Economics at the University of Bonn.
...
" Finally ... he came to economic laboratory experiments. "I was familiar through my psychology studies with experiments that approach made sense to me." His credo: "Who wants to know what is in the real world going on, must make empirical and experimental work, the reality can be devised at the desk no."
"Not for nothing, the economist is therefore regarded as a pioneer of experimental economics. After receiving his doctorate in Frankfurt and lectureships in Berlin and Bielefeld was rare in 1984 to Bonn, where he founded the first European laboratory for economic experiments."


And, in the NY Times:
Reinhard Selten, Whose Strides in Game Theory Led to a Nobel, Dies at 85
By Sam Roberts

"Alvin E. Roth, another Nobel laureate in economics who teaches at Stanford University, wrote in 1999 that game theory and experimental economics were two of the most important developments in the field in the second half of the 20th century.
“Reinhard Selten is one of the pioneers in both of these endeavors, and he has been a leader in each of them throughout his career,” Professor Roth wrote. “This makes him unique: No one else in the world has made such important or such sustained contributions to both fields.”

More recently, from Andreas Ortmann in Australia:
In Memoriam Reinhard Selten (1930 – 2016), September 2, 2016 by Andreas Ortmann

India considers a Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 (banning commercial surrogacy, and restricting surrogacy to traditional couples)

Here's the government press release:
Cabinet approves introduction of the "Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016" 

"The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for introduction of the "Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016".

The Bill will regulate surrogacy in India by establishing National Surrogacy Board at the central level and State Surrogacy Boards and Appropriate Authorities in the State and Union Territories. The legislation will ensure effective regulation of surrogacy, prohibit commercial surrogacy and allow ethical surrogacy to the needy infertile couples. "

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Needless to say, there is lots of press reaction, on both sides, for multiple reasons. A sampling of headlines pro and con, with links:

The surrogacy bill is dangerous overreach

Ideological bias has trumped economic and ethical logic

Draft surrogacy bill violates fundamental right of people to choose modes of parenthood

Overseas Indians, foreigners, unmarried couples, single parents, live-in partners and gay couples are barred from commissioning the services of surrogate mothers.

Why the Surrogacy Bill is necessary

No more rent-a-womb: Why India needs to regulate surrogacy

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Update: and here's the bill: Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016

Google knocks on Uber's door with a ride-sharing service using Waze

The WSJ has the story about how Google/Alphabet will capitalize on Waze/Google Maps to offer drivers ride shares with people on their routes:
Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service -- Alphabet’s carpooling program in San Francisco offers rides at cheaper rates

"Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., began a pilot program around its California headquarters in May that enables several thousand area workers at specific firms to use the Waze app to connect with fellow commuters. It plans to open the program to all San Francisco-area Waze users this fall, the person said. Waze, which Google acquired in 2013, offers real-time driving directions based on information from other drivers.

"Unlike Uber and its crosstown San Francisco rival Lyft Inc., which each largely operate as on-demand taxi businesses, Waze wants to connect riders with drivers who are already headed in the same direction. The company has said it aims to make fares low enough to discourage drivers from operating as taxi drivers. Waze’s current pilot program charges riders at most 54 cents a mile—less than most Uber and Lyft rides—and, for now, Google doesn’t take a fee.
...
"In the San Francisco pilot, any local Waze user can sign up as a driver, but ridership is limited to roughly 25,000 San Francisco-area employees of several large firms, including Google, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. Riders are limited to two rides a day—intended to ferry them to and from work.

"In the planned expansion, anyone with the Waze app in the San Francisco area could sign up to be a rider or driver, the person said. Though Google currently doesn’t collect a fee, the company is exploring different rates in Israel and San Francisco, the person familiar with the matter said."
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I can't say I'm completely surprised. Here's an earlier post (which ended with "Stay tuned...":

Monday, July 6, 2015

Straw in the wind: Google's Waze is piloting a ridesharing marketplace in Israel

The American Economic Association celebrates Hal Varian as a Distinguished Fellow

Hal R. VarianDistinguished Fellow2015 

"Hal R. Varian is the Chief Economist at Google, which he joined first as a consultant in 2002. He is also an emeritus Professor in the School of Information, the Haas School of Business, and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Varian’s work has covered a wide range of topics during his 45 years of academic publications. He has made pioneering contributions in the area of industrial organization, including models of price discrimination, consumer search, and an important model of sales. In the area of public economics, he is the author of a very significant paper on optimal conditions for the public contribution to public goods.

"Varian has also published a series of influential contributions on nonparametric approaches to consumer demand, including developing a widely-used measure of consumer deviations from the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences. Interestingly, this measure has been employed recently in an area he may not have envisioned, as a measure of deviation from rationality in laboratory experiments.

"Hal Varian has also been a household name for generations of both undergraduate and graduate students studying economics, as his two textbooks Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach and Microeconomic Analysis have been read by many economists at the beginning of their careers, distilling in his trademark voice the range of diverse topics which comprise the basics of economics. One could hardly find a better person to write such textbooks, given his wide range of interests, his omnivorous curiosity, and his clarity in exposition, including, to the delight of the reader, the well-placed witty remark.

"Remarkably, Varian has not only established himself as a towering figure in economics, but has also contributed to other scientific disciplines. His book Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (authored with Carl Shapiro) has become an influential early guide to the information economy. In this vein, Varian has also made a number of contributions to strategic choices at Google, including work on the design of Google’s IPO which was executed as an auction.

"His most recent research has focused, among other topics, on how the information embedded in Internet searches contains very valuable information for future outcomes. In his work on nowcasting, Varian (with Hyunyoung Choi) shows that the number of searches online for cars or unemployment benefits allows one to obtain measures, respectively, for car sales and jobless claims weeks ahead of the official data release. This research has spawned substantial interest in the area, including the widespread use of the Google Trends service.

"Hal Varian started his career as an economist at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned his PhD in 1973. After teaching at MIT and at the University of Michigan, he returned to UC Berkeley in 1995 as the founding dean of the School of Information. He was a coeditor for the American Economic Review from 1987 to 1990, and is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also holds honorary doctorates from the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Karlsruhe, Germany."

French court suspends burkini ban: repugnant or protected (or both)?

There was something appropriate about swim suits being banned in France for being insufficiently revealing, but it turns out French citizens may have rights...

French court suspends burkini ban
Highest administrative court says prohibition goes against ‘fundamental liberties’ of citizens

"France’s highest administrative court has suspended a ban on the body-covering burkini swimsuits, saying that it went “against fundamental liberties” of French citizens to choose what to wear in public.

"The Conseil d’Etat said on Friday the ban in the Mediterranean town of Villeneuve-Loubet was “illegal”, adding that the ruling set a precedent that applied to all of the towns that have banned the garment this summer.

"The debate over the burkini has split France’s government and society. It has also drawn anger abroad after images showed French police appearing to force a Muslim woman to take off her tunic on a beach.

"Debates over Muslim integration in France have been tense following a series of terrorist attacks in the country by Islamist extremists. The discourse over the issue has been particularly polemical as politicians are gearing up for the presidential elections next year.

"Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls came out in support of the local burkini bans earlier this month, saying the swimsuit, which typically covers the body but not the face, reflects a world view based on “the enslavement of women”.

"The court on Friday said the decree to ban burkinis in Villeneuve-Loubet “seriously, and clearly illegally, breached the fundamental freedoms to come and go, the freedom of beliefs and individual freedom”.

"The suspension of the ban comes pending a definitive ruling. The court will take more time to prepare a judgment on the underlying legality of the case."
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Some other photos from recent news stories come to mind.
Here's one from Roger Cohen in the NYT on the Olympics:

And here's one recovered from the archives, of a policeman giving a bikini-clad woman a ticket for inappropriate beach attire in Italy in 1957.

These days we've seen the opposite picture in France:

Harvard and Stanford compared and contrasted, in French: la guerre de l’excellence

Les Echos has the story: Harvard-Stanford, la guerre de l’excellence, by
Lucie Robequain

Ms. Robequain spent some time on both campuses, and so her article is full of quotes from people you may know, about universities and university design...

Cocks Not Glocks at the University of Texas: Repugnant and protected transactions

The law allowing students to bring their guns to campus (if they are licensed and at least 21 years old) has now gone into effect, and has been greeted by protesters carrying dildos, which as it happens are banned on campus as obscene. The Chronicle of Higher Ed has the story (actually two):

A Provocative Protest Pits Pro- and Anti-Gun Activists

"Students rallying behind the "Cocks Not Glocks" theme distributed nearly 5,000 donated sex toys, which they encouraged students to brandish during a raucous daylong protest on Wednesday.
"By calling attention to the idea that displaying a sex toy could violate university rules, but carrying a gun into a classroom might not, "we wanted to fight absurdity with absurdity," said Ana López, a sophomore who opposes a state law expanding gun rights on campus."


Meet the Sex Shops in Austin, Tex., That Put the Cocks in ‘Cocks Not Glocks’

"Until 2008 it was illegal in Texas to sell or promote sex objects such as dildos and fake vaginas. The store’s legal problems and Texas’ law, Ms. Raridon said, attracted a film crew to document Forbidden Fruit’s story, eventually producing Dildo Diaries.

"In Texas, guns were legal but dildos were not," she said.

A similar scenario is playing out this year at the University of Texas at Austin, where, because of the state’s new campus-carry law, university rules allow students with permits to carry concealed guns, but prohibit the display of dildos, sex toys that resemble penises.

In protest, on Wednesday afternoon, the first day of classes, many Austin students strapped dildos to their backpacks. Their aim? To "fight absurdity with absurdity." The protest was dubbed "Cocks Not Glocks," after a popular brand of handgun.

Ever since the state ban on sex objects was overturned, Forbidden Fruit has made its mission not just the sale of sex toys but the destigmatization of sex and sexuality, Ms. Raridon said."

The Iranian market for kidneys

The AP has published this descriptive story about the Iranian market for kidneys:
IN IRAN, UNIQUE SYSTEM ALLOWS PAYMENTS FOR KIDNEY DONORS BY NASSER KARIMI AND JON GAMBRELL

Some paragraphs from the story:

"The AP gained rare access to Iran's program, visiting patients on dialysis waiting for an organ, speaking to a man preparing to sell one of his kidneys and watching surgeons in Tehran perform a transplant. All of those interviewed stressed the altruistic nature of the program - even as graffiti scrawled on walls and trees near hospitals in Iran's capital advertised people offering to sell a kidney for cash.
...
Iran started kidney transplants in 1967 but surgeries slowed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in part due to sanctions. Iran allowed patients to travel abroad through much of the 1980s for transplants - including to America. But high costs, an ever-growing waiting list of patients and Iran's grinding eight-year war with Iraq forced the country to abandon the travel-abroad program.

In 1988, Iran created the program it has today. A person needing a kidney is referred to the Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association, which matches those needing a kidney with a potential healthy adult donor. The government pays for the surgeries, while the donor gets health coverage for at least a year and reduced rates on health insurance for years after that from government hospitals.

Those who broker the connection receive no payment. They help negotiate whatever financial compensation the donor receives, usually the equivalent of $4,500. They also help determine when Iranian charities or wealthy individuals cover the costs for those who cannot afford to pay for a kidney.

Today, more than 1,480 people receive a kidney transplant from a living donor in Iran each year, about 55 percent of the total of 2,700 transplants annually, according to government figures. Some 25,000 people undergo dialysis each year, but most don't seek transplants because they suffer other major health problems or are too old.

Some 8 to 10 percent of those who do apply are rejected due to poor health and other concerns. The average survival rate of those receiving a new kidney is between seven to 10 years, though some live longer, according to Iranian reports.

In the United States, about a third of kidney donations come from living donors. The average kidney from a deceased donor lasts 10 years, while one from a living donor averages about 15 years, according to Dr. David Klassen of the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which oversees the U.S. transplant system. Recipients of living-donor kidneys in the U.S. fare better in part because they haven't been on dialysis as long before their transplant."

John Dickerson defends his Ph.D. thesis at CMU, on kidney exchange

John Dickerson will defend today:
Computer Science Thesis Defense, Friday, August 26, 2016 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm
8102 Gates-Hillman Center (or, via Skype, for those of us who are far away).

Here's his summary of what he's preparing to defend:

"The exchange of indivisible goods without money addresses a variety of constrained economic settings where a medium of exchange — such as money — is considered inappropriate. Participants are either matched directly with another participant or, in more complex domains, in barter cycles and chains with many other participants before exchanging their endowed goods. This thesis addresses the design, analysis, and real-world fielding of dynamic matching markets and barter exchanges. We present new mathematical models for static and dynamic barter exchange that more accurately reflect reality, prove theoretical statements about the characteristics and behavior of these markets, and develop provably optimal market clearing algorithms for models of these markets that can be deployed in practice. We show that taking a holistic approach to balancing efficiency and fairness can often practically circumvent negative theoretical results. We support the theoretical claims made in this thesis with extensive experiments on data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Kidney Paired Donation Pilot Program, a large kidney exchange clearinghouse in the US with which we have been actively involved. Specifically, we study three competing dimensions found in both matching markets and barter exchange: uncertainty over the existence of possible trades (represented as edges in a graph constructed from participants in the market), balancing efficiency and fairness, and inherent dynamism. For each individual dimension, we provide new theoretical insights as to the effect on market efficiency and match composition of clearing markets under models that explicitly consider those dimensions. We support each theoretical construct with new optimization models and techniques, and validate them on simulated and real kidney exchange data. In the cases of edge failure and dynamic matching, where edges and vertices arrive and depart over time, our algorithms perform substantially better than the status quo deterministic myopic matching algorithms used in practice, and also scale to larger instance sizes than prior methods. In the fairness case, we empirically quantify the loss in system efficiency under a variety of equitable matching rules. Next, we combine all of the dimensions, along with high-level human-provided guidance, into a unified framework for learning to match in a general dynamic model. This framework, which we coin FutureMatch, takes as input a high-level objective (e.g., "maximize graft survival of transplants over time") decided on by experts, then automatically (i) learns based on data how to make this objective concrete and (ii) learns the "means" to accomplish this goal — a task that, in our experience, humans handle poorly. We validate FutureMatch on UNOS exchange data and make policy recommendations based on it. Finally, we present a model for liver exchange and a model for multi-organ exchange; for the latter, we show that it theoretically and empirically will result in greater social welfare than multiple individual exchanges. Thesis Committee: Tuomas Sandholm (Chair) Avrim Blum Zico Kolter Ariel Procaccia Craig Boutilier (Google/University of Toronto) Alvin Roth (Stanford University)"

He'll be teaching CS at Maryland in the Fall.