Data access makes research on schools (and school choice) hard

Courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, an intrepid reporter lets us in on some of the emails about data access between the Louisiana Department of Education and school choice researchers Parag Pathak and Atila Abdulkadiroglu. These shed light on a controversy and some name calling having to do with a study showing some early problems in Louisiana's school voucher program. The name calling involved accusations that the researchers rushed to publish without waiting for more data. The emails show that they tried unsuccessfully to get more data from the D of E, without success.

Who Gets Access to School Data? A Case Study in How Privacy, Politics & Budget Pressures Can Affect Education Research  by Matt Barnum
"Just who gets access to education data? A case study in La. after a critical early study on school vouchers"

"In the early days of 2016, a study by MIT and Duke University researchers showing the first year of Louisiana’s school voucher program led to marked decreases in student achievement landed in the press and policy worlds with a degree of attention that went beyond the usual wonky provinces of education research.
...
"John White, the state’s high-profile schools superintendent whose pro-school choice policies had long been scrutinized, publicly accused the Duke and MIT researchers of improperly rushing to publish their results and The Wall Street Journal condemned them for similar reasons in an editorial.

The criticism turned on whether the researchers should have waited for additional data before publishing their findings. But even that assertion, it turns out, was complicated. Not long after the headline-grabbing study was released, Louisiana ended its data-sharing relationship with the MIT and Duke researchers, according to emails obtained by The 74 through a public records request.

...

“For a program that’s ongoing, there are real issues of who gets to evaluate the program. Is it open to many teams, which I think is a good model. Or is it restricted to partners?” said MIT professor Parag Pathak, part of the team that studied Louisiana’s voucher program. “There are real broad issues in social science — it’s something that we’re all wrestling with.”

**********

Read it all...you can see why access to data can be hard.

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

Update: the first comment below points to this critical blog post by Professor Jay Greene:
The Chutzpah of Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, and Walters

A comment by Christopher Walters points to  this reply by Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, and Walters:
Statement on Allegations of Academic Fraud by Jay P. Greene
Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke; Parag Pathak, MIT; Christopher Walters, UC Berkeley
August 5, 2017

Kidney exchange in India: legal hurdles, and an app

An interesting story from The Tribune in Chandigarh, about kidney exchange in India, mentions  the legal hurdles that must be overcome to take part in kidney exchange there.  It also mentions that there is an app, for peer to peer kidney matching.

From sufferers to survivors, their tale is touching

The legal hurdles:
"Both Narinder and Pramod said the procedure was not easy. “First, we had to take police clearance from our respective districts. Then, we had to submit an affidavit before the tehsildar. We had to appear before a panel of doctors of the Punjab Government and submitted our case as the transplant was to be performed in a Punjab hospital. The entire exercise took nearly four months,” said the two."

The app:
"On the lines of matrimonial websites, a city-based kidney transplant surgeon has devised a mobile application to help renal failure patients.
“With this app, relatives of a kidney patient can find a right match and get the kidneys swapped with one of family members. Suppose, someone’s father has suffered a kidney failure and his son offers to donate his kidney, but the blood group and tissues do not match, then the person can look for a donor with the same blood group. This app will help needy families contact each other and get the kidney swapped,” said Dr Rajan.
Since 2009, the Paired Kidney Exchange (PKE) has been legalised under the amended Human Organ Transplant Act of India. The Incompatible Kidney App or ikidney will allow all such patients to come under one roof."
***********

Here it is on the apple app store:
iKidney By Pradeep Naangal

Open iTunes to buy and download apps.
 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ikidney/id1071816293?mt=8 

AlphaBay dark marketplace shut down, and others spring up

Here's the Telegraph:
AlphaBay: World's largest dark web site is shut down

"The US Government has shut down two of the world's largest markets on the dark web, a hidden corner of the internet often associated with the sale of illegal weapons and drugs.

"The US Department of Justice confirmed on Thursday that it had shuttered the illicit AlphaBay and Hansa websites following a "landmark" investigation involving law enforcement from around the world.

"AlphaBay and Hansa were associated with the trade of illegal goods such as drugs, guns, personal data stolen in hacks, and computer viruses. There were more than 40,000 sellers on AlphaBay who were advertising around 250,000 items of illegal drugs and chemicals, according to Europol.
 ...
"The operation is reminiscent of the 2013 closure of Silk Road, the first popular dark web marketplace, following the arrest of creator Ross Ulbricht. AlphaBay was created in the void left by Silk Road. "
********
Here's the Economist:
Two of the biggest dark-web markets have been shut down
History suggests that other sites will soon fill the void

 "But governments’ drug tsars are unlikely to be celebrating for long. Numerous dark-web markets have fallen prey to the police before the latest two. And each time, as shown in a paper* by two cyber-security experts, Nicolas Christin and Kyle Soska, new sites have popped up to fill the void. The authors scraped data from the largest dark-web sites between May 2013 and January 2015 to shed light on this shadowy market. During that period, Silk Road, once the largest market on the dark web, was raided and closed by the FBI. Within months, it was replaced by the less-than-imaginatively named Silk Road 2. In late 2014 this successor site met its demise as well, in another law-enforcement sting called Operation Onymous, at which point Evolution and Agora took up the baton. And after they closed down, customers moved to AlphaBay instead. This most recent pair of closures may end up as another mighty thump in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole."

*Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem
Kyle Soska and Nicolas Christin, Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical-sessions/presentation/soska
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity15/sec15-paper-soska-updated.pdf
The paper has some interesting remarks on the difficulties to be overcome in surveying dark markets, and lists the following markets that were investigated:

************
And here's the BBC, with a story dated August 1:
Dark web markets boom after AlphaBay and Hansa busts
By Leo Kelion

"Trade on several of the dark web's illegal markets has boomed since two major players were shut by the authorities last month, according to research carried out for the BBC.
The US and Dutch authorities forced AlphaBay and Hansa offline to prevent the sale of drugs, weapons and malware.
But over the last week of July, other sites saw their number of listings rise by as much as 28%, the study indicates.
...
" Dream Market is now the biggest illegal store with a total of 98,844 listings at the end of the month. The site was launched in late 2013 and is now one of the oldest dark web markets in existence.
Its number of listings rose by 3,818 over the course of the week.
While that was the biggest increase of the surveyed sites in numerical terms, it represented a relatively modest increase of 3.9%.
"There is some interesting buzz around Dream Market potentially being compromised and/or under law enforcement control, which is feeding fear and uncertainty amongst vendors and buyers," said Mr Ben-Meir.
"That is probably why Dream Market has not grown substantially in the wake of the takedowns."
...
 "The next biggest site is TradeRoute, which rose from 14,914 listings to 17,816 over the period - a 16.3% gain.
It includes forged documents and black market tobacco and alcohol among its wares."
************
See earlier posts on the drug market known as Silk Road.
See paper Traveling the Silk Road: A Measurement Analysis of a Large Anonymous Online
Marketplace, by Nicolas Christin

Kidney Exchange Practices in Europe

Here is a new report on kidney exchange in Europe:

Kidney Exchange Practices in Europe: First Handbook of the COST Action CA15210: European Network for Collaboration on Kidney Exchange Programmes (ENCKEP)

Edited by Working Group 1 members (in ABC order): Péter Biró, Lisa Burnapp, Bernadette Haase, Aline Hemke, Rachel Johnson, Joris van de Klundert, David Manlove,

 Descriptions in templates were provided by the following national representatives:
Austria: Georg Böhmig and Gregor Bond
Belgium: Dirk Kuypers,Bart Smeulders and Frits Spieksma
Czech Republic: Jiri Fronek
Finland: Mikko Salonen
France: Christian Jacquelinet and Marie-Alice Macher
Greece: Georgia Menoudakou
Iceland: Eyjólfur Ingi Ásgeirsson
Ireland: Nic Wilson
Italy: Paola Di Ciaccio and Vito Sparacino
Netherlands: Aline Hemke and Bernadette Haase
Poland: Rafal Kieszek
Portugal: Catarina Bolotinha
Slovakia:Tatiana Baltesová and Katarína Cechlárová
Spain: María de la Oliva Valentín Muñoz
Sweden: Tommy Andersson
Switzerland: Karine Hadaya
United Kingdom: Lisa Burnapp and Rachel Johnson
USA (UNOS): Ruthanne Leishman

"This handbook provides information on the current practice of kidney paired exchange programmes in Europe  and  some  countries  outside  Europe.  It  describes  the  incidence  of  active  Kidney  Exchange Programmes (KEPs), including details of country specific schemes and identifies the interest and aims of countries that have yet to develop a KEP."

Medical school seniors are applying to more and more residency positions

Here's an article on the application process that precedes the medical match:

Residency Placement Fever: Is It Time for a Reevaluation?

Gruppuso, Philip A. MD; Adashi, Eli Y. MD, MS

Academic Medicine, 92(7), July 2017, p 923–926

Abstract: The transition from undergraduate medical education to graduate medical education (GME) involves a process rooted in the final year of medical school. Students file applications through the Electronic Residency Application Service platform, interview with residency training (i.e., GME) programs from which they have received invitations, and generate a rank-ordered preference list. The National Resident Matching Program reconciles applicant and program rank lists with an eye towards matching students and GME programs. This process has effectively served generations of graduating medical students. However, the past several decades have seen an intensification of the residency placement process that is exemplified by an inexorable increase in the number of applications filed and number of interviews accepted and attended by each student. The authors contend that this trend has untoward effects on both applicants and departments that are home to GME programs....

"... in 2015, senior U.S. medical students applied, on average, to 73 of the 163 orthopedic surgery programs and 47 of the 105 neurological surgery programs (based on data extracted from the AAMC 8 and the NRMP 9,10). What is more surprising is that even less competitive disciplines may now be seeing an ever-growing flood of applications. This contention is supported in part by recent observations according to which GME programs in nearly all disciplines have seen a marked increase in their application traffic. For example, the percentage of pediatric GME programs to which graduating U.S. medical students have applied on average increased from 9.8% to 13.7% during the five-year interval from 2010 to 2015.10 For internal medicine GME programs, the corresponding figures are 4.9% to 6.0%.8–10 In making these decisions, students appear to be keeping their own counsel against the advice of medical school advisers and mentors advocating moderation.

...

"The increasing number of applications has another important consequence for GME programs. With an expanding burden of reviewing applications, the use of quantitative metrics as “screens,” the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 exam in particular, may assume an increasing role. This trend, one that is viewed by many as a serious problem,15 may further erode emphasis on students’ backgrounds and qualitative indicators of performance, including letters of recommendation and narrative performance evaluations. Should this occur, it could have a detrimental effect on the ability of GME programs to achieve diversity by reducing the selection of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds who may be at risk for underperformance on standardized examinations.

Apart from the preceding considerations, the growing intensity of the residency placement process has been progressively eroding the residual educational value of the fourth and final year of medical school.16–19 This reality, in its own right, would appear to warrant a reevaluation of the extant residency placement construct. Such reassessment may prove all but inescapable before too long if and when the four-year medical school curriculum is ever replaced with a three-year counterpart.20,21 Under these circumstances, the current resident selection paradigm is likely to prove unworkable and in need of redesign.

Nesterly: matching student tenants to empty-nesters

Helping Boomers Find Millennial Roommates
LINDA POON  JUL 1, 2017
In a college town, students and older homeowners have a lot to offer each other. That’s why two urban planners built an app to bring them together.
********

Here's the app: Nesterly.
"On any given night, more than 50 million bedrooms sit empty across the U.S. Many of these spare rooms belong to older homeowners whose large houses have become a burden as they age. At the same time, millions of young renters struggle to afford the high prices in areas near schools and jobs. nesterly targets both of these issues by connecting older people with extra rooms to those seeking affordable rents through unique task-housing arrangements. Renters can now pay part of their rent by helping around the house, and owners gain stability, security, and support to stay in their homes."

Sex workers in Colombia

From The Economist:
Sex workers in Colombia
The Economist; London424.9050 (Jul 22, 2017): 42.

"Some 4,500 Venezuelan prostitutes are thought to be working in Colombia; the trade is legal in both countries. But until recently they were often rounded up by police and deported back to Venezuela by the busload. That changed in April, when Colombia's constitutional court ruled that Venezuelan sex workers are entitled to work visas. Mass deportations violate international human-rights law, it said. "One should weigh up the reasons they decided to come to Colombia...and the specific situation they would face in Venezuela were they to be returned," said the ruling.

The case has its origins in Chinacota, a tiny town an hour's drive from the border city of Cucuta. Last year the town's mayor closed down the Taberna Barlovento, a bar that also serves as a brothel, saying it violated zoning rules. Along with beverages, the bar offers four bedrooms just big enough to fit a mattress or two. Founded in 1935, the bar is a Chinacota institution, says Nelcy Esperanza Delgado, its owner.

When the mayor shut Ms Delgado down, she fought back in court. She and the prostitutes who worked there, including four Venezuelans, had no other income, she said. Closing Taberna Barlovento violated their right to work. The court agreed, and the bar reopened.
...
"Colombians along the border are accustomed to Venezuelans streaming across, but the area's sex workers do not relish the competition. Venezuelans charge the equivalent of $10-13 for a 20-minute session; the Colombian rate is around $13-17. Colombians complain that they are being forced to cut their prices. While Colombia is El Dorado compared with Venezuela, economic growth is slow and the unemployment rate is 9.4%. Colombians haven't forgotten that in 2015 Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, blamed them for the shortages and deported 1,100. Many forded rivers on their way back to Colombia.

While the law is becoming more welcoming to desperate Venezuelans, Colombians are growing increasingly nervous about the influx. Barbara thinks other countries offer bigger opportunities. She is planning to move on to Ecuador, where customers pay in American dollars."

Pro-Renal: a new kidney exchange network in Mexico

There's a new kidney exchange network in Mexico, Pro-Renal, affiliated with the Alliance for Paired Donation:

Programa de donacion renal pareada, del Centro Mexicano, Pro-Renal.
(Paired kidney donaton program of Central Mexico, Pro-Renal)

Here's an announcement: Annuncian hoy el programa para la donacion de riñón

Here are some others (also in Spanish);

http://www.milenio.com/salud/agilizar-trasplantes_renales-mexicanos-arturo_dib-donacion-rinon-pro-renal-milenio_0_992900707.html

Nace el Centro Mexicano pro donación renal A.C.

Intercambio, nueva opción para pacientes que esperan trasplante renal 

Kidney exchange at INFORMS Healthcare 2017 in Rotterdam

 Kidney exchange on Friday at INFORMS Heathcare 2017 in Rotterdam:  here's the whole program.

And here are two sessions that I'd attend if I were there (along with many more):

Spectrum auctions explained (by Scott Kominers in Bloomberg)

Explaining economics is something economists should do more of (especially in light of some of the silly things written about economics in the popular press by people who misunderstand what they are writing about).  Here's a good example of good explanation, written clearly, by an expert:

To Improve Wireless Networks, Auction the Airwaves:
People are watching TV on devices, so mobile companies need more spectrum and broadcasters need less. Here's how to get there.
By Scott Duke Kominers

Sally Satel on EconTalk, talking about organ donation (podcast)

PERMANENT LINK | JULY 24, 2017 Sally Satel on Organ Donation EconTalk Episode with Sally Satel Hosted by Russ Roberts	PRINTEMAIL  SHARE
You Are What You Eat...

Sally Satel, psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenges of increasing the supply of donated organs for transplantation and ways that public policy might increase the supply. Satel, who has received two kidney donations, suggests a federal tax credit as a way to increase the supply of organs while saving the federal government money. She also discusses the ethical issues surrounding various forms of compensation for organ donors.

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Readings and Links related to this podcast episode

Related Readings HIDE READINGS

This week's guest: Sally Satel's Home page Sally Satel on Twitter. This week's focus: "The Kindest (Tax) Cut: A Federal Tax Credit for Organ Donations," by Sally Satel and Alan Viard. Tax Notes, June 12, 2017. PDF file. "A College Tuition Payment for Your Spare Kidney?," by Sally Satel. Slate, September 13, 2016. Additional ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode: "Here's Looking at You, Kidney: How and why I became an organ donor -- and how I kept people from talking me out of it," by Virginia Postrel. Vpostrel.com, Texas Monthly, June 2006. "Desperately Seeking a Kidney," by Sally Satel. The New York Times, December 16, 2007. A few more readings and background resources: National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. Wikipedia. "Life-Saving Incentives: Consequences, Costs and Solutions to the Organ Shortage," by Alex Tabarrok. Library of Economics and Liberty, August 3, 2009. "How Free-Market Kidney Sales Can Save Lives--And Lower the Total Cost of Kidney Transplants," by Kathryn Shelton and Richard B. McKenzie. Library of Economics and Liberty, March 5, 2012. Health Care, by Michael A. Morrisey. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. A few more EconTalk podcast episodes:  Virginia Postrel on Style. EconTalk. November 2006.  Tina Rosenberg on the Kidney Market in Iran. EconTalk. September 2015.  Alvin Roth on Matching Markets. EconTalk. July 2015.  Michael Munger on Exchange, Exploitation and Euvoluntary Transactions. EconTalk. June 2011.  The Economics of Organ Donations with Richard Epstein. EconTalk. June 2006.

Highlights

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0:33

Intro. [Recording date: July 6, 2017.] Russ Roberts: Sally Satel recently wrote an article with Alan Viard entitled "The Kindest (Tax) Cut: A Federal Tax Credit for Organ Donations," and that's going to be our topic for today.... So, you bring a special perspective to kidney donations. Talk about your personal story. Sally Satel: Yeah. I got a kidney in 2006; and then I got another kidney a year ago, almost a year ago today. And, when I got my first one it was sort of a surprise. A lot of people who know that they're going to need a kidney--well, by definition, they know that they're going to need a kidney. What I meant is that they have certain illnesses--they are either diabetic, or they've got lupus, severe hypertension that's been poorly managed for a while, high blood pressure. People know they are at risk for this, for kidney failure. But my case was sort of a surprise. I just went to the doctor for a regular checkup. This is the part of the story that scares everyone, because I felt completely fine. And during a routine blood draw, found out that I had--well, that I had kidney failure. Which is rather easy to diagnose. It's a test called a creatinine level. But when you go for a regular blood draw, a routine blood draw, that's one of the indexes they measure. So, they tested it again, and that was the same. So, the clock was ticking for me, because I knew from my medical training that if you have kidney failure, you need a new kidney, or you will languish on dialysis for years. And no matter how long you are on dialysis, your life will be prematurely shortened. I mean, people have lived for 20 years, even a little longer, on dialysis. Some people tolerate it better than others. That's a process where your blood is cleansed of toxins about 3 times a week for about 4 hours at a time; you go to a clinic. Most people feel very debilitated by it. The average person on dialysis can't hold a job. But some do. And, some people--it isn't as psychologically devastating to some folks. But others find it so distressing, they are actually--suicide is not that unusual. So, the idea of being tethered to that machine, while, granted, it would keep me alive. Now, if my liver had failed and I didn't get a transplant, that would be it. So, kidney dialysis does keep people alive for awhile. But it just seemed like a really, really half a life. So, I knew I needed a kidney, but I didn't know exactly when I would need dialysis. So, as I said, the clock started ticking. And it turned out I had a good year before the function got to the point where I really was becoming physically debilitated. But it was very hard finding a donor. And that's what kind of galvanized me, this whole issue of the shortage. But, just in terms of finding a donor, as I say, it was extremely difficult. It's not like every day you ask people for a body part. And I didn't have--I have a very tiny family. And, to make a long story short, none of them--I didn't feel I could ask any of them. And in fact I never really asked anyone. I would do it all differently if, heaven forbid, there is yet a third time I have to go through this--see, I'm very nice to my interns. But I would just talk about it with folks and wasn't even being coy. I just sort of thought magically, 'Oh, well some people will think of being a donor, and it will work out.' But it became pretty clear that it wasn't working out. And a lot of people actually said they would do it; and I appreciate that in that I know they wanted to be--I know they felt empathy for my situation; but in the end, basically, a lot of them got cold feet and backed out. And then you're in this terribly awkward position, because you really can't be angry. I mean it's an enormous thing to ask, and it would be incredibly presumptuous to have the expectation that they owed you anything. So, I was really getting very demoralized and about to get ready to go on dialysis. And, Virginia Postrel, who I knew, not very well, had been at a cocktail reception somewhere--this was in November of 2005--and she ran into a mutual friend and asked that friend how I was. And the friend said, 'Not so hot. She needs a kidney.' And, Virginia went--I think the next went to her computer--I remember the subject line; I still have a printout of her email--it said, 'Serious Offer.' And she said, 'So-and-so told me you needed a kidney, and if I match, I will do it.' And I think she followed up a few minutes later with another email: 'I won't back out.' And, so, she went through with it. This was March of 2006. And I'm almost as grateful to Steve, her husband, as to her, because that was one of the reasons that two of my friends, other of my friends who had seriously considered donating did not go through with it--because their spouse basically said, 'It's the kidney or a divorce.' [More to come. 6:48]

Celebrating János Kornai at 90, In Budapest

Here's the Call for Papers:  The importance of János Kornai's research for understanding the changing role of the state in the economy 

"The aim of this conference - organized on the occasion of Kornai's 90^th birthday - is to bring together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines (economists, political economists, political scientists, sociologists and historians), advanced scholars as well as PhD students who build on Kornai’s insights (www.kornai-janos.hu) in their own research."
...
"Important dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: September 15, 2017
Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2017
Payment of conference fees: February 1, 2018
Full paper submission: February 1, 2018
Conference: Feb 21, 2018 

A celebration of Victor Elias, at 80, in Tucuman

Here's a story about and interview with Victor Elias in La Gaceta, complete with testimonials from students whose lives he touched.

 El académico que optó por quedarse en su Tucumán
Acaba de cumplir 80 años y la academia le rendirá un tributo al doctor en Economía por la Universidad de Chicago y director del Magister de la UNT. Sus alumnos recuerdan las enseñanzas que le dejó al profesor que, según confiesa, se retroalimenta con la creatividad de los aspirantes a economistas.

[G translate: The academic who opted to stay in his Tucumán
He has just turned 80 and the academy will pay a tribute to the Doctor of Economics from the University of Chicago and director of the UNT Magister. His students remember the teachings [of] the teacher who, he confesses, is fed by the creativity of aspiring economists.]

Victor Elias and Al Roth, Tucuman, 2016, taken by Ivan Werning

Here's an earlier interview, from 2005
Entrevista a Víctor Jorge Elías
by Juan Carlos De Pablo

Random Matching under Priorities: Stability and No Envy Concepts by Haris Aziz and Bettina Klaus

Here's the preprint of a new paper by Haris Aziz and Bettina Klaus:
Random Matching under Priorities: Stability and No Envy Concepts

Abstract

We consider stability concepts for random matchings where agents have preferences over objects and objects have priorities for the agents. When matchings are deterministic, the standard stability concept also captures the fairness property of no (justified) envy. When matchings can be random, there are a number of natural stability / fairness concepts that coincide with stability / no envy whenever matchings are deterministic. We formalize known stability concepts for random matchings for a general setting that allows weak preferences and weak priorities, unacceptability, and an unequal number of agents and objects. We then present a clear taxonomy of the stability concepts and identify logical relations between them.Furthermore, we provide no envy / claims interpretations for some of the stability concepts that are based on a consumption process interpretation of random matchings. Finally, we present a transformation from the most general setting to the most restricted setting, and show how almost all our stability concepts are preserved by that transformation.

Epilepsy and Neurophysiology fellowships are unravelled

Here is an article calling for a match. The opening paragraphs describe the current, unraveled recruiting process.

The Case for an Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology Match  RSS  Download PDF

• Jorge Vidaurre MD
•  and Julia Campbell C-TAGME

Pediatric Neurology, 2017-07-01, Volume 72, Pages 5-6, Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc.

"Accredited epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology fellowships in the United States do not participate in a formal matching system to facilitate selection of trainees. For the 2015 to 2016 academic year, there were about 95 accredited clinical neurophysiology fellowship programs offering 313 positions and 43 epilepsy fellowship programs with 106 available positions. Each of these programs has their own unique recruitment process. The lack of a standardized process may be disadvantageous for both applicants and the training programs.

With our current approach, applicants may feel compelled to accept a fellowship offer before completing other program visits and with little time to consider their options. This situation occurs when a position is offered on the spot or soon after an interview. Unless the offer is quickly accepted, the candidate risks losing a guaranteed opportunity in order to explore other programs. The lack of uniformity in the application process can create additional difficulties for applicants.

Similarly, knowing that good candidates are likely to receive offers from other institutions during an interview, many institutions feel compelled to make a quick decision in their selection of fellows. In an effort to avoid vacancies, program directors may be tempted to select applicants who are available but may not be the best choice. Adopting a formal match system would create a more organized process with clear advantages for both applicants and programs."

Usury and theology

At Aeon, Alex Mayyasi writes about the work of banker turned theologian David Miller:

Of money and morals
Moneylending has been taboo for most of human history. So how did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?

"Vedic law in Ancient India condemned usury, and rulers routinely capped interest rates from Ancient Mesopotamia to Ancient Greece. In Politics, Aristotle described usury as ‘the birth of money from money’, and claimed it was unnatural because money was sterile and should not ‘breed’.
...
"In the 4th century CE, Christian councils denounced the practice, and by 800, the emperor Charlemagne made the prohibition into law. Accounts of merchants and bankers in the Middle Ages frequently include expressions of anguish over their profits. In his Divine Comedy of the 14th century, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri put the usurers in the seventh circle of Hell..."

"The stigma against moneylending continued well into the 1500s. To understand it, think about your reaction to the idea of a bank making a loan to a business at a 5 per cent interest rate. No problem, right? Now compare that to how you’d feel if your mother lent you money on the same terms. In Biblical times, the typical loan was more like the second case – it wasn’t an arms-length transaction, but a charitable loan from a wealthy man to a neighbour who’d experienced misfortune or had nowhere else to turn. "

THE 28TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GAME THEORY; IN HONOR OF PRADEEP DUBEY AND YAIR TAUMAN

The celebration of Pradeep Dubey and Yair Tauman is going on now.

Here's the program.

Declining racial disparities in deceased-donor kidney allocation

Here's an article from the June issue of Health Affairs, reporting that racial disparities among deceased-donor kidney recipients seem to have declined since the introduction of a modified allocation procedure.

New Kidney Allocation System Associated With Increased Rates Of Transplants Among Black And Hispanic Patients

1. Taylor A. Melanson1, 
2. Jason M. Hockenberry2, 
3. Laura Plantinga3,
4. Mohua Basu4, 
5. Stephan Pastan5, 
6. Sumit Mohan6,
7. David H. Howard7 and 
8. Rachel E. Patzer8,*

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Taylor A. Melanson is a doctoral student in the Laney Graduate School, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia.
2. ²Jason M. Hockenberry is an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, at Emory University.
3. ³Laura Plantinga is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine.
4. ⁴Mohua Basu is a data analyst at the Emory University School of Medicine.
5. ⁵Stephan Pastan is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine.
6. ⁶Sumit Mohan is an assistant professor in the Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, and in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, in New York City.
7. ⁷David H. Howard is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, at Emory University.
8. ⁸Rachel E. Patzer (rpatzer@emory.edu) is an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery and Department of Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine, and in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health.

1. Health Aff June 2017 vol. 36no. 6 1078-1085

Abstract

Before the 2014 implementation of a new kidney allocation system by the United Network for Organ Sharing, white patients were more likely than black or Hispanic patients to receive a kidney transplant. To determine the effect of the new allocation system on these disparities, we examined data for 179,071 transplant waiting list events in the period June 2013–September 2016, and we calculated monthly transplantation rates (34,133 patients actually received transplants). Implementation of the new system was associated with a narrowing of the disparities in the average monthly transplantation rates by 0.29 percentage point for blacks compared to whites and by 0.24 percentage point for Hispanics compared to whites, which resulted in both disparities becoming nonsignificant after implementation of the new system.

From the paper:

"The United Network for Organ Sharing implemented a new kidney allocation system in December 2014,26 in part to address long-standing racial/ethnic disparities in the allocation of deceased donor kidneys. The primary factor for determining a patient’s priority level on the waiting list for a kidney transplant is how long he or she has been waiting. Under the new system, the starting point for calculating waiting time was changed from the date the patient was put on the waiting list to the earliest of either that date or the date of the patient’s first regular dialysis. This change was expected to benefit minorities because blacks and Hispanics spend more time on dialysis before being put on the waiting list, compared to white patients.27,28 The new system made additional changes meant to improve access to transplantation, including making it easier for patients with a highly sensitized immune system to receive transplants and increasing the sharing of kidneys across donor service area boundaries. It is important to note that this policy targets the allocation of deceased-donor kidneys, not of live-donor kidneys."

Blackmail has something in common with transactions that become repugnant when money is added

Blackmail isn't what I usually mean when I speak of a repugnant transaction, because it isn't a voluntary transaction that third parties wish to prevent, it's a crime that someone assaults someone else with. But, just as some praiseworthy transactions (like donating a kidney to someone who needs a transplant) can become repugnant when money is added (both demanding compensation and compensating the donor of a kidney for transplant is a crime almost everywhere), the crime of blackmail involves combining actions that are otherwise legal but that together are criminal.

For example, if someone knows something about you that you would like to conceal, it is quite often legal for them to reveal it to interested parties, or even in a biography of you they might write (e.g. your past arrests, affairs, political affiliations and contributions, etc.). It would also be quite legal for you to approach someone and commission them to write something about you, including something over which you might have editorial control. But if someone proposes to combine these things, by threatening to write bad things about you unless you pay him money, that is in many cases the criminal act of blackmail.

More on blackmail and it's subtleties (e.g. I can't demand that you pay me if you don't want me to reveal that you are a thief, but I could threaten to report you the police if you don't pay me for something you stole from me...) in this interesting column at the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy:
Blackmail is surprisingly hard to define