Incentive compatibility is not enough: evidence from the Israeli matching market for psychologists, by Hassidim, Romm and Shorrer

While it has taken some time for this paper to be published, I think it was the first to discover that some applicants in a labor market clearinghouse organized as an applicant proposing deferred acceptance algorithm were systematically misrepresenting their preferences, perhaps out of confusion. (This has since been observed in other markets as well.)  Their data are from the Israeli match for psychology graduate programs, which the authors also designed and organized.

Online early in Management Science:

The Limits of Incentives in Economic Matching Procedures
Avinatan Hassidim, Assaf Romm, Ran I. Shorrer
Published Online:13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3591

Abstract: Organizations often require agents’ private information to achieve critical goals such as efficiency or revenue maximization, but frequently it is not in the agents’ best interest to reveal this information. Strategy-proof mechanisms give agents incentives to truthfully report their private information. In the context of matching markets, they eliminate agents’ incentives to misrepresent their preferences. We present direct field evidence of preference misrepresentation under the strategy-proof deferred acceptance in a high-stakes matching environment. We show that applicants to graduate programs in psychology in Israel often report that they prefer to avoid receiving funding, even though the mechanism preserves privacy and funding comes with no strings attached and constitutes a positive signal of ability. Surveys indicate that other kinds of preference misrepresentation are also prevalent. Preference misrepresentation in the field is associated with weaker applicants. Our findings have important implications for practitioners designing matching procedures and for researchers who study them.

India NDTV interview on coronavirus, convalescent plasma, etc. (5 minute interview by Dr. Prannoy Roy)

My 5 minutes come at 1:12, but if I've embedded this right the video should begin from there when you start it...

Olly Williamson (1932-2020)

The great student of transaction costs, Oliver (Olly) Williamson, has died.

Here's the Berkeley obit:
Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson, pioneer of organizational economics, dies at 87

"His multidisciplinary approach to analyzing organizational structures was unconventional in economics at the time—he described it as a melding of soft social science with abstract economic theory. He looked not only at formal firm structure but at culture and social norms. Prof. Ernesto Dal Bó, the Phillips Girgich Professor of Business, called Williamson’s work “a fountain of vocation-shaping epiphanies.”

“After reading his work, we could no longer think of markets, organizations, and legal or political institutions in the same way. And so we didn’t,” Dal Bó said. “His insights are now part of the common sense of social scientists.”
***********
He won the Nobel prize in economics in 2009: here's his autobiographical statement on the Nobel site. I was struck by this paragraph:

"Although I would not come to appreciate this last until later, there was a major difference between engineering and economics with respect to hypothetical ideals. Thus whereas assumptions of weightlessness or perfect gas laws or frictionlessness etc. served the purpose of simplification in engineering, these assumptions would give way to realities (in the form of friction, resistance, turbulence, and the like) as engineering applications were attempted. In economics, however, assumptions of frictionlessness (of which the standard assumption of zero transaction costs was one) often went unquestioned or, even worse, were invoked asymmetrically. Thus whereas markets were subject to “failures” for which corrective public policy measures were prescribed, there was no corresponding provision for failures in the public sector. A more symmetrical approach would be to recognize that positive transaction costs were the economic counterpart of friction and that all forms of organization experience such costs – albeit in variable degree (depending on the attributes of the transaction to be organized). I credit my engineering background with giving me a receptive attitude toward transaction costs, to include an interest in pinning down and working out the organizational ramifications of such costs."

Should emergency medical supplies go to the highest bidders? (That isn't necessarily what economists think...)

Should prices clear markets for emergency medical supplies? Many economists don't think so:

Prices of Medical Supplies

"About the European IGM Economic Experts Panel
This panel explores the views of European economists on vital public policy issues. It does this by polling them on important policy questions, by including a way for them to explain their answers briefly if they wish, and by disseminating these responses directly to the public in a simple format."

What makes a market transaction morally repugnant? by Leuker, Samartzidis, and Hertwig

Here's a new working paper on repugnance, from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

What makes a market transaction morally repugnant?
Christina Leuker, Lasare Samartzidis, & Ralph Hertwig
April 23, 2020

Abstract: For many people, it is morally impermissible to put kidneys, jury duty exemptions, or permits for having children on the free market. All of these are examples of repugnant transactions—market transactions that third parties want to prevent. In two studies (N = 1,554), using respondents’ judgements of 51 different market transactions across 21 characteristics, we show that repugnance can be characterized along five higher-order dimensions: moral outrage, need for regulation, incommensurability, exploitation, and unknown risk. Repugnance toward the 51 market transactions was highly consistent across two samples. Our results can help identify mismatches between public sentiments and current regulations (selling carbon emissions is currently legal but considered repugnant), anticipate responses to novel markets that have not been publicly scrutinized (often arising from technological advances, such as markets for “designer babies”), and help design less repugnant markets (e.g., by making the risks involved in a transaction known to sellers).


And, in conclusion:

"Our studies have shown that perceived repugnance is quantifiable, and that market transactions can be profiled based on their underlying psychometric properties. The extent to which certain market transactions are considered repugnant is fairly stable across different respondent samples. Perhaps the most important finding from this research is that people’s judgments of a transaction’s repugnance can reflect a range of legitimate and important concerns. These concerns can be measured and possibly harnessed to predict how the public will perceive new, rapidly emerging transactions"

Blood and plasma: a brief history, from 1628

With all my discussion of convalescent plasma for Covid-19 this week*, here's a historical perspective on the technology and changes in medical practice since the discovery of blood circulation in 1628 that allows blood and plasma to be used in medicine.


A history of blood transfusion: a confluence of science—in peace, in war, and in the laboratory
by Kevin R. Loughlin
Hektoen International, Volume 12, Issue 2 – Spring 2020.

"Since 1628 when William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood, there had been hope that blood transfusion would be possible.
...
"After Harvey’s discovery, transfusion attempts began. In 1665 Richard Lower kept dogs alive by transfusing blood from other dogs.2 In 1667 French physician Jean Denys transfused nine ounces of blood from the carotid artery of a lamb into the vein of a young man. He continued the practice until the third patient so treated, died.3 Denys was sued by the wife of the deceased patient, who presumably died from a hemolytic reaction, but was exonerated. However, the French Parliament, the Royal Society, and the Catholic Church subsequently issued a general prohibition against transfusions.4

"It would not be until 1818 when transfusions were seriously considered again. A British obstetrician, James Blundell, performed a human blood transfusion in the setting of a postpartum hemorrhage.5 However, the debate over transfusions continued over the remainder of the nineteenth century. In 1849 C.H.F. Routh reviewed all the published transfusions to date and remarked in the Medical Times that of the 48 recorded cases, 18 had a fatal outcome and concluded that the mortality rate was unacceptably high.5 The next major advance in transfusion therapy would wait until the turn of the century.

"Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian physician and immunologist. While working at the University of Vienna, he became interested in blood serum work, specifically the factors that led to hemagglutination of red blood cells. This resulted in two landmark publications in 1900 and 1901 that described the evidence of blood groups that he named A, B, and C.6,7 These would later be modified to A, B, and O. Two years later, two of his colleagues, Alfred Von Decastelo and Adriano Sturli, would add a fourth blood type, AB.8,9 Landsteiner would be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 for his elucidation of the blood groups.

... in 1912, Doctor Roger Lee demonstrated that O blood could be given to a person of any blood type (universal donor) and that a person with AB blood could receive blood from any blood group (universal recipient).
...
"As blood transfusions became more widespread in medical practice, the concept of establishing blood banks became attractive. In the 1930s Bernard Fantus at Cook County Hospital20 and Carl W. Walter at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital started blood banks. In Boston, Walter’s efforts were viewed with such skepticism and disdain that his facility was relegated to a basement room at Harvard because some trustees thought the storage and use of blood was “immoral and unethical.”21 Fifteen years later he invented the plastic blood bag, which greatly facilitated transfusion therapy.21
...
"In 1940 Edwin Cohn developed ethanol fractionation, the process of breaking down plasma into component products. Albumin, gamma globulin, and fibrinogen were isolated to become available for clinical use.

"In 1944 dried plasma became available for the treatment of combat injuries. Component transfusion therapy became more widely used as the war progressed. The Red Cross concluded its World War II blood program in 1945 after 13 million pints had been collected.11

"In 1961 platelet concentrates became recognized for reducing mortality from hemorrhage in cancer patients. In 1964 plasmapheresis was introduced as a means of collecting plasma for fractionation. In 1971 Hepatitis B surface antigen (HbsAg) testing of donated blood began and in 1992 testing of donor blood for HIV-1 and HIV-2 antibodies commenced.
*************

*here's a recap of my earlier coronavirus posts relating to plasma this week:

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Cascades of convalescent plasma for Covid-19, and chains of exchanges, by Kominers, Pathak, Sönmez, and Ünver

Monday, May 18, 2020

Plasma and plasma products (such as antibodies) are a big business (and the U.S. dominates the international market)

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Convalescent plasma collection and distribution

Convalescent plasma collection and distribution

Efforts to collect and distribute convalescent plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients are ramping up: there are lots of options.

I donate convalescent plasma at the Stanford Blood Center, in their program on
 CONVALESCENT PLASMA FROM RECOVERED COVID-19 PATIENTS
"This exciting initiative involves taking plasma donations from recovered COVID-19 patients and transfusing that plasma into critically ill COVID-19 patients in the hopes that the antibodies present in the donated plasma will help save the lives of the recipients."

Modern plasma collection is a one-arm process: the machine on my right in the photo alternates between taking blood and returning red blood cells through the same needle (in contrast to the old technology which had blood go out of a needle in one arm and red blood cells return through a needle in the other arm).

Collecting convalescent plasma is not regulated as a research activity, it is just ordinary plasma donation. However giving it to patients is done under FDA guidance, either as a research activity or as an emergency intervention for very ill patients:
Recommendations for Investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma
"Because COVID-19 convalescent plasma has not yet been approved for use by FDA, it is regulated as an investigational product."

There are three FDA-approved pathways right now by which convalescent plasma can be administered to patients.
"Pathways for Use of Investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma:
1. Clinical Trials,
2.  Expanded Access "for patients with serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 disease"
3. Single Patient Emergency"

Here is a consortium of nonprofit blood centers, there's likely one near you if you're reading this in the States:
America's Blood Centers (association of independent blood centers)

• ABC Resources on COVID-19 and Convalescent Plasma
• America’s Blood Centers Partners with BARDA to Expand Collection of Convalescent Plasma for COVID-19 Patients

Here's the American Red Cross effort: Plasma Donations from Recovered COVID-19 Patients

My impression is that the nonprofit blood centers don't pay donors, but are able to sell plasma to customers, including the commercial plasma industry, as part of the thriving domestic and international market in plasma. (I blogged Monday about U.S. plasma exports, all over the world, including especially countries in which compensating donors is repugnant.)
*****************
The for-profit plasma industry (which compensates plasma donors) is represented by The Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association (PPTA)
Here's an announcement about their plans for Covid-19 antibodies:

1. CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance Builds Strong Momentum Through Expanded Membership and Clinical Trial Collaboration

"The CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance, an unprecedented plasma industry collaboration recently established to accelerate the development of a plasma-derived hyperimmune globulin therapy for COVID-19, is rapidly building momentum. Its membership has expanded globally to include 10 plasma companies, and now also includes global organizations from outside the plasma industry who are providing vital support to encourage more people to donate plasma.

"In addition to those announced at its inception - Biotest, BPL, CSL Behring, LFB, Octapharma and Takeda - the Alliance welcomes new industry members ADMA Biologics, BioPharma Plasma, GC Pharma, and Sanquin. Together, these organizations will contribute specialist advisory expertise, technical guidance and/or in-kind support to contribute to the Alliance goal of accelerating development and distribution of a potential treatment option for COVID-19."

*******

Here's an NPR story: Market For Blood Plasma From COVID-19 Survivors Heats Up
May 11, 2020

"In Minnesota, a program coordinated by the Mayo Clinic has collected plasma from more than 12,000 COVID survivors for transfusion into more than 7,000 gravely ill patients, the result of a massive public appeal led by government leaders and nonprofit groups such as the Red Cross.

"Meanwhile, for-profit companies that typically pay $50 per donation of plasma used in other lifesaving therapies are advertising aggressively — and significantly bumping up their rates for COVID donors.

"In Utah, John and Melanie Haering, who contracted COVID-19 aboard the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise ship, received gift cards worth $800 after making two donations apiece at a Takeda Pharmaceuticals' BioLife Plasma Services center. BioLife runs several of the more than 800 paid-plasma collection sites in the U.S., part of an industry that produces plasma protein therapies used to treat rare, chronic conditions such as hemophilia and in medical emergencies."

Surrogacy amidst the corona virus pandemic lockdowns

The coronavirus pandemic isn't only a story about disease, it's also a story about lockdowns, and restrictions on travel (among other things), especially international travel.  This is having a big, unintended effect on surrogacy markets, as surrogate pregnancies begun before the pandemic come to term. Here are two stories about the situation in the U.S. and in Ukraine.

The Guardian has the story about surrogacy in the U.S.:

Surrogates left holding the baby as coronavirus rules strand parents
The US surrogacy business is in turmoil, with parents overseas unable to pick up their baby and others unable to leave America

"Commercial surrogacy is legal in some US states, making it a hotspot for parents looking to have children through assisted reproduction. But the coronavirus travel ban has seen President Trump close the country’s borders to almost all international visitors, while a nationwide US passport office shutdown has made it impossible for parents who do manage to get into the country to obtain the necessary documentation to take their children home.

"As a result, babies are being born without their parents present at the birth (immigration authorities will only let parents in once the surrogate has given birth to the child). In at least one case, a mother flew from France to attend the birth of her child, only to be turned back by border control. Some parents aren’t being allowed in the country at all.

"Surrogates and surrogacy agencies are scrambling to look after babies themselves."
...
"The solution, Brisman says, is for the US immigration authorities to allow parents into the US to collect their children, and expedite the process by which they can leave the country. “I would like to see the government allow these people in quickly, and allow them home quickly,” she says. “We need expedited passports, birth certificates and visas for people whose babies are being born.”"
********

The NY Times has the story from the Ukraine:

100 Babies Stranded in Ukraine After Surrogate Births
Travel bans have prevented the babies’ parents from entering the country. One official says as many as 1,000 babies will be born before restrictions are lifted.

"Dozens of babies born into Ukraine’s booming surrogate motherhood business have become marooned in the country as their biological parents in the United States and other countries cannot travel to retrieve them after birth. For now, the agencies that arranged the surrogate births care for the babies.

"Authorities say that at least 100 babies are stranded already and that as many as 1,000 may be born before Ukraine’s travel ban for foreigners is lifted.

“We will do all we can to unite the children with their parents,” Albert Tochilovsky, director of BioTexCom, the largest provider of surrogacy services in Ukraine, said in a telephone interview.
...
"Ukraine does not tally statistics on surrogacy, but it may lead the world in the number of surrogate births for foreign biological parents, Mr. Tochilovsky said. His company alone is awaiting about 500 births. Fourteen companies offer the service in Ukraine.

"Ukraine is an outlier among nations, though not alone, in allowing foreigners to tap a broad range of reproductive health services, including buying eggs and arranging for surrogate mothers to bear children for a fee. The business has thrived largely because of poverty.

“The cheapest surrogacy in Europe is in Ukraine, the poorest country in Europe,” BioTexCom’s website explains. Surrogate mothers in Ukraine typically earn about $15,000.

"Some members of Parliament who have long opposed the business have renewed their calls for banning surrogacy services for foreigners now that the babies are stacking up without parents.

"Surrogacy is available in Ukraine only if a woman in a heterosexual partnership can demonstrate that she cannot bear children herself.
...
"The babies’ parents are now in the United States, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, France, Romania, Austria, Mexico and Portugal, the company said.

"Lyudmila Denisova, a human rights ombudsman for Ukraine’s Parliament, said the stranded babies underscore a pressing need for the country to bar foreigners from hiring Ukrainian women as surrogate mothers.

"A human rights official in the presidential administration, Nikolai Kuleba, has also demanded an end to the practice. “Ukraine is just turning into an online store for little ones,” he said."

Qingyun Wu defends his dissertation--remotely

Qingyun Wu successfully defended his dissertation at Stanford today, remotely, as we are all sheltering in place from the coronavirus pandemic.

He presented three papers, the screenshot above is from the third.

1. The lattice of envy-free matchings." Games and Economic Behavior 109 (2018): 201-211.
2 Entering Classes in the College Admissions Model." 
3 "Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets." 

Welcome to the club, Qingyun.

Plasma and plasma products (such as antibodies) are a big business (and the U.S. dominates the international market)

These days I'm thinking about corona virus covid-19 convalescent blood plasma, which I blogged about yesterday, and about which I hope to say more soon. But that has gotten me to think again about blood plasma generally, which is a source of many therapies, including antibodies, immunoglobulins, that defend against a large variety of diseases.

The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of blood plasma and plasma products, with both a large domestic commercial market and annual exports valued in the billions of dollars. The reason is largely that it is legal in the U.S. to pay plasma donors, so there's ample supply through a big network of hundreds of  for-profit and nonprofit blood and plasma centers (the nonprofits mostly don't pay donors, I think). In many countries, paying their residents for plasma is repugnant and illegal. Fortunately for their citizens, they mostly don't also suffer from severe shortages of life-saving plasma medicines, because it can be bought from the U.S. (See e.g. my posts on Canada's plasma policies.)

Here are some relevant export figures. They make clear that the U.S. exports billions of dollars of plasma, and tens of billions of dollars of plasma products.

For those who would like to study these data, let me explain where they come from.  (They  include some things that aren't plasma products, and may miss some that are...) It's not so easy to find the U.S exports of exactly blood plasma and plasma products (I needed some help).

In Chapter 30 of the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS),is the code:
HTS 3002: "Human blood; animal blood prepared for therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic uses; antisera, other blood fractions and immunological products, whether or not modified or obtained by means of biotechnological processes; vaccines, toxins, cultures of micro-organisms (excluding yeasts) and similar products:
 Antisera, other blood fractions and immunological products, whether or not modified or obtained by means of biotechnological processes"

That sounds good, but it includes (aside from plasma products) things that I don't want to include e.g. Malaria diagnostic test kits, and Fetal Bovine Serum.

On the other hand the subcategory 3002.12.00  is for "Antisera and other blood fractions" which includes sub-subcategories for things I do want to include:
3002.12.10 Human blood plasma.
3002.12.20 Normal human blood sera, whether or not freeze-dried
3002.12.30 Human immune blood sera

And then there are are codes 3002.13.00, 14.00, and 15.00 which cover the promising (very similar) categories in which most of the immunoglobulins are probably found, but maybe some other things too:

Immunological products, unmixed, not put up in measured doses or in forms or packings for retail sale
Immunological products, mixed, not put up in measured doses or in forms or packings for retail sale
and
 Immunological products, put up in measured doses or in forms or packings for retail sale.

The place to go to turn these numbers into export figures is dataweb.usitc.gov  (But getting data there isn't completely straightforward, and I got help from Julia Fabens.)  The table above shows that whole plasma itself has over $2 billion of annual exports from the U.S., and together with plasma products, including those involving antibodies (immunological products) there are almost $20 billion of exports from the U.S.

So, I'm guessing that soon, if clinical trials show that antibodies against covid-19, are useful, they will become readily available, commercially, in plasma and in pharmaceuticals.  A year ago, those human antibodies didn't exist, and so there was no way to use it to help patient zero or the next many thousands.  But now there's a lot of it, more each day, in the blood of recovered patients.  And there's a whole industry devoted to collecting it and purifying the antibodies into "immunological products." 

I hope human antibodies against covid-19 are clinically useful, to help mitigate and cure the disease if not to prevent it, because my sense is that a vaccine is (at least) many months away.

102,597,746 2,627,504 1,586,634	102,597,746	2,627,504	1,586,634

Cascades of convalescent plasma for Covid-19, and chains of exchanges, by Kominers, Pathak, Sönmez, and Ünver

Covid-19 convalescent plasma is a new thing in the world, that came into existence only when the first human was infected and recovered from the Covid-19 disease that is now pandemic. It isn't clear yet whether it will be clinically valuable, but recovered antibodies have been valuable for some other diseases, so there's excellent reason to hope that will be the case now too.  And as the number of people grows who have recovered from Covid-19, it is likely that the supply of antibodies is growing much faster, since antibody-containing plasma can be donated once a month or so. (There are  ongoing studies of antibody production by recovered patients, examining how long the antibodies remain at high levels, post-recovery). Of course, most of that supply is sequestered in the blood of recovered patients, so there's a non-trivial issue of collection and distribution.

As readers of this blog know, many countries prohibit the sale of plasma. Will Americans continue to support a commercial market for Covid-19 convalescent plasma in the current pandemic?  A distinguished group of market designers has written a paper considering how to apply techniques developed for kidney exchange to the task of collecting convalescent plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients, if it becomes impossible to buy and sell it. In particular, they consider how to create chains of donations, without using money, to overcome the shortages they anticipate.

Here's an easy to read account by Scott Kominers, one of the authors.

How to End the Plasma Shortage for Coranavirus Patients

Scott Duke Kominers, Bloomberg News  May 11, 2020

"convalescent plasma is in short supply: although it’s hard to estimate precisely, some statistics suggest the U.S. may need twice as much as we have on hand.

"In a new paper, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sonmez, M. Utku Unver and I propose a market design strategy that could help close the gap. Our approach makes use of two special features of the way plasma donation works.

"First, convalescent plasma is collected from recently recovered patients, which means that today’s patients become tomorrow’s prospective donors, assuming they manage to beat the virus. ... That suggests the shortage isn’t from lack of potential supply.

"Second, plasma donation is more than one-for-one: the typical donor can give enough plasma at one time for multiple treatments, and they can potentially donate more than once. As a result, assuming plasma therapy does help patients recover, there is a so-called flywheel effect: the more we use the treatment, the more plasma is available -- provided enough recovered patients are willing to donate.

"Many people would like to donate plasma to help a loved one, but can’t for various reasons:  Their blood types might be incompatible or they might live far away and be unable to travel. To address these sorts of obstacles, my collaborators and I suggest that each plasma donor could receive a voucher that can be used to give a family member or friend priority for plasma treatment. Because donation is more than one-for-one, it’s possible to honor vouchers while still increasing the pool of plasma available to treat other patients.

...

"A similar analysis suggests a role for a pay-it-forward system, where we make a point of treating patients who pledge to donate plasma, assuming they recover and are medically able to do so. Because recovered patients can typically donate more plasma than was needed for their own treatment, this again can help increase the plasma supply in the long run. As a result, my collaborators and I show that, somewhat paradoxically, prioritizing patients who pledge to donate can still end up expanding treatment for the patients who are unable to pledge, or just choose not to.

"Both of these policies are similar to systems we’ve used to expand kidney donation in the U.S.: Priority vouchers are sometimes granted when a living donor gives a kidney to a third-party before one of their family members needs a transplant. And pay-it-forward incentives are used in kidney exchange chains, where a patient with a medically incompatible prospective donor receives a kidney from a third-party donor, and then their donor later gives a kidney to some other patient."
******
Here is the paper itself:

Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design
Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver
NBER Working Paper No. 27143
Issued in May 2020

Abstract: COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) therapy is currently a leading treatment for COVID19. At present, there is a shortage of CCP relative to demand. We develop and analyze a model of centralized CCP allocation that incorporates both donation and distribution. In order to increase CCP supply, we introduce a mechanism that utilizes two incentive schemes, respectively based on principles of “paying it backward” and “paying it forward.” Under the first scheme, CCP donors obtain treatment vouchers that can be transferred to patients of their choosing. Under the latter scheme, patients obtain priority for CCP therapy in exchange for a future pledge to donate CCP if possible. We show that in steady-state, both principles generally increase overall treatment rates for all patients—not just those who are voucher-prioritized or pledged to donate. Our results also hold under certain conditions if a fraction of CCP is reserved for patients who participate in clinical trials. Finally, we examine the implications of pooling blood types on the efficiency and equity of CCP distribution.

Here's some of the motivation for their model:

"There is an active debate in economics and philosophy on the appropriate role of market-based

mechanisms with compensation for human products used in medicine or medical research like kidneys, blood, blood products, sperm, breast milk, bone marrow, and other.11 Since, as far as we know, there is no current market where infected patients can buy CCP or where recovered patients can sell CCP, we do not consider this possibility as part of our model.

...

"Because CCP is a form of plasma, a natural question is whether a compensated market for CCP will develop. In our model, there is no option to pay to receive CCP or be paid for donating CCP, but a donor can designate the voucher in our model to particular patient in need. As a result, our model of CCP falls between the two extremes described above. We expect that in a crisis moment, there is unlikely to be an active compensated market for CCP (even though it may be impossible to fully prohibit resale of vouchers). If a price-based market does develop, society may deem it unacceptable."

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

I am more optimistic than they are about the likely available supply of convalescent plasma if it proves useful, through existing commercial channels. My optimism is based on the large thriving commercial market for plasma and plasma-derived antibodies in the U.S., and around the world.  I'll try to blog about the general plasma and antibody (immunoglobulin) market tomorrow, and perhaps more on Covid-19 antibodies later this week.

Transplants dropped as Covid-19 rose, in France and the U.S.

In France, even more than in the U.S., kidney transplants were considered elective surgery.

In the Lancet:

Organ procurement and transplantation during the COVID-19 pandemic
Alexandre Loupy, Olivier Aubert, Peter P Reese, Olivier Bastien, Florian Bayer, Christian Jacquelinet
Published:May 11, 2020

Here is a set of figures showing "Trends in COVID-19 spread over time in France and the USA and recovery of organs and solid-organ transplantation procedures from deceased donors" (The top two figures are France, the bottom two US)

Here's an updated snapshot of American transplants from UNOS, for all organs:

and for kidneys:

Search and matching models of marriage (with emphasis on search or on matching)

Often when economic theorists (particularly matching theorists) speak of "marriage" we don't mean the real thing, we mean a metaphor embodied in a simple one-to-one model of matching. But marriage is a very real thing, and matching models of various sorts are used to study it.  Here's a survey from the Annual Review of Economics, by one of the leaders of this literature.

The Theory and Empirics of the Marriage Market by  Pierre-André Chiappori

"the economic analysis of the marriage will aim at answering two sets of questions: (a) Who marries whom? and (b) How are the benefits distributed between spouses? Mostly, these questions have been analyzed using either of two different frameworks: frictionless matching theory and search models. The basic distinction between the two is related to the emphasis that is put (or not) on frictions in the description of the market. In search models, frictions are paramount. Typically, each individual sequentially and randomly meets one person of the opposite gender; after such a meeting, both individuals must decide whether to settle for the current mate or continue searching. The latter option involves various costs, from discounting to the risk of never finding a better partner. If both individuals agree to engage in a relationship (which can be marriage or, in some models, cohabitation), then a negotiation begins on the way the surplus is shared.

"Matching models, on the contrary, assume a frictionless environment. In the matching process, each woman (say) is assumed to have free access to the pool of all potential men, with perfect knowledge of the characteristics of each of them—and vice versa. In other words, matching models disregard the cost of acquiring information about potential matches as well as the role of meeting technologies of all sorts (from social media to head hunters and from dating sites to pure luck).
*********

I haven't absorbed the whole paper yet, but the introduction reminded me of the plurality of approaches to studying search and matching (not just restricted to the study of marriage). Chiappori shares the view that the big difference between search models and matching models is that matching models are "frictionless," they assume away all the search frictions that are the subject of search models. 

Search models, on the other hand, concentrate on search effort, and take the actual matching technology to be random meetings. (To my mind, that's vastly different from taking account of the actual technology of matching, which is central to the market design literature on matching.)

The 2010 Nobel prize in Economics went to Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides, the founders of the search and matching macro literature "for their analysis of markets with search frictions." I recall that Dale Mortensen expressed the view that one of their big contributions was to notice that matching could be regarded as a "black box," rather than being studied explicitly, i.e. that actual matching didn't need to be incorporated in the model. Here's a 2001 paper from the JEL that discusses that:

Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function
Barbara Petrongolo and Christopher A. Pissarides
Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 390-431

" The matching function summarizes a  trading technology between agents who  place advertisements, read newspapers and  magazines, go to employment agencies,  and mobilize local networks that eventually bring them together into productive matches. The key idea is that this  complicated exchange process is summarized by a well-behaved function that  gives the number of jobs formed at any  moment in time in terms of the number  of workers looking for jobs, the number  of firms looking for workers, and a  small number of other variables.

" The matching function is a modeling  device that occupies the same place in  the macroeconomist's tool kit as other  aggregate functions, such as the production function and the demand for money  function."
***********
That work, which is focused on search and which treats matching as a black box, provides some big insights. For example, if search is costly but the benefits of matching are shared equally by the one who searches and the one who is found, then there can be free riding in the form of too little search, and hence unemployment by qualified job seekers at the same time that there are unfilled positions, and unsold houses at the same time as there are people who would actually like to buy them.

But models of matching via aggregate matching functions or via random matching are nowhere near the level of detail that allows the kind of micro-micro economics that market designers practice in analyzing marketplaces or in trying to design them. I'm mostly talking about markets that resemble labor markets more than marriage, but dating sites are marketplaces designed for something related to marriage, and there are some explicitly matrimonial sites. Much of what makes one dating site different from another is how they deal with congestion and other frictions.

A not-atypical market design project begins with an analysis of matching in an existing system,  focused on precisely the details of how matching occurs. A next step is that designers sometimes take responsibility for redesigning those details, or aspects of them, to reduce frictions in marketplaces e.g. for labor, schools,  kidneys, MBA courses, financial exchanges, dating sites themselves, etc.

I think there has been too little intersection between those who study search with random matching and those who study matching without explicitly modeling the costs of search. (That isn't to say that there aren't people working and making progress in that intersection.)  Possibly one barrier is a misunderstanding between these two groups of what the models are good for.

Does the porn industry provide a model for disease testing and contact tracing to end corona virus lockdowns?

The adult film industry--which produces films in which performers engage in sex with one another--has a testing service called PASS (Performer Availability Screening Services) intended to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases on film sets.

"Testing facilities screen patients for HIV using the Aptima HIV-1RNA Qualitative Assay test. Other tests on a full performers’ panel also include Chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B & C, trichomoniasis, and syphilis."
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Stat provides some detail:
Why the porn industry has a lot to teach us about safety in the Covid-19 era
By USHA LEE MCFARLING  MAY 8

"Since the late 1990s, when an outbreak of HIV infections threatened to shutter the multibillion-dollar industry, the mainstream porn community has implemented procedures that require all performers to be tested for HIV and a host of other sexually transmitted infections every 14 days before they can be cleared to work. Any HIV-positive test leads to an immediate shutdown of all U.S. sets, followed by detailed contact tracing before sets can reopen.
...
"In the 20 years it has been in place, PASS has met, and overcome, many of the same challenges that any large-scale coronavirus testing program might encounter, from issues of keeping databases of private medical information secure, preventing the forging of test results, dealing with false positive results, and educating workers about the need for repeated testing to keep workplaces safe.
...
"“You could imagine TSA verifying someone had tested negative before they were allowed on a flight,” he said. “Testing is particularly important for areas that are high risk, like airplanes or meatpacking plants.”
...
"Mike Stabile, communications director for the Free Speech Coalition, the adult entertainment trade association that runs PASS, said the adult film industry understands “better than most the discussion that has to happen for businesses to reopen.”

"Yet for all of that expertise, it would be hard to imagine the Trump administration, or state politicians, reaching out to the porn industry for guidance.
...
"Repeat testing will be necessary for the coronavirus, too, because — like with HIV — there is so much asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus, said Elizabeth “Betz” Halloran, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington who directs the Center for Inference and Dynamics of Infectious Diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

“You’ll have to keep testing, maybe every 10 days. We need simpler tests that people can just do at home,” said Halloran, who envisions a low-cost “10-pack” of tests for home use."

College admissions, late in the season

Each year, around this time of year, as the main round of college admissions comes to a conclusion, NACAC (the National Association for College Admissions Counseling) publishes a list of colleges that still have positions for qualified students.  Here's this year's listing:

COLLEGE OPENINGS UPDATE: OPTIONS FOR QUALIFIED STUDENTS

"NACAC’s annual College Openings Update: Options for Qualified Students (formerly the Space Availability Survey) is a voluntary listing of NACAC member postsecondary institutions that are still accepting applications from prospective freshman and/or transfer students for the upcoming fall term. Now in its 33rd year, the College Openings Update is designed as a tool for counselors, parents and others assisting students who have not yet completed the college admission process. Typically, colleges will continue to join the update after the May 5 public release date, so check back periodically to see additional colleges still accepting applications."

Confusion in NYC high school wait lists

In August, the New York City Department of Education announced a change in the school choice assignment process--without announcing any details.  But the plan was that after the initial run of the deferred acceptance algorithm, they would institute some sort of wait lists. I blogged about it at the time, and was concerned by the lack of detail.

Here's a current story from Chalkbeat that suggests that the details are still opaque, but that families are learning that the waitlist position they were given isn't reliable:

‘How can you move back on a waiting list?’: NYC’s high school admissions tweaks spark confusion
By Alex Zimmerman  May 8, 2020

"students vying for the city’s most coveted schools are discovering that their position on high school waitlists can worsen over time, a situation that has come as a surprise to some families — adding anxiety to an admissions process that is already famous for its complexity.
...
"Every student who fills out an application and does not get into their top choice is automatically waitlisted. If you get your third choice school, for example, you’ll be on the waitlist for your No. 1 and 2 choices. Nearly 44,000 students did not get into their first choice high school this year, automatically placing them on at least one waitlist.

"The second way is that students can add themselves to any waitlist once the initial matching process is over, even for schools a student didn’t initially apply to.

"In general, students who initially applied to a school but didn’t get in and are automatically added to its waitlist should be ranked ahead of students who add themselves later on, officials said. But there are exceptions.

"The first major exception is if a student is in a higher priority group than someone who is already on the waitlist. Some schools, for instance, give preference to students who live in certain neighborhoods, which can override a student’s position on the waitlist even if they were added first. (Officials said this is the most common reason a student would see their position worsen.)

"Olga Ramos, the admissions director at Bard High School Early College Queens, pointed to a second reason families can move backward — something that surprised her at first.

"If a student got into their first choice school, and listed Bard as their second choice, they could still add themselves to Bard’s waitlist and be considered as if they had been automatically added — potentially bypassing students who were already on the list."

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Here's an earlier story in Chalkbeat by Mr. Zimmerman, indicating that the system was still pretty opaque as the school choice process got ready to announce admissions in March:

NYC high school offers are coming this week with a big change: waitlists. Here’s what you should know.  By Alex Zimmerman  Mar 18, 2020

Here's what was known then...

"What are these waitlists, anyway?

"New York City students must apply to high school, listing up to 12 schools they want to attend. A complicated algorithm, developed by a Nobel prize-winning economist, then matches a student to one of their choices.

"That fundamental algorithm is not changing. But for the first time this year, any student who does not get into their first choice school will automatically be added to the waitlist of every single higher-ranked school they didn’t get into.

"Every school that has more applicants than seats will have a waitlist. It’s a similar model that the education department uses for pre-K, kindergarten, and middle schools — something education department officials said is an advantage."

**********
Here's a story from the time of the initial announcement:

Goodbye round two applications, hello waitlists: NYC announces changes to high school admissions
By Christina Veiga and Alex Zimmerman   Aug 15, 2019

"Starting next year, the city will allow students to sit on waiting lists for schools they wanted to attend, but didn’t get into. The city is also eliminating the second round of admissions, which it now uses to for students who aren’t matched to a school they applied to during the typical process.
...
"“It’s like going to a store and getting the ticket, you know what number you are, and you know how many folks are ahead of you, and you’ll be able to watch the process go,” said Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack. “You’ll also be able to talk with an administrator in a school who can give you a sense of how much waitlists move each year and that varies a bit by school.”
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I'm still confused about a different issue that I haven't yet seen addressed. In the original school choice system using the deferred acceptance algorithm, there was a second round in which students unmatched in the first round were asked for additional preferences over schools, so that they could be matched.  How were those unmatched students assigned to schools this year?

Here's my August post:

Friday, August 16, 2019 

Waitlists in NYC school choice--early reflections on yesterday's initial announcements

Double bubble: Locking up with exactly one other household during lock down

You thought your hard interpersonal decisions ended in high school, or when you married?  Not if you live in parts of Canada, where households will now be allowed to expand their social-distancing radius to include exactly one other household.

The WP has the story:

Canadian provinces allow locked-down households to pair up — threatening hurt feelings all around

"While jurisdictions around the world begin to relax their coronavirus restrictions, a handful are pioneering a novel — and potentially fraught — approach: The double bubble.

"There are rules — and they are not for the commitment-phobic. Each household may join with only one other household. Both sides must agree — for better, for worse — to a mutually exclusive relationship. The decision applies to all members of both households. And it’s final.
...
"The arrangement isn’t unique to Newfoundland and Labrador. New Brunswick has also introduced it. So has New Zealand. And the English Channel island of Guernsey.

Buying and selling blood plasma, with focus on Canada, continued

Peter Jaworski writes:

"I had a video with Big Think come out recently where I defend paying for plasma against a number of objections. It’s a bit on the long side (17 minutes), but I thought you might be interested in posting it to your blog: https://bigthink.com/videos/paid-plasma-ethics

"I also had an opinion piece on the same topic published in the National Post (with Kate Vander Meer, who is a patient that used plasma therapies): https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-on-covid-19-canada-needs-to-pay-plasma-donors-to-protect-its-domestic-supply?video_autoplay=true"

From the video transcript:

"Out of all the countries in the world only the ones that pay people to make that donation are self-sufficient in plasma therapies. And even the ones that pay not all of them are, in fact, sufficient. So there are only seven countries in the world that legally permit paying people for plasma donations – Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechia or the Czech Republic, parts of Canada. And I'll talk about Canada in a second. The United States, of course, and China. Those are the seven countries in the world that permit payment. Every other country that does not allow payment for plasma donations imports plasma therapies that make use of plasma primarily from Americans. Germans as well, but primarily Americans. "
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And here's the op-ed:

Opinion on COVID-19: Canada needs to pay plasma donors to protect its domestic supply
Kate Vander Meer and Peter Jaworski: In order to ensure that enough people are willing to give plasma to meet the ever-expanding need, we must urgently adopt a pay-for-plasma model here at home

"There’s no evidence that anything other than paying for plasma will work. According to an expert panel formed by Health Canada in 2018, paid donors in countries that permit payment are responsible for providing 89 per cent of the plasma used to make therapies, with the United States alone providing 70 per cent of the global supply. The panel also revealed that no country in the world that forbids paid donations collects enough plasma to meet its needs — not one!"

Repugnant but legal: can strip shows and payday lenders get Paycheck Protection Program support in the pandemic?

The Washington Post has the story:

Strip clubs, payday lenders, lobbyists fight to get emergency federal loans
In wave of lawsuits, companies battered by coronavirus shutdowns but excluded from aid seek small-business funds

"The Little Darlings strip club in Flint, Mich., was forced to turn off its stage lights and close its doors by the state’s stay-at-home order, but it failed to get a federal small-business emergency loan aimed at softening the financial blow from the pandemic.

"Owners of Little Darlings, along with clubs such as Baby Dolls in Dallas and Cheerleaders Gentlemen’s Club in Philadelphia, said it was wrong that they were excluded from the more than $600 billion Paycheck Protection Program created by Congress and the Trump administration to try to save businesses and jobs during the coronavirus crisis.

"So the strip clubs sued the Small Business Administration. And a federal judge in Wisconsin recently sided with the strip clubs, granting a preliminary injunction to force the government to issue loans to four of them, which government lawyers quickly appealed."

Human Challenge Trials (aka Controlled Human Infection studies) for corona virus vaccines

What do we want?  A vaccine for covid-19.

When do we want it?  After clinical trials and peer review.

How can we get it faster?  By asking healthy young (not at too much risk) volunteers to permit themselves to get infected with covid-19, so we can try out vaccine candidates.

Is that crazy?  Well, maybe not. (But not everyone is sure of that.)

Here's a recent paper considering the proposal.

Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure 
Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch, Peter G Smith
The Journal of Infectious Diseases, jiaa152, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiaa152
Published: 31 March 2020

Abstract: Controlled human challenge trials of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates could accelerate the testing and potential rollout of efficacious vaccines. By replacing conventional phase 3 testing of vaccine candidates, such trials may subtract many months from the licensure process, making efficacious vaccines available more quickly. Obviously, challenging volunteers with this live virus risks inducing severe disease and possibly even death. However, we argue that such studies, by accelerating vaccine evaluation, could reduce the global burden of coronavirus-related mortality and morbidity. Volunteers in such studies could autonomously authorize the risks to themselves, and their net risk could be acceptable if participants comprise healthy young adults, who are at relatively low risk of serious disease following natural infection, if they have a high baseline risk of natural infection, and if during the trial they receive frequent monitoring and, following any infection, the best available care.
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Here's another paper, in Science, 07 May 2020, by a big group of authors consisting of medical ethicists and physicians: they think it might be ok.

Ethics of controlled human infection to study COVID-19
Seema K. Shah, Franklin G. Miller, Thomas C. Darton, Devan Duenas, Claudia Emerson, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Nancy S. Jecker, Dorcas Kamuya, Melissa Kapulu, Jonathan Kimmelman, Douglas MacKay, Matthew J. Memoli, Sean C. Murphy, Ricardo Palacios, Thomas L. Richie, Meta Roestenberg, Abha Saxena, Katherine Saylor, Michael J. Selgelid, Vina Vaswani, Annette Rid

 Abstract: High social value is fundamental to justifying these studies

 Here are the articles opening lines:

"Development of an effective vaccine is the clearest path to controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To accelerate vaccine development, some researchers are pursuing, and thousands of people have expressed interest in participating in, controlled human infection studies (CHIs) with severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (1, 2). In CHIs, a small number of participants are deliberately exposed to a pathogen to study infection and gather preliminary efficacy data on experimental vaccines or treatments. We have been developing a comprehensive, state-of-the-art ethical framework for CHIs that emphasizes their social value as fundamental to justifying these studies. The ethics of CHIs in general are underexplored (3, 4), and ethical examinations of SARS-CoV-2 CHIs have largely focused on whether the risks are acceptable and participants could give valid informed consent (1). The high social value of such CHIs has generally been assumed. Based on our framework, we agree on the ethical conditions for conducting SARS-CoV-2 CHIs (see the table). We differ on whether the social value of such CHIs is sufficient to justify the risks at present, given uncertainty about both in a rapidly evolving situation; yet we see none of our disagreements as insurmountable. We provide ethical guidance for research sponsors, communities, participants, and the essential independent reviewers considering SARS-CoV-2 CHIs."

Kim Krawiec points out to me that, among the things the authors disagree about among themselves is compensation to donors:
"Members of our group disagree about the ethical permissibility of offering payment to CHI participants, and there may be relevant regulatory limits in different jurisdictions. Nevertheless, as SARS-CoV-2 CHIs require confinement and follow-up, fairness seems to demand offering participants compensation for their time. This may total several thousand dollars in the United States, assuming compensation at a fair minimum wage for unskilled labor, as in other CHIs. By contrast, incentives beyond compensation could be avoided, given the number of people already indicating willingness to participate. Concerns that the undue influence of monetary compensation compromises risk judgments are unsupported by the available data, as financial motivations are associated with greater attention to risk (15). Moreover, a rigorous informed consent process could maximize understanding. In case payment tempts participants to withhold disqualifying information, eligibility criteria should be objectively verifiable."
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And here is a group of activists, at an organization called 1 Day Sooner.
You can sign up here*,

COVID-19 Human Challenge Trials
"Human challenge trials deliberately expose participants to infection, in order to study diseases and test vaccines or treatments. They have been used for influenza, malaria, typhoid, dengue fever, and cholera. Researchers are exploring whether human challenge trials could speed up the development of a vaccine for COVID-19, saving thousands or even millions of lives."

*"Sign up here if you may wish to participate in a human challenge trial for COVID-19 if one were to occur, and, potentially, advocate for safe and rapid vaccine development. "