CHOICE SCREEN AUCTIONS by Michael Ostrovsky

 Mike Ostrovsky points out that small design decisions can have big consequences, and considers how European regulations have caused search engines to be allocated on Android phones.

CHOICE SCREEN AUCTIONS by Michael Ostrovsky, NBER Working Paper http://www.nber.org/papers/  (a less gated version is here)

"ABSTRACT: Choice screen auctions have been recently deployed in 31 European countries, allowing consumers to choose their preferred search engine on Google's Android platform instead of being automatically defaulted to Google's own search engine. I show that a seemingly minor detail in the design of these auctions—whether they are conducted on a “per appearance” or a “per install” basis—plays a major role in the mix and characteristics of auction winners, and, consequently, in their expected overall market share. I also show that “per install” auctions distort the incentives of alternative search engines toward extracting as much revenue as possible from each user who installs them, at the expense of lowering the expected number of such users. The distortion becomes worse as the auction gets more competitive and the number of bidders increases. Empirical evidence from Android choice screen auctions conducted in 2020 is consistent with my theoretical results."

The auction rules: "In each country auction, search providers will state the price that they are willing to pay each time a user selects them from the choice screen in the given country. The three highest bidders will appear in the choice screen for that country. The provider that is selected by the user will pay the amount of the fourth-highest bid."

...

"In this paper, I show that a seemingly minor detail of the implementation of choice screen auctions plays a major role in their outcomes—and thus in the overall effectiveness of the antitrust remedy. Specifically, while the answer in the Q&A section of the document states that an auction “allows search providers to decide what value they place on appearing in the choice screen and to bid accordingly,” the auction, as implemented, charges these providers not for appearing in the choice screen but for being chosen by a user. 

"While the difference may seem to be just a matter of language, it is not. To see the intuition for the difference, consider a version of the auction with just one available spot and two bidders. Bidder A gets revenue $10 from each user who installs its search engine, and if it is shown as an option in the choice screen, then the probability that a user will choose it is 10%. Bidder B gets revenue $20 from each user who installs its search engine, but the probability that a user will choose it (if it is shown as an option in the choice screen) is only 1%. The value that bidder A has for appearing on the screen is therefore $1, and the value that bidder B has for appearing on the screen is $0.20. Thus, if the auction is conducted on the “per appearance” basis, then bidder A will win, will pay $0.20 per appearance, and will have its search engine chosen by users 10% of the time, while the dominant platform’s own search engine will be chosen 90% of the time. If, instead, the auction is conducted as implemented, with bidding and payment on the “per install” basis, then bidder B will win and will pay $10 every time its search engine is chosen (corresponding to $0.10 per appearance). The winner’s search engine will be chosen only 1% of the time, and the dominant platform’s one will be chosen the remaining 99% of the time. Thus, relative to the per appearance auction, the per install auction results in a lower likelihood that an alternative search engine will be chosen by the user (making it correspondingly more attractive to the dominant platform) and gives advantage to search engines that generate higher revenue per user vs. those that are more popular but generate less revenue on a per-user basis. I

OK Cupid on trends in dating

 The datng site OK Cupid regularly surveys its users, and have just published a summary of recent results:

The Future of Dating--OkCupid Data Predicts 8 Dating Trends Singles Can Expect from 2021

Perhaps the most predictable of the 8 trends they note is this one:

"More than 2 million people answered our question “Do you prefer that your date shares your political views?” with 64% of respondents agreeing: cross-party dating does not work in modern relationships. In 2021, we’re going to see more people are refusing to date outside party lines. Around the world, 5 million daters answered our question “Could you date someone who has strong political opinions that are the exact opposite of yours?”, and there’s been an upward trend in people refusing to date across party lines. In 2019, 53% of respondents said they couldn’t date someone whose political views were the opposite of theirs — and that ratio jumped to 60% in 2020."

Joshua Gans on Paul Milgrom

 In Vox.EU:

Paul Milgrom, price discoverer and Nobel laureate--Joshua Gans 15 November 2020

"One thing I remember clearly about Paul Milgrom as an advisor is the child-like glee he would exhibit when he had found a new and interesting problem to solve. That happened one day in 1993 when he had been asked to consult on the proposal by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to auction off spectrum for the next generation of mobile phones."

UAE modifies laws on alcohol, cohabitation, and honor killings

 The Guardian has the story:

UAE decriminalises alcohol and lifts ban on unmarried couples living together--Country also ends lenient punishments for ‘honour’ killings as part of reforms       by Emma Graham-Harrison and agencies

"The United Arab Emirates has ended lenient punishments for so-called “honour” killings, lifted a ban on unmarried couples living together and decriminalised alcohol, in reforms to personal laws.

...

"The country, where citizens are outnumbered nine-to-one by migrants, has long branded itself internationally as a modern business and tourist destination and has not always strictly implemented its own law.

...

"Emirati judges have until now been allowed to hand down lighter sentences when a woman was attacked or killed by a relative because she has acted in a way he considers to have affected the family reputation, or “honour”. That can include eloping or fraternising with men not related to them.

"Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, described the changes as “positive steps for women’s rights” but also raised concerns about the daughters of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

"A UK family court this year found he had orchestrated the abductions of two of his children – one from the streets of Cambridge – and subjected his youngest wife to a campaign of “intimidation”.

...

"The reports did not mention other behaviour outlawed by Emirati law, which has previously landed foreigners in trouble, including homosexual relationships, cross-dressing and public displays of affection.

"Although alcohol is available for sale in restaurants and bars in Emirati cities, individuals needed a licence to buy booze or keep it in their homes. The new laws would apparently allow Muslims, who have not been able to get licences, to drink alcoholic beverages freely."

Large cores in college admissions markets: the case of Hungary by Biro, Hassidim, Romm, Shorrer and Sovago

 Here's a paper that tells us something about stable college admissions, and also something more general about large cores in matching with contracts.

Need versus Merit: The Large Core of College Admissions Markets*

by Péter Biró, Avinatan Hassidim, Assaf Romm, Ran I. Shorrer, Sándor Sóvágó

Abstract: This paper studies the set of stable allocations in college admissions markets where students can attend the same college under different financial terms. The stable deferred acceptance mechanism implicitly allocates funding based on merit. In Hungary, where the centralized mechanism is based on deferred acceptance, an alternate stable algorithm would change the assignment of 9.3 percent of the applicants, and increase the number of assigned applicants by 2 percent. Low socioeconomic status applicants and colleges in the periphery benefit disproportionately from moving to this non-merit-based algorithm. These findings stand in sharp contrast to findings from the matching (without contracts) literature.

Another art museum cancels sale of art in response to pushback

 The NY Times has the story about another last minute cancellation of a "deaccessioning" sale by an art museum:

Baltimore Museum of Art Cancels Painting Sale that Drew Complaints--The museum was prepared to sell three major works to pay for salary increases and to diversify its collection, but many critics disagreed with the plan.   By Hilarie M. Sheets

"The Baltimore Museum of Art is pausing its plan to sell three major paintings from its collection. A Sotheby’s sale of works by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol was estimated to bring in $65 million to fund acquisitions of art by people of color and staff-wide salary increases.

"The decision, on the day of a planned auction of two of the works, came after weeks of criticism from people who opposed the sale and hours after a conversation between leaders of the museum and the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional organization advancing best practices for art museums.

...

"In April, the association loosened its strict deaccessioning guidelines for the next two years to help museums under financial stress from the pandemic by allowing them to sell works to fund direct collection care, not just the acquisition of other artworks. While the Baltimore Museum has a balanced budget, its director, Christopher Bedford, said earlier this month he saw an opportunity to create an endowment for collection care that would then free up money for salary increases — a vision-based initiative in line with his efforts to bring greater equity to both its collections and workplace culture."

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

Recently:

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Auction of art from Jerusalem museum postponed at the last moment

Crispr gene editing is apparently not yet so well understood

 The NY Times has the story:

Crispr Gene Editing Can Cause Unwanted Changes in Human Embryos, Study Finds--Instead of addressing genetic mutations, the Crispr machinery prompted cells to lose entire chromosomes.  By Katherine J. Wu.

"A powerful gene-editing tool called Crispr-Cas9, which this month nabbed the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for two female scientists, can cause serious side effects in the cells of human embryos, prompting them to discard large chunks of their genetic material, a new study has found.

Administered to cells to repair a mutation that can cause hereditary blindness, the Crispr-Cas9 technology appeared to wreak genetic havoc in about half the specimens that the researchers examined, according to a study published in the journal Cell on Thursday.

"The consequences of these errors can be quite serious in some cases, said Dieter Egli, a geneticist at Columbia University and an author of the study. Some cells were so flummoxed by the alterations that they simply gave up on trying to fix them, jettisoning entire chromosomes, the units into which human DNA is packaged, Dr. Egli said."

***********

Previous post:

Monday, December 14, 2015

Technology watch: does Crispr create a new class of repugnant transactions?

Lies, damn lies, and internet conspiracy theories

 One reason lies spread faster than true stories on social media is that lies can be designed to be clickbait, while the truth is constrained by the facts.  This has been notably true with stories about election fraud, but it is by no means confined to lies originating at the top.

The Washington Post has the story:

Big Tech still hasn’t figured out how to make truth spread faster than lies--Warnings from Twitter and Facebook were the equivalent of slapping the “PARENTAL ADVISORY” labels from album covers on the president of the United States.    By Geoffrey A. Fowler

"President Trump tweeted that America’s election was being stolen, and Twitter put labels over his lies over a dozen times and counting. “This tweet is disputed and might be misleading,” it warned.

...

"But as tech products, the labels were too little, too late. There’s scant evidence that labels make a lick of difference to viewers. Moreover, they didn’t stop the flow of toxic election content on social media. That’s because social media’s business model is toxic content.

...

"when we look back on the 2020 election, we’ll remember it for the domestic disinformation campaigns and alternate-reality bubbles that grew, in part, because of technology designed to amplify them. This was the year where some 70 candidates for office embraced at least parts of the wacky QAnon online conspiracy theory, and one of them — Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — got elected to Congress.

...

"There is one way labels could definitely be effective, disinformation experts agree: by making it physically harder to share misinformation — adding speed bumps to the information superhighway.

"Facebook said Friday it had added a mini speed bump: forcing people to look at an additional message before they could share a flagged post.

"Twitter was the only one that made a significant speed bump effort on election night. Trump’s tweets covered by warning labels had to be clicked on to be seen, and didn’t show retweet and like counts. And they couldn’t be shared without adding your own context on top.

Assisted reproductive technology in Japan's national health insurance

 The Financial Times has the story:

Prime minister floats fertility treatment to boost Japan’s birth rate--Critics say making IVF cheaper will not address economic insecurity of raising children by Robin Harding

"Japan has spent 50 years fretting about its low birth rate and declining population but new prime minister Yoshihide Suga has hit on a different solution: fertility treatment.

"In his leadership campaign, Mr Suga called for in vitro fertilisation to be covered on national health insurance. The prime minister wants to make it affordable in a country where the average age of first-time mothers is now above 30 and nearly one in five couples has had tests or treatment for infertility.

"Mr Suga hopes the policy will raise Japan’s fertility rate, which stood at 1.36 children per woman in 2019. The fertility rate has been below the replacement level of 2.1 since the 1970s, locking in decades of future population decline with profound consequences for Japan’s society, economy and national security.

"But while subsidies for fertility treatment reflect a slow shift in Japan towards supporting parents rather than criticising the childless, experts said it still did little to address the economic insecurity and gender inequality that discouraged marriage and raising children."

Interviews with Fuhito Kojima, Bob Wilson, and Al Roth in the Japanese economic magazine Diamond Weekly

 Here are three interviews conducted by the journalist Kohei Takeda for the Japanese economic magazine  DIAMOND WEEKLY, on their website DIAMOND ONLINE.   

Here are the headlines and beginnings via Google Translate.

The essence of the Nobel Prize in Economics "Game Theory", explained by a former colleague of the award winner--Interview with Fuhito Kojima, Professor of the University of Tokyo, Director of Market Design Center, University of Tokyo  by Kohei Takeda : Reporter

The interview begins with these opening words from Fuhito:

"Eight years ago, when Al (Professor at Alvin Roth Stanford University), who I had been taught, received the award, we held a grand celebration and press conference. I thought I couldn't do that this year due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection, but in the evening of the award day (October 12), planned by him and his wife Emily, in the garden of Al's house. A small celebration was held while keeping a certain distance from each other.

"At universities in the United States, teachers and students tend to live very close to the campus, so fellow researchers have more relationships with their neighbors. I still lived near the university, so I received an invitation email from Emily on the day and participated in the celebration. ...

"To me, Paul was a colleague at the university, but he is also like a mentor. After I got a job at Stanford University about 10 years ago, my research field was the same "market design" in the Faculty of Economics (Editor's note: one of the research fields of game theory) , and sometimes I wrote a co-authored paper. , I was able to build a good relationship.

"He is a major researcher I have known since I was a student... Bob taught both Al and Paul, so academically I'm also Bob's "grandson."

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

2020 Nobel Prize Winner "Auction Theory for Business" Special Lecture--Interview with Professor Emeritus of Robert Wilson Stanford University by Kohei Takeda : Reporter

The first thing Bob was asked to explain was his work on the winner's curse:

"I started working in this area in the 1960s. The background to this was the issue of oil drilling rights among US oil companies at that time. They had very incomplete information about what their oil reserves were. From the size of the oil field to whether or not it was filled with hydrocarbons, there were many things we didn't know. Oil companies were under pressure to estimate their reserves in such an unknown environment.

"When auctioning under these circumstances, each participating player tends to overestimate in order to win the bid. In this case, each estimate is a function to increase the likelihood of bidding, but oil companies face the challenge of significantly lower rates of return after investing in oil rigs. Was there.

"Eventually, this is (in a situation where each player does not have the same information, the information is asymmetrical, and the player eventually chooses the less valuable one in an attempt to maximize his or her profits). (Adverse selection) ”was recognized as a problem. In other words, there was a tendency to win bids only when overestimating.

"What I have built is a theory for bidding various things in the best possible way, taking into account the situation of such adverse selection. This achievement has attracted a great deal of attention and is one of my early achievements in research. The negative effect of overestimating what is being bid on and winning the auction has been called "Winner's Curse". However, the best bidding strategy takes its existence into account, so you won't suffer from the curse of the winner."

***********

Nobel laureate in economics "Matching theory that can be used in business" --Interview with Professor Alvin Roth Stanford University by Kohei Takeda : Reporter

Bernard Cohen (1934-2020), who convinced the Supreme Court that bans on inter-racial marriage were unconstitutional

 Flags flew at half staff in Virginia last month, marking the death of Bernard Cohen, and also marking how much has changed in Virginia and the U.S. since he argued in the Supreme Court against the Virginia law that forbid inter-racial marriage. (The legalization of same sex marriage was still decades in the future.)

Va. flags to be half-staff Friday in memory of late Bernard Cohen, lawyer in Loving v. Virginia case   by MATTHEW BARAKAT, AP 

"Cohen and legal colleague Phil Hirschkop represented Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman who were convicted in Virginia in 1959 of illegally cohabiting as man and wife and ordered to leave the state for 25 years.

"Cohen and Hirschkop represented the Lovings as they sought to have their conviction overturned. It resulted in the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling, which declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional."

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

In a 1963 appeal, the Virginia trial judge declared:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages,” the judge wrote in upholding the sentence. “The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”

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

Here's the Supreme Court decision 

LOVING  v. VIRGINIA , SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, 388 U.S. 1

June 12, 1967, Decided

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

"These convictions must be reversed."

New Zealand votes to legalise euthanasia but not marijuana

 The Guardian has the story:

New Zealand votes to legalise euthanasia in referendum--Results must be enacted by the new Labour government by November 2021, but second referendum on legalising cannabis fails to find support  by Eleanor Ainge Roy 

"New Zealanders have voted to legalise euthanasia for those with a terminal illness, in a victory for campaigners who say people suffering extreme pain should be given a choice over how and when to bring their life to a close.

"The decision on whether to legalise euthanasia appeared as a referendum question on the 17 October general election ballot paper, alongside a second referendum question on whether to legalise cannabis – which did not succeed, according to preliminary results.

"The results of the euthanasia referendum are binding and will see the act come into effect 12 months from the final results – on 6 November 2021. Assisted dying will be administered by the Ministry of Health.

...

"The vote makes New Zealand only the seventh country in the world to legalise assisted dying."

America's "war on drugs" appears to be winding down after this election

 Vox has the story:

Election Day was a major rejection of the war on drugs--In every state where marijuana legalization or another drug policy reform was on the ballot, it won.  By German Lopez

"In every state where a ballot measure asked Americans to reconsider the drug war, voters sided with reformers. In Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota, voters legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. In Mississippi and South Dakota (separate from the full legalization measure), voters legalized medical marijuana.

"In Oregon, voters decriminalized — but not legalized — all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Also in Oregon, voters legalized the use of psilocybin, a psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms, for supervised therapeutic uses.

"In Washington, DC, voters in effect decriminalized psychedelic plants, following the lead of several other cities.

"With its vote, Oregon became the first state in the US to decriminalize all drugs in modern times. And marijuana is now legalized in 15 states and DC, although DC still doesn’t allow sales."

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

Update: and here's Kristof in the NYT:

Republicans and Democrats Agree: End the War on Drugs--Voters in red and blue states may be in accord on nothing else, but they passed measures to liberalize drug laws.  By Nicholas Kristof

"In Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota, voters decisively passed measures liberalizing marijuana laws. Marijuana will now be legal for medical use in about 35 states and for recreational use in 15 states.

...

"Under the new Oregon measure, manufacturing or selling drugs will still be crimes, but possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine would be equivalent to a traffic ticket. The aim is to steer people into treatment so that they can get help with their addictions."

Wearing military honors is a protected transaction

 

The New Yorker has an interesting story that sheds light on how we think of honorable or exceptional military service, and how claims about it are not so easy to verify and are (therefore) sometimes made falsely in public ways. (The story focuses on a Republican primary campaign for sheriff in a Texas county, in which both candidates lied about their military service.)

 How to Spot a Military Impostor--The detectives who investigate fake stories of military service use many tools, including shame.  By Rachel Monroe

"Politicians lie to get us into wars; generals lie about how well things are going; soldiers lie about what they did during their service. In 1782, when George Washington awarded ribbons and badges to valorous Revolutionary War troops, he was already worrying about pretenders. “Should any who are not entitled to these honors have the insolence to assume the badges of them they shall be severely punished,” he wrote. When Walter Washington Williams, thought to be the last surviving veteran of the Confederate Army, died, in 1959, President Eisenhower called for a national day of mourning. It turned out that Williams had fabricated his service, and that the second-longest-surviving Confederate soldier probably had, too. In fact, according to the Civil War historian William Marvel, “every one of the last dozen recognized Confederates was bogus.” But it’s only recently that lying about military service has been considered a particularly heinous form of lying, one with its own name: stolen valor.

...

"...wearing an unearned military medal was against the law, but there was no particular consideration given to lies about military service; the same chapter of the federal statute also made it illegal to proffer a fake police badge, pretend to be a member of 4-H, or misuse the likeness of Smokey Bear. That began to change in 2004, after an Arizona man was featured in a local newspaper as a highly decorated veteran who had, among other improbable exploits, assisted in the capture of Saddam Hussein. Sterner helped expose him as a liar, but he was frustrated that there was no criminal penalty. It wasn’t illegal to lie about a medal—it was only when you pinned it on your lapel that you broke the law.

...

"The Stolen Valor Act of 2005, written in part by Pam Sterner, was introduced the year that millions of filmgoers watched “Wedding Crashers,” in which Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s characters lie about being Purple Heart recipients. On September 7, 2006, the act, which made it a federal crime to falsely claim receipt of a military award or decoration, passed in the Senate by unanimous consent; President George W. Bush signed it into law soon afterward. But, six years later, in United States v. Alvarez, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Xavier Alvarez, a water-district official in Southern California, who had been convicted of lying about receiving the Medal of Honor. (Alvarez had also falsely claimed to be a professional ice-hockey player and to have been married to a Mexican movie star.) The Court found that the Stolen Valor Act violated the First Amendment. Congress passed an amended statute, which made it illegal to fraudulently wear medals, embellish rank, or make false claims of service in order to obtain money or some other tangible benefit, making stolen valor an issue of fraud rather than of speech. "

Preference Signaling for the Otolaryngology Interview Market

 From the journal The Laryngoscope, a thoughtful description of the growing interest in signaling for medical residency interviewing (which I believe will be implemented for Otolaryngology residency positions in the coming year).

Preference Signaling for the Otolaryngology Interview Market

C.W. David Chang MD  Steven D. Pletcher MD  Marc C. Thorne MD, MPH  Sonya Malekzadeh MD

First published: 06 October 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.29151

"The impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic extends beyond patient care and into graduate medical education (GME). The pandemic has created disarray in the residency application process. Visiting rotations and residency interviews—two cornerstones of the application cycle—are gone.

"Just as the pandemic has exposed healthcare disparities in medical care, it also shines a light on inequalities with GME. Even before the pandemic, many residency specialties observed a meteoric rise in the number of applications submitted by each applicant. In 2019, otolaryngology applicants submitted an average of 72 applications, an 80% rise over 15 years.1 This increase drives a cycle of programs receiving more applications and students feeling the need to apply more broadly to maintain competitiveness. Students with monetary resources are better able to mitigate match risk through prolific residency application and by traveling for away rotations to cultivate faculty advocates. Financially disadvantaged applicants may find it more difficult to amass influential social capital.

"With the deluge of applications, applicants are unable to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Such dilution impairs the applicants' abilities to credibly convey interests to programs. Similarly, the program director has a hard time selecting candidates from a pool of excellent applicants for interview.

"The interview is a limited resource. Selection committees often react to this scarcity by declining to interview qualified candidates they think (but do not really know) are unlikely to choose their program and instead interview candidates who they think (but do not really know) are more likely to accept an offer. This approach is inefficient.

"Preference signaling is an intriguing solution. Since 2006, the American Economic Association has operated a signaling service to facilitate job interviews for graduate students. This applicant‐initiated concept aligns goals of interested applicants with programs. Students send signals to up to two employers to indicate their interest in receiving an interview. In reviewing their outcomes, signals were found to increase probability of interview, especially for niche scenarios (nongraduate applicants, applications to liberal arts colleges, and small city locations).2 Signaling has received interest among medical residency specialties as well.3, 4

...

"The Otolaryngology Program Directors Organization (OPDO) Council has worked diligently with stakeholders to incorporate their input throughout the development process. We thank members and leaders of the academic otolaryngology community, including the Association of Academic Departments in Otolaryngology (AADO), the Society of University Otolaryngologists (SUO), and the greater community of program directors for their support. We appreciate the guidance and valuable insight from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)—specifically the Group on Student Affairs (GSA), the Committee on Student Affairs (COSA), and the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS)—along with the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). We are hopeful that signaling will improve the residency interview selection process by facilitating the successful pairing of applicants with programs."

Ethics of machine learning--an interview with Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth

 Amazon Scholars Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth discuss the ethics of machine learning--Two of the world’s leading experts on algorithmic bias look back at the events of the past year and reflect on what we’ve learned, what we’re still grappling with, and how far we have to go.  By Stephen Zorio

"In November of 2019, University of Pennsylvania computer science professors Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth released The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design. Kearns is the founding director of the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences, and the faculty founder and former director of Penn Engineering’s Networked and Social Systems Engineering program. Roth is the co-director of Penn’s program in Networked and Social Systems Engineering and co-authored The Algorithmic Foundations of Differential Privacy with Cynthia Dwork. Kearns and Roth are leading researchers in machine learning, focusing on both the design and real-world application of algorithms.

Their book’s central thesis, which involves “the science of designing algorithms that embed social norms such as fairness and privacy into their code,” was already pertinent when the book was released. Fast forward one year, and the book’s themes have taken on even greater significance.

Amazon Science sat down with Kearns and Roth, both of whom recently became Amazon Scholars, to find out whether the events of the past year have influenced their outlook. We talked about what it means to define and pursue fairness, how differential privacy is being applied in the real world and what it can achieve, the challenges faced by regulators, what advice the two University of Pennsylvania professors would give to students studying artificial intelligence and machine learning, and much more."

What do we know about the effects of payments to participants in challenge trials for vaccines, and other public spirited activities?

There is starting to be an empirical literature associated with payments for socially productive activities, such as participating in challenge trials of vaccines, donating plasma, etc.

Here's a blog post in the Medical Ethics blog of the Journal of Medical Ethics:

Is it acceptable to pay nothing or little to challenge trial participants?  By Sandro Ambuehl, Axel Ockenfels and Alvin E Roth.   October 30, 2020

Here's a paragraph (with some links).:

"we hope that the debates about payments in medical research, and on other transactions subject to restrictions on payments such as blood plasma donations, will converge as empirical results accumulate. To date, there is empirical evidence on the underlying motivations for volunteering, on the impact of high payment on human risk taking, on decision quality and well-being, on the signal value of small payments, on strategies to evade regulation, and on the general public’s assessment of appropriate activities and  payments. Moreover, there are studies that document biases affecting normative judgment in general, and biases affecting paternalistic restrictions and moral intuitions in particular.

***********

This blog post was written in connection with our paper in the JME:

Payment in challenge studies from an economics perspective 

by Sandro Ambuehl, Axel Ockenfels, and Alvin E. Roth

published online early, Oct 28, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-

Why I have signed election day letters

 I am a reluctant letter signer, but this election season I have signed two open letters.  My reluctance stems in part from the fact that, when I am one among many who sign a letter, I'm often prominently mentioned in the resulting news stories, even though my expertise on the subject of the letter is no more than the other signers.

But, we are entering on an important election, and I'm a concerned citizen.  So, I let myself be counted (even if over-counted), and when asked to explain, I sometimes feel moved to respond.

Here's the latest, from Business Insider:

More than 1,000 economists have now signed letter urging voters to reject 'reckless and selfish' Trump on Election Day. Alvin Roth, a Nobel winner, tells us why he's among them.

by Kate Duffy.

"As of Friday, 1,027 prominent economists from major institutions across America, including numerous Nobel winners, had signed the open letter, which is being updated until Election Day.

"The number of signatures has increased by more than 300 since last Friday, when it was first created.

"Alvin Roth, who shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2012, told Business Insider he signed the letter because he was "concerned that some voters might believe President Trump's essentially false claims that his careless stewardship has been good for the US economy."

"Roth said: "That certainly isn't the view of those who study these things. Letters like this may also help many people know that they are not the only ones to notice that the current president is trying to keep us divided and misinformed." He added that "democracy depends on reliable information, and the letter was meant to provide some of that."

...

"Roth, an economics professor at Stanford University, believes the re-election of Trump could severely damage the US economy. ...economic progress in the US is made through working with trading partners, he said.  

"But "President Trump prefers trade wars, with government subsidies to help staunch the bleeding in those parts of the economy that are harmed," such as the damage to American overseas agricultural markets, Roth added.

"Roth said that if Biden were elected as president, he would most likely appoint advisors who have knowledge in their areas of responsibility, and could therefore "restore America's relations with our allies and trading partners."

"Biden's tax and economic policies will not aim to benefit only the wealthiest Americans and political supporters, according to Roth, who emphasized how divided the country he believes the country is."

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

Related posts:

Monday, October 26, 2020

Vote! Here's another open letter, this one from business school professors

 Open letters are in season, and I've signed another one.  You can too, at the link.

It’s Time for America’s Business Leaders to Speak Out Against the Threat Trump Poses to Our Republic

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Open letter by economists opposing re-election of current U.S. president

 Open Letter: 690 Economists Oppose Trump's Re-Election

Don't forget to vote.

Challenge trials for Covid-19 vaccine are being planned (and a recent NBER cost/benefit analysis)

 Here's the NY Times:

To Test Virus Vaccines, U.K. Study Will Intentionally Infect Volunteers--The hotly contested strategy of deliberate exposure, known as a human challenge trial, could speed up the process of identifying effective coronavirus vaccines.  By Benjamin Mueller

"Scientists at Imperial College London plan to deliberately infect volunteers with the coronavirus early next year, launching the world’s first effort to study how vaccinated people respond to being intentionally exposed to the virus and opening up a new, uncertain path to identifying an effective vaccine.

"The hotly contested strategy, known as a human challenge trial, could potentially shave crucial time in the race to winnow a number of vaccine candidates. Rather than conducting the sort of trials now underway around the world, in which scientists wait for vaccinated people to encounter the virus in their homes and communities, researchers would purposely infect them in a hospital isolation unit.

"Scientists have used this method for decades to test vaccines for typhoid, cholera and other diseases, even asking volunteers in the case of malaria to expose their arms to boxes full of mosquitoes to be bitten and infected. But whereas the infected could be cured of those diseases, Covid-19 has few widely used treatments and no known cure, putting the scientists in charge of Britain’s study in largely uncharted ethical territory.

...

"The volunteers in London will be paid roughly Britain’s minimum wage, which is about £9, or $11, per hour, for their time in taking part in the trial and their two to three weeks in mandatory quarantine. The researchers said they were wary of offering additional incentives that could cloud the judgment of volunteers."

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

And here's a recent NBER paper on the efficiency of challenge trials:

A Cost/Benefit Analysis of Clinical Trial Designs for COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates

Donald A. Berry, Scott Berry, Peter Hale, Leah Isakov, Andrew W. Lo, Kien Wei Siah & Chi Heem Wong

ID w27882, DOI 10.3386/w27882, October 2020

Abstract: We compare and contrast the expected duration and number of infections and deaths averted among several designs for clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, including traditional randomized clinical trials and adaptive and human challenge trials. Using epidemiological models calibrated to the current pandemic, we simulate the time course of each clinical trial design for 504 unique combinations of parameters, allowing us to determine which trial design is most effective for a given scenario. A human challenge trial provides maximal net benefits—averting an additional 1.1M infections and 8,000 deaths in the U.S. compared to the next best clinical trial design—if its set-up time is short or the pandemic spreads slowly. In most of the other cases, an adaptive trial provides greater net benefits.

Paying participants in challenge trials of Covid-19 vaccines, by Ambuehl, Ockenfels, and Roth

 Here's a new short paper in Journal of Medical Ethics: (it's ungated, you can read it all at the link): 

Payment in challenge studies from an economics perspective 

by Sandro Ambuehl, Axel Ockenfels, and Alvin E. Roth

published online early, Oct 28, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-

"Participants in medical studies perform a service. Outside the domain of research participation, there is nearly universal agreement that workers providing a service should be compensated fairly, and that work involving more discomfort and risk should be compensated more generously. Accordingly, labour regulations impose floors (minimum wage laws), not caps on compensation. Caps, even if intended to protect against undue inducement, also raise concerns about illegal price-fixing that disadvantages workers. Such limits on payment for egg donors have successfully been challenged in court.

...

"Payment caps can lead to attempts to circumvent the regulation. For example, many countries that prevent payment for the donation of blood plasma instead import it from the USA where payment is legal—the volume of the US export market for plasma products approaches $20 billion per year.ii Similarly, restrictions on CHIM trial payments may lead to an increase in trials in countries with less stringent regulation.

...

"we note that increasing hourly pay by a risk-compensation percentage as proposed in the target article provides compensation proportional to risk only if the risk increases proportionally with the number of hours worked. (Some risky tasks take little time; imagine challenge trials to test bulletproof vests.) To ensure that equal consequences are compensated with equal amounts across a wide variety of studies, we instead recommend a three-part contract consisting of: (1) salary for time involvement that is adjusted to account for the amount of discomfort experienced during participation, (2) insurance against ex post adverse outcomes and (3) ex ante compensation for risks that cannot be compensated ex post (such as death). Such a scheme also increases transparency about what is requested from participants and thus contributes to high-quality participation decisions."

...

"The current discussion about payment in challenge trials is important because the potential benefits of well-designed challenge trials that could accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines are enormous. Overall, economic research has shown, first, that ethical concerns over high payments may rely on intuitive predictions about behavioural effects that find little or no empirical support, and that the dangers of underpayment are at least as real as those of overpayment. Second, a part of the ethics literature attaches significantly more weight to concerns of undue inducement than the general population. Accordingly, it appears to us that there is sufficient public support for preparing for challenge trials, with paid participants, without a need for excessive ethical concern that payments might inadvertently become too generous to trial participants."

***********

Our article is an invited commentary on

• Payment in challenge studies: ethics, attitudes and a new payment for risk model

  Olivia Grimwade Julian Savulescu Alberto Giubilini Justin Oakley Joshua Osowicki Andrew J Pollard Anne-Marie Nussberger  J Med Ethics, 2020

Related comments appear in

1. Compensating for research risk: permissible but not obligatory
   Holly Fernandez Lynch et al., J Med Ethics
2. Payment of COVID-19 challenge trials: underpayment is a bigger worry than overpayment
   Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby et al., J Med Ethics, 2020
3. How much money would it take for you to be infected with COVID-19 for research?
   
   By Olivia Grimwade and Julian Savulescu., JME blog, 2020