The black market in cactus

 The NY Times has the story:

Global Cactus Traffickers Are Cleaning Out the Deserts.  A recent raid in Italy involving rare Chilean species highlights the growing scale of a black market in the thorny plants. by Rachel Nuwer

"As with the market for tiger bones, ivory, pangolin scales and rhino horn, a flourishing illegal global trade exists for plants. “Just about every plant you can probably think of is trafficked in some way,” said Eric Jumper, a special agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Cactuses and other succulents are among the most sought after, along with orchids and, increasingly, carnivorous species.

"Trafficking can take a serious toll. Over 30 percent of the world’s nearly 1,500 cactus species are threatened with extinction. Unscrupulous collection is the primary driver of that decline, affecting almost half of imperiled species.

...

"Purchasing rare species legally, however, can be difficult to impossible. All cactuses and many other types of succulents require permits to be traded internationally, if they can be legally traded at all. Most countries also prohibit collection of some or all of these species from the wild, including the United States.

...

"But while stronger law enforcement is welcome, a variety of experts believe prohibition, on its own, will not stop trafficking. Instead, they favor meeting demand through sustainably managed collection of seeds or cuttings of wild plants, which could be used for artificial propagation by certified greenhouses.

"Sales of these legally sourced plants could help offset illegal trade. Preferably, the proceeds would go directly to communities living alongside the species, the experts say, creating incentives to protect them. The cactus and succulent trade is “big business, but the majority of that money is not centered in countries of origin,” Dr. Margulies said. “I think there should be a push to engage in this more from a social justice lens.”

"Many countries’ domestic legislation prohibits these types of activities, however, as do strict international trade laws and bureaucracy. The result, Mr. Cattabriga said, is a system that “discourages the reproduction of rare plants in captivity, and has the side effect of exacerbating the illicit trade.”

School choice in Sweden (and in Swedish), by Andersson and Roth

 Tommy Andersson and I wade into the school choice debate in Sweden in the Dagens Samhalle, arguing in favor of unified enrollment and the deferred acceptance algorithm. Google translate does a reasonable job of translation:

Professorer: Så kan skolvalet leda till minskad skolsegregation

Google Translate: "Professors: This is how school choice can lead to reduced school segregation

"If you seriously want to break school segregation, the choice of school needs to be maintained. But it is important that you choose the "right" method for allocating school places so that tactical school choices are eliminated, write professors Tommy Andersson and Alvin E Roth."

Journal of controversial ideas

  Some ideas are controversial not just because some people think they are bad ideas, but because they think that they are the kinds of ideas that only bad people have.  So writing about them, let alone advocating them, may have reputational costs.  Here's a new (open access) journal that offers authors the option of publishing under a pseudonym if they wish, to avoid the harassment, hate mail and death threats that would otherwise come their way.

Journal of controversial ideas

"The Journal of Controversial Ideas offers a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive. The journal offers authors the option to publish their articles under a pseudonym, in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety.  We hope that this will also encourage readers to attend to the arguments and evidence in an essay rather than to who wrote it. Pseudonymous authors may choose to claim the authorship of their work at a later time, or to reveal it only to selected people (such as employers or prospective employers), or to keep their identity undisclosed indefinitely. Standard submissions using the authors’ actual names are also encouraged."

Editors: 

Jeff McMahan (White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK)

Francesca Minerva (Researcher, University of Milan)

Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University, USA)

And Here's the first issue, with several pseudonymous contributions.

Peter Singer discusses the journal at Project Syndicate:

Keeping Discussion Free

"A new academic journal permits authors to use a pseudonym to avoid running the risk of receiving personal abuse, including death threats, or of irrevocably harming their careers. That option has become necessary even in countries that we do not think of as repressive dictatorships."

Payday loans: usury, or access to credit? by Allcott, Kim, Taubinsky and Zinman

Payday loans and other expensive services to those without access to formal credit generate a good deal of repugnance and regulation (including bans), but may be the only source of credit available to their habitual customers. Here's a new NBER working paper on that finds that experienced borrowers don't misjudge their chances of borrowing again.

Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? Theory and Evidence from Payday Lending  by Hunt Allcott, Joshua J. Kim, Dmitry Taubinsky & Jonathan Zinman  WORKING PAPER 28799, DOI 10.3386/w28799,  May 2021

Abstract: It is often argued that people might take on too much high-cost debt because they are present focused and/or overoptimistic about how soon they will repay. We measure borrowers' present focus and overoptimism using an experiment with a large payday lender. Although the most inexperienced quartile of borrowers underestimate their likelihood of future borrowing, the more experienced three quartiles predict correctly on average. This finding contrasts sharply with priors we elicited from 103 payday lending and behavioral economics experts, who believed that the average borrower would be highly overoptimistic about getting out of debt. Borrowers are willing to pay a significant premium for an experimental incentive to avoid future borrowing, which we show implies that they perceive themselves to be time inconsistent. We use borrowers' predicted behavior and valuation of the experimental incentive to estimate a model of present focus and naivete. We then use the model to study common payday lending regulations. In our model, banning payday loans reduces welfare relative to existing regulation, while limits on repeat borrowing might increase welfare by inducing faster repayment that is more consistent with long-run preferences.

***********

Update: here's the published paper

Allcott, Hunt, Joshua Kim, Dmitry Taubinsky, and Jonathan Zinman. "Are high-interest loans predatory? theory and evidence from payday lending." The Review of Economic Studies 89, no. 3 (2022): 1041-1084.

Download

Kidney exchange in India: progress, then Covid

 Here's a paper reporting, among other things, a long kidney exchange cycle in India.  But Covid has put a temporary halt to all that.

Paired Kidney Exchange in India: Future Potential and Challenges Based on the Experience at a Single Center  by Kute, Vivek B. MD, DM, FASN, FRCP1; Patel, Himanshu V. MD, DNB1; Modi, Pranjal R. MS, DNB2; Rizvi, Syed J. MS, MCh2; Engineer, Divyesh P. MD, DM1; Banerjee, Subho MD, DM1; Butala, Bina P. MD3; Gandhi, Shruti MD4; Patel, Ansy H. MBBS5; Mishra, Vineet V. MS  Transplantation: May 2021 - Volume 105 - Issue 5 - p 929-932  doi: 10.1097/TP.0000000000003421

But now Covid is taking a toll. Dr. Kute writes in an email that transplantation has been on hold in Gujarat since April. He says "we had cumulative 225 kidney transplant recipients with PCR confirmed COVID-19 in our single center. Over all mortality in transplants population 10% and much higher in dialysis."

Here's hoping that vaccine production ramps up and Covid falls away in India and the rest of the world soon.

**********

I have quite a number of posts following the work of Dr. Kute and his colleagues in Ahmedabad.

Kidney to Share

 The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics is sponsoring a presentation tomorrow of a new book, Kidney to Share.  It's written largely in alternating chapters, by Martha Gershun, an altruistic kidney donor,  and  her friend John Lantos, a doctor and bioethicist who is a member of the same synagogue. I'll join in the discussion.

Kidney to Share Book Launch Seminar  With Authors Martha Gurshun & John Lantos,  Wednesday, May 19, 2 - 3pm PST  (RSVP )

There has been much recent discourse, and some regulatory action, about reducing the financial dis-incentives to being a kidney donor (e.g. steps have been taken to facilitate the reimbursement of out of pocket travel and child care expenses arising from donation, and even replacement of some lost wages).  But this book is among the first discussions I've seen of other dis-incentives to donation, arising from  procedural and logistical barriers.  

In Martha Gershun's case, many of these barriers to donation arose from the fact that the Mayo Clinic, where she donated, was inconveniently far from her home in Kansas City, but Mayo insisted that all procedures and tests be conducted on-site in Rochester, Minnesota. (Some of these barriers have in fact been overcome in kidney exchange, but Ms. Gershun was making a direct donation, to a patient she had read about.)

Dr. Lantos points out that if transplant centers treated kidney donors more like the way they treat financial donors, they would have found ways to smooth some of the logistical barriers that were bureaucratically applied.

Ms. Gershun, in email correspondence with me after I had read the book, wrote:

"I was very interested in your thought that there has been some improvement in logistics over the past 20 years, since it is now easier to ship kidneys.  Many of the barriers I encountered in my efforts to donate were exacerbated because we lived 6 hours from Mayo.  At every stage, they were unwilling to “outsource” any part of the process to another provider (not even that sticky substance abuse appointment or processing the blood that otherwise had to be shipped on dry ice). 

...

"Why couldn’t I have undergone the medical/psychological evaluation and surgery at KU Medical Center, a highly-respected transplant center just 2 miles from my house, with the kidney flown to Mayo for transplantation?  You have made me think that another barrier to consider must surely be the proprietary and siloed nature of Transplant Centers.  How many more transplants could we do if we eliminated the need for both donor and recipient to receive their care at the same institution?  My understanding is that pairs/chains have made a lot more progress on that front than directed donations."

Kidney to Share

In a subsequent email exchange Ms. Gershun points out to me that other transplant centers accept shipped kidneys even for direct transplants from donor to recipient (with no exchange involved). (The article below, from the ABA Journal, concerns a kidney shipped from UCLA to MGH in Boston, where the transplant was performed.  Both of those transplant centers have lots of inter-hospital kidney exchange experience.)

Father and daughter legal scholars complete successful kidney transplant  by Stephanie Francis Ward

"Jennifer Mnookin had one kidney removed in Los Angeles on Dec. 2, and it was put on an overnight flight to Boston to be transferred Dec. 3 to Robert Mnookin, who had end-stage kidney disease. Both are doing well."

The pandemic and the job market for economists

 It's been a tough year on the academic job market. Here's hoping it recovers quickly.

Committee chair John Cawley submitted the following Report of the Ad Hoc Committee  on the Job Market  AEA Papers and Proceedings 2021, 111: 801–802 https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.111.801

" To share information about how COVID-19 is affecting the job market for PhD economists, we have regularly released memos providing information on the demand and supply of new PhD economists. These memos can be found on our committee’s webpage, but below is a summary of the most recent information.

a. Regarding labor demand: the overall number of job openings on JOE in 2020 was down 26.5 percent from 2019. The number of full-time academic jobs in the United States was down 52.8 percent, and the number of full-time academic jobs outside the United States (and listed on JOE) was down 20.3 percent. The number of fulltime nonacademic jobs listed on JOE was down 17.7 percent from 2019.

b. Regarding labor supply: the number of new JOE job candidate accounts created by students was down 19.1 percent from 2019, and the number of people sending AEA signals was down 14.9 percent."

The common app and the growth of applications to selective colleges, by Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff

A pair of papers study the Common App, how it is used disproportionally by selective universities and liberal arts colleges, to which applications have increased over time.  The papers focus on how this has increased student choice. 

There's a parallel set of arguments made elsewhere, particularly in connection with application to medical residencies, that too many applications increase congestion in the admissions process. 

The Common Application and Student Choice, By Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff, AEA Papers and Proceedings 2021, 111: 460–464, https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20211042

And here's a longer companion paper:

Reducing Frictions in College Admissions: Evidence from the Common Application by Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff, April 17, 2020

Abstract: College admissions in the U.S. is decentralized, creating frictions that limit student choice. We study the Common Application (CA) platform, under which students submit a single application to member schools, potentially reducing frictions and increasing student choice. The CA increases the number of applications received by schools, reflecting a reduction in frictions, and reduces the yield on accepted students, reflecting increased choice. The CA increases out-of-state enrollment, especially from other CA states, consistent with network effects. CA entry changes the composition of students, with evidence of more racial diversity, more high-income students, and imprecise evidence of increases in SAT scores.

********

For a look at applications through the other end of the telescope, see

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

The surge in exam-optional applications for college admissions

The importance of very early education, by Gray-Lobe, Pathak, and Walters

 There's more to education than exam scores.  Here's a recent paper on the effects of early preschool education on long term educational outcomes.

The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston  by Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walters, SEII Discussion Paper #2021.05  ay 2021

ABSTRACT: We use admissions lotteries to estimate the effects of large-scale public preschool in Boston on college-going, college preparation, standardized test scores, and behavioral outcomes. Preschool enrollment boosts college attendance, as well as SAT test-taking and high school graduation. Preschool also decreases several disciplinary measures including juvenile incarceration, but has no detectable impact on state achievement test scores. An analysis of subgroups shows that effects on college enrollment, SAT-taking, and disciplinary outcomes are larger for boys than for girls. Our findings illustrate possibilities for large-scale modern, public preschool and highlight the importance of measuring long-term and non-test score outcomes in evaluating the effectiveness of education programs

Clean needle exchange faces renewed opposition in Indiana and elsewhere

Harm reduction measures in connection with intravenous drug abuse can remain repugnant even where they were successful.

Statnews has the story:

Years ago, a syringe exchange helped end a devastating HIV outbreak. Now it might be forced to close  By Lev Facher

"The Indiana county at the center of a devastating HIV crisis in 2015 may soon close the syringe exchange program widely credited with helping to end its outbreak.

"For public health advocates in Scott County, home to 24,000, the controversy is all too familiar. Six years ago, the county drew national attention for recording roughly 200 HIV cases in a single year, largely driven by injection drug use. Critics have charged that the state government’s slow response and monthslong refusal to permit needle exchanges only made the crisis worse.

"Closing the exchange now, they warn, could lead to a new wave of HIV and hepatitis C cases and increased drug overdoses. Nationally, too, many are worried it could trigger a broader wave of closures. Scott County’s syringe exchange was hailed as a success in 2015 and paved the way for other programs to open across the country. Many fear that shuttering the program, similarly, could inspire activists from coast to coast seeking to close syringe exchanges in their communities.

...

"The new debate in Indiana comes amid a wave of anti-syringe-exchange activism across the country, including a controversial new law in West Virginia that critics say could force many local programs there to close. West Virginia is experiencing a worst-in-the-nation HIV outbreak not unlike Indiana’s six years ago.

...

"Despite the reduced rates of transmission, Scott County is still among those most vulnerable to HIV outbreaks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It sits at the western edge of the country’s largest HIV hotspot: An area spanning several hundred miles that includes parts of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee, where much of the HIV transmission is thought to be driven by injection drug use.

"Still, neighbors and local lawmakers there have sought to close the exchange, citing fears it encourages or facilitates drug use and crime (data shows that such programs do not). They have also charged that syringe exchanges lead to hazardous litter, like stray needles — a problem that, in some cases, harm reduction advocates have acknowledged and pledged to help address."

INFORMS 3rd workshop on market design in July (submission deadline June 1)

 Alex Teytelboym sends me the following announcement:

The INFORMS Section on Auctions and Market Design is organizing its 3rd Workshop on Market Design, traditionally held in conjunction with the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.  

The two-day workshop with invited speakers and a sequence of submitted papers will be held virtually on July 23-24, 2021.  The submission deadline is June 1, 2021.  Further information is available here.

Keynote speakers

Tommy Andersson, Lund University

• Wedad Elmaghraby, Univ. of Maryland
• Asu Ozdaglar, MIT

Organizers

• Martin Bichler, Technical University of Munich
• Sasa Pekec, Duke University
• Alex Teytelboym, University of Oxford

We look forward to your participation and to getting your submissions!

Martin Bichler, Technical University of Munich

Sasa Pekec, Duke university

Alex Teytelboym, University of Oxford

A glimmer of hope for German kidney transplants: a discussion of kidney exchange

 Axel Ockenfels (who, along with Dorothea Kubler has been at the forefront of advocating for kidney exchange in Germany) forwards me this announcement (translated from German):

"the German Federal Ministry of Health is organizing a digital symposium on Tuesday, June 29, 2021, from 09:30 to approx. 15:30 on the topic of "Expanding the donor pool for living organ donation - a perspective for Germany?", to which we cordially invite you. Please feel free to forward the invitation to interested parties from your industry.

"An organ transplant is often the only way to save the lives of seriously ill people or to restore their quality of life. In view of long waiting times for a post-mortem organ donation, the question of living donation sometimes arises. Living organ donation has been permitted in Germany since 1997 within narrow limits and under special conditions. The donor and recipient must be "manifestly close in a special personal bond." However, living donation may be excluded in such cases for medical reasons. In order to increase the chances of organ transplantation for patients who are affected by this, some countries have established so-called kidney exchange programs.

"The symposium will take a look at various possibilities for extending organ donation: What are the opportunities and risks associated with cross over donation, pooled donation and so-called non-directed living donation? What procedures are necessary to protect donors? These and other questions will be discussed from a medical, legal and ethical perspective with an interdisciplinary audience. 

"We would be delighted if you could contribute your expertise to the discussion and if we could welcome you at the event on

"Tuesday, June 29, 2021, 09:30 - approx. 15:30 hrs.

...

"welcome to the event. The invitation is explicitly transferable. 

"If you would like to attend the event, please register by June 28, 2021 at the following link: Event Management Tool link.

Yours sincerely

"Joachim Becker

"Head of the Department of Medical and Professional Law, Prevention

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)"

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

This seems like a potentially very positive first step, despite (or maybe because) of the fact that it seems to be signed by the Ministry of Health's department of prevention... (Leiter der Abteilung Medizin- und Berufsrecht, Prävention)

A previous post observed that kidney exchange receives popular support in Germany:

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Surrogacy and global kidney exchange receive popular support even where banned, in PNAS by Roth and Wang

(It turns out that I have a lot of previous posts related to kidney exchange in Germany...)

Keeping pilots in the Air Force, in the face of renewed, post-pandemic demand from airlines

 I spent a good deal of time last year working on understanding the internal labor market of the Air Force, and how it interacts with the larger American labor market.

During the pandemic, with airlines cutting back on flights, it may have seemed as if the problem of retaining pilots had eased. But airline demand for pilots is growing,rand the Air Force will have to think creatively about retention of pilots who are at or near the end of their service obligation.

Here's a short piece in Defense One, by two Air Force officers:

The USAF’s Bad Bets on Pilot Retention Show It Needs Outside Help. Service leaders think the same old tactics can reverse a pilot shortage in a resurging economy.  By BRIAN KRUCHKOW and TOBIAS SWITZER

"Despite the pandemic, the Air Force is still short of pilots, thanks to low retention and strong airline hiring. Before COVID-19 reached the United States, the Air Force had a deficit of more than 2,000 pilots, requiring $15 billion to train replacements. The pandemic temporarily paused airline hiring to the Air Force’s relief, reducing pilot losses, but Covid-19 also hampered pilot training, leaving the overall shortage almost unchanged. Instead of using the reprieve as an opportunity to try bolder retention initiatives, the Air Force recently placed a large wager against airline recovery and renewed airline pilot hiring.

...

"Before the pandemic, the Air Force offered retention contracts as short as three years to pilots completing their initial ten-year commitments. Seizing on the collapse of airline hiring in 2020, though, the service changed the terms of its contracts. Gone are three- and four-year contracts; the shortest pilot contract is now five years, which gets you about 70 percent of the maximum retention bonus. To get the full amount authorized by Congress—$35,000 per year—the Air Force requires at least an eight-year commitment. These are hardball terms compared to past years and are a strong bet that airline pilot hiring will be weak for an extended period. 

...

"Air Force pilots are poised to leave active duty, not stay, according to our research. Despite the incredibly dire economic and health conditions in 2020, only 51 percent of the Air Force’s eligible pilots signed retention contracts, a small increase from recent years. Of those pilots who signed retention contracts last year, though, we found that 33 percent signed on for only three years. The rest stayed on active duty without service commitments and are now free agents able to depart on short notice. Air Force pilots are keeping their options open and believe airline hiring will return soon, offering better opportunities.  

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

Earlier:

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The labor market that is the military: a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The international market for fonts

 There was a time when printing was a local business, and so fonts had local markets. And the buyers were printers, so even if the ultimate customers had artistic preferences (e.g. newspapers liked to look different from books), the names of the fonts were not a big issue.

But Microsoft's announcements of new fonts for Word has opened up a window (so to speak) on some considerations that I hadn't thought about.

CNBC has the story, including an interview with Lucas de Groot, the designer of the previous default font, Calibri:

Microsoft is rolling out a new default font to 1.2 billion Office users after 14 years — and the designer of the old one is surprised  by Jordan Novet

"Coming up with the name was not easy. For both of his fonts, Microsoft wanted names that started with the letter C.

"As de Groot put it in an email, “I had proposed Clas, a Scandinavian first name and associated with ‘class,’ but then the Greek advisor said it meant ‘to fart’ in Greek. Then I proposed Curva or Curvae, which I still like, but then the Cyrillic advisor said it meant ‘prostitute’ in Russian, it is indeed used as a very common curse word.” Microsoft legal workers also checked each possible name to see if it had already been trademarked.

"The company came up with the name “Calibri,” and when de Groot first heard it, he found it odd. It was similar to Colibri, a genus of hummingbirds. But then Microsoft employees said that it related to calibrating the rasterizer in the company’s ClearType font rendering system."

**********

I realize that I like fonts with serifs, which for example distinguish my name from the acronym for Artificial Intelligence: Al and AI.

In a sans-serif font, those are Al and AI.

Apparently sans-serif fonts were easier to read on low resolution computer screens.

Texas electricity market design: replace ERCOT experts with political appointees

 The Texas Tribune has the story:

Overhaul of ERCOT board could replace experts with political appointees  By MITCHELL FERMAN

"AUSTIN, Texas -- During February's deadly winter storm, Gov. Greg Abbott and many state lawmakers quickly criticized the Electric Reliability Council of Texas because several members of its large governing board reside outside of Texas.

"Many of the out-of-state board members are experts in the electricity field, but resigned following criticism of the agency's oversight of the state's main power grid during the storm that left millions of Texans without electricity for days in freezing temperatures.

"State lawmakers are now trying to change the way ERCOT is governed by requiring members to live in Texas and giving more board seats to political appointees - changes that experts say may do little to improve the power grid.

"One former board member who resigned after the storm, Peter Cramton, criticized legislation for politicizing the grid operator's board.

"These people would be political types without electricity expertise," he told The Texas Tribune.

The Texa"s House has already approved House Bill 10, which would remove independent outside voices on the ERCOT board and replace them with five political appointees. The governor would appoint three of those people, while the lieutenant governor and speaker of the House would each appoint one. None of the appointees would be required to be electricity experts. The only requirement is that appointees live in Texas."

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

Other posts on ERCOT.

Akhil Vohra and Mike Shi defend their dissertations

 We're still locked out of the Economics building, but science progresses and dissertations are defended.  I've been remiss in celebrating them: here are two recent ones.

Akhil Vohra, whose job market paper I blogged about  here.

Akhil Vohra (top center) with Al Roth, Itai Ashlagi, Matt Jackson, Gabe Carroll and Fuhito Kojima

And Mike Shi, one of whose papers is this one:

The Burden of Household Debt  By ALEJANDRO MART´INEZ-MARQUINA and MIKE SHI *

Mike Shi (upper right) with Al Roth, Jeremy Bulow, Muriel Niederle, Luigi Pistaferri, and Nick Bloom

Welcome to the club, Akhil and Mike.

How can medical residency candidates be evaluated more reliably?

 Standardized tests as measures of physician aptitude are falling into disrepute and disuse.  Consequently the medical profession needs to develop better ways for evaluators (e.g. med school professors) to communicate information about applicants to residency programs.

Here are two reflections on the current state of afairs in Orthopaedic surgery.

Are Narrative Letters of Recommendation for Medical Students Interpreted as Intended by Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Programs?  by Egan, Cameron R. MD; Dashe, Jesse MD; Hussein, Amira I. PhD; Tornetta, Paul III MD

Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research: February 25, 2021 - doi: 10.1097/CORR.0000000000001691

"Background: Narrative letters of recommendation are an important component of the residency application process. However, because narrative letters of recommendation are almost always positive, it is unclear whether those reviewing the letters understand the writer’s intended strength of support for a given applicant.

"Questions/purposes: (1) Is the perception of letter readers for narrative letters of recommendation consistent with the intention of the letter’s author? (2) Is there inter-reviewer consistency in selection committee members’ perceptions of the narrative letters of recommendation?

"Methods: Letter writers who wrote two or more narrative letters of recommendation for applicants to one university-based orthopaedic residency program for the 2014 to 2015 application cycle were sent a survey linked to a specific letter of recommendation they authored to assess the intended meaning regarding the strength of an applicant. A total of 247 unstructured letters of recommendation and accompanying surveys were sent to their authors, and 157 surveys were returned and form the basis of this study (response percentage 64%). The seven core members of the admissions committee (of 22 total reviewers) at a university-based residency program were sent a similar survey regarding their perception of the letter.

...

"Conclusion :Our results demonstrate that the reader’s perception of narrative letters of recommendation did not correlate well with the letter writer’s intended meaning and was not consistent between letter readers at a single university-based urban orthopaedic surgery residency program.

"Clinical Relevance: Given the low correlation between the intended strength of the letter writers and the perceived strength of those letters, we believe that other options such as a slider bar or agreed-upon wording as is used in many dean’s letters may be helpful."

**********

CORR Insights®: Are Narrative Letters of Recommendation for Medical Students Interpreted as Intended by Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Programs? by Zywiel, Michael G. MD, MSc, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research: April 29, 2021 - doi: 10.1097/CORR.0000000000001780

"With the upcoming transition of the USMLE Step 1 to a pass/fail score, and as we continue to gather more evidence calling into question the current selection criteria used for surgical training, programs are increasingly left to wonder how they can select learners that are most likely to succeed. Similarly, learners are increasingly left wondering how they can appropriately determine whether they are likely to succeed in a chosen specialty.

...

"Going forward, we need more research within the domain of selection criteria for training. This includes identifying more reliable predictors of technical skill, nontechnical skill, as well as performance in independent practice. The failure of most current selection criteria to adequately predict performance suggests that novel, specialty-specific instruments may need to be developed, evaluated, and ultimately incorporated at the medical student level to better predict future performance."

Vaccine shortages are more about congested supply chains than about patent protection: Alex Tabarrok at MR

 Alex Tabarrok has a nice post at Marginal Revolution about the actual problems in worldwide vaccine supply, involving congested supply chains much more than protected intellectual property.

Patents are Not the Problem! by  Alex Tabarrok May 6, 2021 

Milgrom on Auctions, Theorems, and the practice of Market Design, in the AER

 The latest issue of the AER publishes a version of Paul Milgrom's Nobel lecture:

Auction Research Evolving: Theorems and Market Designs  By Paul Milgrom

American Economic Review 2021, 111(5): 1383–1405   https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.111.5.1383

Here are a few of the introductory paragraphs:

"Game-theoretic modeling of auctions began in the 1960s with a pair of seminal papers by William Vickrey (1961, 1962) and the brilliant but unpublished doctoral dissertation of Armando Ortega-Reichert (1968). Robert Wilson (1977, 1979) became the next important contributor to auction theory research and, as Wilson’s student, I was inspired to make auctions and bidding the subject of my doctoral dissertation.

...

"Most of my work published in academic journals is theoretical, proving theorems about the properties of abstract models, but developing and participating in real-world mechanisms requires more than that. Two important lessons that I learned from working on high-stakes auctions are that they operate in an almost infinite variety of contexts, and that this variety is the reason for the paradoxical importance of including unrealistic assumptions in models built to understand and illuminate reality. No single set of assumptions is adequate to describe all the various settings in which auctions are used, and too much specificity in models can blind the analyst to important general insights.

...

"Why do economists rely on such unrealistic assumptions? It is because a well-chosen simplification can remove the dust and smoke that obscures our view of the workings of economic forces. Although we celebrate the resulting theorems for the insights they deliver, we can apply them successfully only by being vigilant, working hard to understand not just the insights that simplified analyses provide but also how the designs and rule choices they inspire must be adapted to withstand the dust and smoke and also the much larger disturbances of the particular worlds in which the mechanisms will operate."

And here are the concluding paragraphs:

"Auction theory has changed substantially since I made my first studies in what were still its early days. Although the “unrealistic” models of those times have proved their worth in guiding practical auction designs, some of that guidance was off point. In my own work, this showed up in the traditional analysis of the exposure problem. Despite the theoretical worst-case conclusion that exposure problems are intractable, we found that they could sometimes be quite manageable in practice.

"For the future, simulations and computational methods are likely to be increasingly important. Yet, it still takes theory to understand problems and the scope of proposed solutions. The time has come for old methods and new to work hand in hand."

VEM FÅR VAD – OCH VARFÖR? Who Gets What--and Why in Swedish

My 2015 book, Who Gets What and Why? has been translated into Swedish, and published by the Ohlin Institute, "Founded In The Spirit Of Bertil Ohlin."

VEM FÅR VAD – OCH VARFÖR?

"The Swedish translation also contains a preface written by Tommy Andersson, professor of economics and world-leading researcher in market design who recently published the book  Algorithmmaker .

The book will be presented in a conversation on May 6 at 12–13 between Professor Tommy Andersson and Andreas Bergström, board member of the Liberal Economics Club and vice president of the think tank Fores. Of course, there will be room for questions and posts from the audience.

The seminar is a collaboration between the Ohlin Institute, which has published the book, and the Liberal Economics Club (LEK). 
Connect via the link below! No pre-registration required. 

The book can be purchased at Bokus or Adlibris .

About the Webinar:
Zoom meeting on 6 May at 12–13 (click on the link to join the meeting).

Meeting ID: 842 8902 0304 Passcode: 620368"