2023 Chinese Economists Society Annual Conference, June 24-25, 2023

I'll be speaking via zoom at 6:40pm this evening in California/tomorrow morning in China, June 24, 9:40-10:40am ) at the 

2023 Chinese Economists Society Annual Conference,  June 24-25, 2023 at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan.

"The conference includes invited keynote speeches, invited speakers sessions and panels, and parallel sessions. We are also planning for Pre-Conference events which will be conducted in Chinese and are more geared toward policy.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

	Joshua Angrist, 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economic Sciences. Ford Professor of Economics at MIT.
	Justin Yifu Lin, Dean of Institute of New Structural Economics, Dean of Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development and Professor and Honorary Dean of National School of Development at Peking University.
	Eric Maskin, 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economic Sciences. Professor at Harvard University of Economics and Mathematics. Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.
	Al Roth, 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economic Sciences. Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University.

 Update:  My talk title is "Economists as Engineers: How game theory led to practical market design."

Here's a sharable zoom link: . https://cornell.zoom.us/j/99038838324?pwd=aU9jRnpxV2R1VDk1RGp1bnRYdjZmUT09

    Passcode: 029136 

Leo Hurwicz (1917-2008), biography

 Here's a web site devoted to the biography of Leo Hurwicz, by his son Michael: Leonid Hurwicz: Intelligent Designer

Incentive auctions for water rights

 Here's a press release from Auctionomics, the consulting firm run by Paul Milgrom and his business partner Silvia Console Battilana. They propose to repurpose water rights in a way that may resemble the recent incentive auctions for repurposing radio spectrum.

From Lawsuits to Solutions: Auctionomics Is Harnessing Efficient Market Design and Deep Tech for a Litigation-Free Solution to the Water Crisis by Auctionomics 

"Earlier this year, Paul co-hosted a conference at Stanford University attended by a group of economists, lawyers, and water experts. The group developed a proposal for a novel policy to fix the Colorado River crisis: the U.S. should redefine and buy back existing water rights, just as it did for misallocated rights to radio airwaves.

Auctionomics led the development of the FCC's Broadband Incentive Auction, converting TV licenses to new valuable uses. The current issues with water rights are similar to those of the radio spectrum, where existing rights holders with solid legal standing were hesitant to change the status quo, despite the clear misallocation of resources.

However, Auctionomics successfully addressed the problem with its innovative auction design, facilitating next-generation telecommunications and raising $19.8 billion while safeguarding existing broadcasters.

The Colorado River proposal aims to address deficiencies in the current water rights allocation system. The existing system hinders mutually beneficial trades between users and prohibits water banking - a means to enable farmers or cities manage current water use more efficiently, leaving more in reservoirs for future dry periods.

While there are historical reasons for these limitations - the uses of river water are diverse, interconnected, and poorly measured. Modifying them can result in severe consequences in a system that guarantees inefficiency and overconsumption. However, the same model employed to redistribute broadband spectrum can incentivize water rights holders to use their water more efficiently.

Auctionomics aims to adapt this model to the Colorado River with practical steps involving a hydrological survey, voluntary redefinition of water rights, and purchasing enough new rights from willing sellers to meet the necessary reductions in total consumption."

Equilibrium effects of pay transparency--by Zoe Cullen and Bobby Pakzad-Hurson

 From the current issue of Econometrica, the lowdown on pay transparency:

Cullen, Zoe B., and Bobak Pakzad‐Hurson. "Equilibrium effects of pay transparency." Econometrica 91, no. 3 (2023): 765-802.

"Abstract: The discourse around pay transparency has focused on partial equilibrium effects: how workers rectify pay inequities through informed renegotiation. We investigate how employers respond in equilibrium. We study a model of bargaining under two-sided incomplete information. Our model predicts that transparency reduces the individual bargaining power of workers, leading to lower average wages. A key insight is that employers credibly refuse to pay high wages to any one worker to avoid costly renegotiations with others. When workers have low individual bargaining power, pay transparency has a muted effect. We test our model with an event-study analysis of U.S. state-level laws protecting the right of private sector workers to communicate salary information with their coworkers. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, transparency laws empirically lead wages to decline by approximately 2%, and wage declines are smallest in magnitude when workers have low individual bargaining power."

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Earlier:

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Pay transparency, horizontally, vertically, and across firms, by Zoe Cullen

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Salary negotiation: some Massachusetts market design

The NY Times has the story: Massachusetts Bans Employers From Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Market culture and salary discussions

Stanford graduation--Alex Chan, Ph.D.

 Congratulations Dr. Chan.

Welcome to the club, Alex.

Black market for mustard in Bogotá

 The NYT has the story:

Colombia’s Mustard Lovers Grow Desperate Amid Saucy Shortage of Dijon. Colombians are scrambling to find the beloved French condiment as a new health law removes it from shelves  by Genevieve Glatsky

"In Colombia, a new illicit product is on the rise. Desperate consumers are sneaking it in suitcases from abroad, hoarding it in their homes, paying outrageous prices online and lining up at clandestine locations to buy it.

"The contraband? Dijon mustard.

"A new health law intended to improve Colombians’ diets — which are heavy on meat and fried food — has led to the disappearance of a host of fare from market shelves, including the French delicacy of the condiment world.

...

"Inspired by a push by the Pan American Health Organization to address high rates of cardiovascular disease in the region, Colombia’s Health Ministry in 2020 imposed limits on high-sodium products, with the measure taking effect last November.

...

"Mustard must have less than 817 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams. A jar of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard has nearly three times that ratio."

Video snippets from the recent challenges of Europe 2023 conference in Croatia

Ehud Kalai, interviewed on the past and future of game theory

Here's a half-hour video interview of Ehud Kalai, by Sandeep Baliga, that touches on the history of game theory at Northwestern and elsewhere, his work on axiomatic models of bargaining, Econ-CS (and the Kalai Prize), and more.

 

School choice and related matching algorithms in France, by Vincent Iehlé and Julien Jacqmin

Here's a recent paper that looks at the assignment of students to some of France's Grandes Ecoles, and draws some conclusions about the preferences for those schools.

SIGEM : analyse de la procédure d’affectation dans les grandes écoles de management,, Vincent Iehlé, Julien Jacqmin, Dans Revue économique 2023/2 (Vol. 74), pages 139 à 168 (SIGEM: analysis of the assignment procedure in major management schools)

"First, we list the expected properties of the assignments produced by the SIGEM. To do this we identify the SIGEM algorithm. It is quite standard in this type of environment since it is the “schools” version of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962]. Based on this information, we show that assignments satisfy a stability property that is crucial in educational systems since it guarantees fair treatment of declared wishes and rankings. On the other hand, the use of this version of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962], in opposition to the "candidate" version, raises two reservations concerning, on the one hand, the sub-optimality of the assignments from the point of view candidates and, on the other, the theoretical absence of simple strategies for candidates to play when submitting their wishes. This theoretical analysis of the algorithm is completed by a discussion on the specificities of the SIGEM procedure which can explain the formation of strategic behaviors. The second contribution concerns the use made of the results of this procedure in the case of SIGEM. We show how post-assignment data is used to determine the influential ranking of SIGEM from the so-called cross-dismissal matrix, itself based on the candidates' revealed preferences and their final assignments. The last contribution concerns the exploitation of a stylized fact which justifies the joint analysis of the algorithm and the SIGEM classification. The post-assignment data indeed reveal the existence of a hierarchy of schools that is very rigid and that achieves a consensus among students. This point is particularly interesting because it finally allows to have a finer look at the theoretical properties of the algorithm, the alignment of the preferences of the candidates tending to limit the impact of the negative effects associated with the use of the version "schools" of the algorithm of Gale and Shapley [1962]."

...

"Figure 2 presents for each school the number of ranked candidates and the number of wishes expressed for the school among these ranked. It seems to confirm the existence of these voluntary self-censorship strategies. In particular, we observe a significant loss for schools of average attractiveness (for example, AUDENCIA, NEOMA, SKEMA) which are more likely to be subject to both downward and upward truncation on the part of candidates ."

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Recall also, 

Strategic Issues in the French Academic Job Market, by Guillaume Haeringer, Vincent Iehlé In Revue économique Volume 61, Issue 4, 2010, pages 697 to 721