Kidney transplants for cats

 Kidney transplants for cats are a thing, and they all take the form of kidney exchange with a very short chain, in which the lives of two cats are saved. The donor cat is either an unadopted cat from a 'kill shelter,' or a veteran of a medical research trial, who (as the story below says) would otherwise face a "bleak future." But when such a cat becomes a living kidney donor, it is adopted into the family of the cat who receives the transplant (and I guess it goes without saying that they love cats..)

The Washington Post has the story

.Cat kidney transplants: For some, the pricey procedure is well worth it. The surgery can cost up to $25,000. “I just spent $17,000 on my roof, and I love my cat a lot more than my roof,” one person said.  By Marlene Cimons

"Segal, then living in the Boston area, drove his cat to the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in Philadelphia where Despy underwent a kidney transplant in 2018. Today, Despy is thriving. So is Stevie, the kidney donor cat from a local shelter that Segal agreed to adopt as part of the renal transplant.

...

"Chronic kidney disease is one of the most common conditions in aging cats and a leading cause of death. The disease can be heritable, afflicting young cats such as Despy, and can result from toxin exposure, such as eating lilies.

...

"Like humans, cats have two kidneys, which filter waste from the body, and can live with just one if that kidney is healthy.

"Kidney transplants in cats began more than 25 years ago, although they still are rare, and only three facilities perform them: Penn Vet, the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine.

"Penn Vet has performed 185 transplants since 1998, the Georgia school more than 40 since 2009, and Wisconsin 87 since 1996.

...

"Many pet health insurance companies will cover some of the costs for the recipient, but usually not for the donor because “the donor is not the insured pet,” according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. The cost for the donor surgery to harvest the kidney is about 25 percent of the $25,000 total, Aronson says.

...

"Matching is easier for cats than it is for humans needing a transplant because there are only two blood types among all cats.

"Donors come from cat research breeding facilities or shelters, where they might otherwise have a bleak future, and families whose cats undergo transplants must adopt the donors. “For the cost of a kidney, [the donor cats] get to move in with a cat-loving household and are universally loved by their new adoptive families,” Schmiedt says.

...

"Transplants other than kidneys in pets aren’t viable because most require the death of the donor. Kidney transplants in dogs can be challenging because, unlike cats, they often suffer problems with immunosuppression, says Aronson, who has performed three. (The dogs survived but did not do as well long-term as cats, she says.)

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Earlier

Monday, November 23, 2020

Colin Sullivan on organ transplant policy (and on the job market this year)

His job market paper is an experiment with an exceptionally creative design. (Spoiler: it involves a cat actually getting a kidney transplant.) 

Eliciting Preferences Over Life And Death: Experimental Evidence From Organ Transplantation by Colin by D. Sullivan

Centralized assignment mechanisms that don't include all the relevant choices, by Kapor, Karnani and Neilson in the JPE

 One of the issues in organizing a centralized matching mechanism is to make the market thick, by including all or most of the relevant choices in the centralized system.  If not, there will be transactions outside of the centralized marketplace, and some of them may be costly to the system.

Here's a paper that explores that in the context of  college admissions in Chile.

Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms, by Adam Kapor, Mohit Karnani, and Christopher Neilson, Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming.

Abstract: "We study the welfare and human capital impacts of colleges’ (non)participation in Chile’s centralized higher-education platform, leveraging administrative data and two policy changes: the introduction of a large scholarship program and the inclusion of additional institutions, which raised the number of on-platform slots by approximately 40%. We first show that the expansion of the platform raised on-time graduation rates. We then develop and estimate a model of college applications, offers, wait lists, matriculation, and graduation. When the platform expands, welfare increases, and welfare, enrollment, and graduation rates are less sensitive to off-platform frictions. Gains are larger for students from lower-socioeconomic-status backgrounds."

"in virtually every practical implementation there exist many off-platform options that are available to participants of the match. In primary and secondary education, these include private schools or charter schools that do not participate in the centralized system. In other cases, such as higher education, some providers may be excluded from the platform by regulation, while others may choose not to participate. When off-platform options exist, applicants may renege on their assigned matches in favor of programs that did not participate in the centralized process. In turn, these decisions lead to the use of wait lists and aftermarkets, which may be inefficient due to the presence of congestion and matching frictions and can be inequitable if some students are better able to navigate this partially decentralized process, negating some of the benefits of the match.

"In this paper, we study the empirical relevance of the configuration of on- and off-platform options for students’ welfare and for persistence and graduation in higher-education programs. We document the importance of negative externalities generated by off-platform options and quantify a measure of aftermarket frictions that contribute to generating them in practice. Our empirical application uses data from the centralized assignment system for higher education in Chile, which has one of the world’s longest-running college assignment mechanisms based on the deferred-acceptance (DA) algorithm.2 We take advantage of a recent policy change that increased the number of on-platform institutions from 25 to 33, raising the number of available slots by approximately 40%. We first present an analysis of the policy, which shows that when these options are included on the centralized platform, students start college sooner, are less likely to drop out, and are more likely to graduate within 7 years. Importantly, these effects are larger for students from lower-socioeconomic-status (SES) backgrounds, suggesting that the design of platforms can have effects on both efficiency and equity.

...

"We find that when students are allowed to express their preferences for a larger variety of options on the platform, welfare increases substantially, as does the share of students graduating on time.

...

"Intuitively, when a desirable program is not on the platform, it can cause some students who would have placed in that program to instead receive a placement in a different program available on the platform. These students may then decline that placement in favor of the off-platform program, creating vacancies that in turn lead to increased reliance on wait lists, which may be subject to frictions. Moreover, the absence of a particular program may distort the placements of other students, even if the students whose placements are affected would never enroll in that program. These students may also be less satisfied and more likely to decline their placement.

"Taken together, our results show empirically that the existence of off-platform options affects the equity and efficiency of centralized assignment systems. "

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Earlier (with some links to still earlier papers):

Monday, May 9, 2022

School choice with outside options , by Akbarpour, Kapor, Neilson, van Dijk, and Zimmerman in J.Pub.E.

Kidneys for Communities and first responders

The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York receives national award for helping its members and first responders nationwide battling kidney disease

CLEVELAND, June 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) has been honored with the Kidneys for Communities National Community Impact Award in recognition of its dedication and commitment to promoting living kidney donation and supporting the organization's members who are living with kidney disease.

Kidneys for Communities, a national community-directed donation program, launched its Kidneys for First Responders program with the PBA in June 2023 after New York City police officer Melissa Quinones' successful living kidney transplant. Since then, Kidneys for Communities has worked with first responder organizations to help members and their families who are in need of a lifesaving kidney transplant.

Kidneys for First Responders provides access to and facilitates living kidney donations by connecting people from around the country who want to help first responders with those who need lifesaving kidneys. The program is based on the Community-Directed Donation model that leverages individuals' affinity with membership-based communities.

Ira Brody, Co-Founder of Kidneys for Communities, presented PBA President Patrick Hendry with the National Community Impact Award at the NYCPBA delegate meeting on June 14, 2024. The NYCPBA is the first organization to receive the award.

"This award is a testament to the unwavering dedication that New York City police officers show every day, whether we're protecting our communities or stepping up to help each other," said Patrick Hendry, PBA president. "The success of Officer Quinones' transplant inspired our entire blue family, showing the profound impact we have when we come together. We are committed to continuing this program and serving our active and retired NYPD police officers, our fellow first responders and their families living with kidney disease."

Killing more people than breast cancer or prostate cancer, kidney disease has in recent years been named by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a leading cause of death in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reports that approximately 13 people die each day waiting for a kidney transplant.

"The perseverance of the NYCPBA and the passion of the NYPD in rallying around officer Melissa Quinones were a catalyst for the Kidneys for First Responders program," said Atul Agnihotri, Kidneys for Communities chief executive officer and board president. "The PBA's commitment to the program has resulted in the support of many successful kidney transplants for first responders across the country."

The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) is the largest municipal police union in the nation and represents nearly 50,000 active and retired New York City police officers.

About Kidneys for Communities
Kidneys for Communities is a nonprofit that partners with organizations to impact the lives of their members by offering resources about living kidney donations to members of their communities, increasing the chances of a donor directing a gift-of-life kidney to a fellow member in need of a kidney. Addressing the shortage of living kidney donors through proactive community outreach programs, Kidneys for Communities developed the first-ever national Community-Directed Donation^™ program.

The program unlocks connections created through membership-based communities, with the goal of increasing the number of living kidney donors in the U.S. through paired kidney exchange.   

The Kidneys for Communities leadership team includes innovative leaders, kidney donors, social workers and medical experts in the fields of nephrology and renal transplantation — all of whom have seen this disease up close and are committed to making an impact.

To find out more about how to help first responders who need a kidney transplant, visit kidneysforcommunities.org/first-responders/

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Earlier:

Friday, March 12, 2021   Kidneys for Communities

Tuesday, July 11, 2023   NYC police officer receives a kidney through Kidneys for Communities (KFC:)

Kurt Sweat and Vincent Jappah graduate

 Kurt Sweat is a new PhD economist (and if you look closely you can barely make out how expertly his doctoral hood was given and received).  Vincent Jappah is a new Masters in Econ, heading towards a PhD in Health Policy.

Three Hats

Earlier:

Friday, April 26, 2024

Kurt Sweat defends his dissertation

Internal Talent Markets, by Cowgill, Davis , Montagnes, and Perkowski

 Here's a paper that deals with the tradeoff between centralized assignment and market-like mechanisms for job assignment within a firm, 

Stable Matching on the Job? Theory and Evidence on Internal Talent Markets, by Bo Cowgill , Jonathan M. V. Davis , B. Pablo Montagnes , Patryk Perkowski, Managment Science, Published Online:6 Jun 2024https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01373

Abstract: "A principal often needs to match agents to perform coordinated tasks, but agents can quit or slack off if they dislike their match. We study two prevalent approaches for matching within organizations: centralized assignment by firm leaders and self-organization through market-like mechanisms. We provide a formal model of the strengths and weaknesses of both methods under different settings, incentives, and production technologies. The model highlights trade-offs between match-specific productivity and job satisfaction. We then measure these trade-offs with data from a large organization’s internal talent market. Firm-dictated matches are 33% more valuable than randomly assigned matches within job categories (using the firm’s preferred metric of quality). By contrast, preference-based matches (using deferred acceptance) are only 5% better than random but are ranked (on average) about 38 percentiles higher by the workforce. The self-organized match is positively assortative and helps workers grow new skills; the firm’s preferred match is negatively assortative and harvests existing expertise."

"In our empirical results, we find a high degree of match-specific productivity and specialization. As a result, there are large potential gains in match quality from the executive’s perspective. However, workers and managers are apathetic about these assignments. Our results suggest that these differences arise in part through differences in assortative matching. In the workforce-driven match, the firm’s best workers and managers team up together. However, from the CEO’s perspective, a good manager is more helpful in carrying the bad workers. We also find that workers prioritize opportunities for on-the-job skill development—especially in non–firm-specific skills—and the firm does not."

Why High Incentives Cause Repugnance, by Robert Stüber

 Here's a nice experiment in the EJ:

Robert Stüber,Why High Incentives Cause Repugnance: a Framed Field Experiment, The Economic Journal, 2024;, ueae018, https://doi-org.stanford.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ej/ueae018 

"Abstract: Why are high monetary payments prohibited for certain goods, thereby causing shortages in their supply? I conduct (i) a framed field experiment with a general population sample and (ii) a survey experiment with this sample and with ethics committees. In the experiment, participants can prohibit others from being offered money to register as stem-cell donors. I document that, whereas the majority of participants do not respond to changes in the incentives (63%) or become more in favour of the offer with higher incentives (20%), a minority of 17% prohibit high incentives. I show that this minority wants to protect individuals who are persuaded by high incentives. I also show that a lottery scheme reduces their objections to high incentives. Finally, I document that the public is much more supportive of high incentives than are ethics committees."

"In the experiment, participants can prohibit a transaction that involves another person signing up as a potential stem-cell or bone-marrow donor for money.1 Participants initially make a decision for two distinct amounts of compensation: one low (€10) and one high (€500). The main outcome is participants’ willingness to pay for prohibiting or permitting the offer. I find that the majority of participants (63%) do not respond to changes in the incentives or become more in favour of the offer with higher payment (20%). A clear minority (17%) reveal a stronger preference for preventing the offer when the payment is €500 rather than €10. This finding is mirrored in a second outcome, in which separate participants make simple binary decisions to prohibit the offer or not.

"Why do some participants want to prevent high monetary incentives for signing up? I answer this question by randomly assigning participants to different treatments. In the main treatment, Reservation Price, participants again decide whether to permit an offer of €500 for becoming a stem-cell donor. However, they know that, even if they permit the offer, the offer will be made only if the individual potentially receiving the offer agrees to sign up as a donor for €10 in an independent decision made beforehand. If the individual is not willing to sign up for €10, no offer is made. Put differently, the treatment ensures that the €500 offer is made only to individuals with reservation prices of €10 or less. The offer therefore cannot attract individuals with high reservation prices. The treatment drastically reduces the resistance of individuals who prefer low incentives: the median person who was previously willing to pay €2.50 to prevent the €500 offer is now willing to pay €1.50 to permit it. "

Repugnance doesn't establish standing in court: Supreme Court reverses Kacsmaryk on medical abortion

  Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that (for the time being at least) the medical abortion pill mifepristone should remain legal and widely available.  This reverses the decision of judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Federal District court in Amarillo Texas, who ruled that the FDA's authorization of the drug was illegal. (That decision was stayed pending appeal, which has now reversed it.)

The Supreme Court left open the underlying legal issues, but ruled against Judge Kacsmaryk's decision that the plaintiffs in the case, a consortium of medical associations and physicians had standing to bring the case. They say clearly that finding a law repugnant doesn't give a plaintiff standing:

“standing screens out plaintiffs who might have only a general legal, moral, ideological, or policy objection to a particular government action.” 

More colorfully, they say

"As Justice Scalia memorably said, Article III [standing] requires a plaintiff to first answer a basic question: “‘What’s it to you?’” A. Scalia, The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers, 17 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 881, 882 (1983). For a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what the governing law is, the plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a “personal stake” in the dispute."

Here is the full opinion:

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, “ FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION ET AL. v. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 23–235. Argued March 26, 2024—Decided June 13, 2024, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf 

Do e-cigarettes lead to combustables? (Two NBER papers).

 Two NBER working papers on flavor bans for e-cigarettes, and possible migration to combustables:

The Effect of E-Cigarette Flavor Bans on Tobacco Use. by Chad D. Cotti, Charles J. Courtemanche, Yang Liang, Johanna Catherine Maclean, Erik T. Nesson & Joseph J. Sabia  NBER working paper 32535, DOI 10.3386/w32535,  June 2024

Abstract: Advocates for sales restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes argue that flavors appeal to young people and lead them down a path to nicotine addiction. This study is among the first to examine the effect of state and local restrictions on the sale of flavored electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products on youth and young adult tobacco use. Using data from the State and National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, we find that the adoption of an ENDS flavor restriction reduces frequent and everyday youth ENDS use by 1.2 to 2.5 percentage points. Auxiliary analyses of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System show similar effects on ENDS use for young adults ages 18-20. However, we also detect evidence of an unintended effect of ENDS flavor restrictions that is especially clear among 18-20-year-olds: inducing substitution to combustible cigarette smoking. Finally, there is no evidence that ENDS flavor restrictions affect ENDS use among adults aged 21 and older or non-tobacco-related health behaviors such as binge drinking and illicit drug use.

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Comprehensive E-cigarette Flavor Bans and Tobacco Use among Youth and Adults by Henry Saffer, Selen Ozdogan, Michael Grossman, Daniel L. Dench & Dhaval M. Dave NBER working paper 32534, DOI 10.3386/w32534,  June 2024

Abstract: The vast majority of youth e-cigarette users consume flavored e-cigarettes, raising concerns from public health advocates that flavors may drive youth initiation into and continued use of e-cigarettes. Flavors drew further notice from the public health community following the sudden outbreak of lung injury among vapers in 2019, prompting several states to enact sweeping bans on flavored e-cigarettes. In this study, we examine the effects of these comprehensive bans on e-cigarette use and potential spillovers into other tobacco use by youth, young adults, and adults. We utilize both standard difference-in-differences (DID) and synthetic DID methods, in conjunction with four national data sets. We find evidence that young adults decrease their use of the banned flavored e-cigarettes as well as their overall e-cigarette use, by about two percentage points, while increasing cigarette use. For youth, there is some suggestive evidence of increasing cigarette use, though these results are contaminated by pre-trend differences between treatment and control units. The bans have no effect on e-cigarette and smoking participation among older adults (ages 25+). Our findings suggest that statewide comprehensive flavor bans may have generated an unintended consequence by encouraging substitution towards traditional smoking in some populations.

Nicotine is hard to ban: Juul wins a reprieve from the FDA, and illegal vapes flood the market

 Here are two stories by Jennifer Maloney at the WSJ:

FDA Rescinds Juul Ban, Opening Door for Federal Clearance. E-cigarette maker’s products have stayed on market pending appeal of 2022 ban.. By  Jennifer Maloney

"The Food and Drug Administration rescinded its 2022 ban on Juul Labs’s e-cigarettes. The agency hasn’t yet reached a final determination on whether they can stay on the U.S. market, but the move opened the possibility for federal clearance.

The FDA in 2022 ordered Juul to halt its sales, then stayed the order pending the vaping company’s appeal. The agency said Thursday that it was placing Juul’s products back under scientific review, essentially moving them back to their regulatory status before the ban. 

...

"Juul’s products remain on the market. The FDA didn’t give a timeline for a final decision on whether they can stay there. Juul is the No. 2 e-cigarette maker in the U.S.

Juul and other e-cigarette manufacturers in 2020 were required to submit scientific research to demonstrate that their vaping products exposed users to fewer carcinogens than cigarettes and that the benefit of helping adult smokers switch to a safer alternative outweighed the potential harm of hooking young people on nicotine.

...

"The FDA ban, though it was quickly put on hold, sent Juul into a financial tailspin. The company narrowly averted bankruptcy. Juul has since submitted next-generation vaping products for FDA review. They aren’t yet for sale in the U.S."

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U.S. Pledges Crackdown on Illegal E-Cigarettes. FDA and DOJ form task force to go after fruity, disposable vapes flooding the market.  By Jennifer Maloney

"Big tobacco companies and their critics agree on at least one thing: The illegal, fruit-flavored, disposable vapes that are popular among teenagers have flooded the U.S. market and federal regulators haven’t done enough to stop it.

"The Food and Drug Administration and Justice Department said Monday they are stepping up enforcement by forming a multiagency task force to go after the illegal distribution and sale of e-cigarettes.

"Disposable vaping devices, almost none of which are authorized for sale by the FDA, represent more than 30% of U.S. e-cigarette sales in stores tracked by Nielsen, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs. Many of them are imported from China. Breeze Pro and Elfbar, both of which were ordered off the market last year by the FDA, remain the top two disposable e-cigarette brands in the U.S.

"Njoy is the only disposable vaping brand authorized for sale by the FDA." 

Frans de Waal (1948-2024)

 The eminent primatologist Frans de Waal has passed away. Here's a memoriam from Emory University:

Emory primatologist Frans de Waal remembered for bringing apes ‘a little closer to humans’

I sometimes show the video below about his experiment with monkeys on fairness (and being treated unfairly) to my class on experimental economics (typically when I'm about to talk about the ultimatum game).

"Two capuchins were situated in enclosures next to one another. A researcher would ask them to do a task and if they succeeded give them a treat. The catch was one monkey was always rewarded with a piece of cucumber while the other monkey sometimes got a piece of cucumber and sometimes got a grape — a preferred treat among capuchin monkeys.

"A video de Waal filmed of one of the experiments created a media sensation.

Unequal pay for equal work: When the first monkey gives the researcher a rock, she is rewarded with a cucumber slice. But watch what happens when the first monkey sees the second monkey hand the researcher a rock — and get a much tastier grape instead.

"A monkey that received only cucumber appears perfectly happy until she sees her companion receive a grape. Then her behavior changes. She accepts the next piece of cucumber only to throw it back at the researcher, pounding the surface in front of the enclosure and shaking its Plexiglas walls.

“That video struck home with a lot of people,” Brosnan says. “Who hasn’t felt like that monkey that’s only getting cucumbers? Our research showed something about the evolution of the sense of human fairness.”

INFORMS Section on Auctions and Market Design (AMD)

 Itai Ashlagi and Vahideh Manshadi write:

"Dear colleagues:

 

We are writing to provide updates about the ongoing activities of the INFORMS Section on Auctions and Market Design (AMD)... 

 

1) AMD Membership without INFORMS Membership: As you may know, AMD aims to build an inclusive and diverse community interested in Market Design (broadly construed). Toward that goal, we have worked with INFORMS to create the option of joining AMD without INFORMS membership. If you are interested in joining the AMD section, please visit our website and check out the different options to join (as INFORMS member for an additional $10 on top of your INFORMS membership or non-member for only $20 in total per year). This way you will continue to be informed about our market design activities. 

 

2) Special Issue on Market Design (Deadline September 24): We are pleased to announce that we have co-sponsored a new Special Issue on Mathematics of Market Design at the INFORMS Journal Mathematics of Operations Research. (Special Issue Editors: Saša Pekeč, Martin Bichler, Nicole Immorlica, Scott Kominers, and Paul Milgrom) 

 

3) Journal Presence at Management Science: the INFORMS Journal  Management Science now has a department titled Market Design, Platform, and Demand Analytics. (Dept. Editors are Itai Ashlagi, Martin Bichler, and Srikanth Jagabathula; the list of AEs includes Paul Milgrom and Al Roth); Management Science is the flagship journal of INFORMS.  

 

4) AMD Workshop at the ACM EC in July 24: We are pleased to announce the INFORMS Market Design Workshop which will take place in conjunction with the ACM EC Conference at Yale University, July 8-11, 2024. Special thanks to Paul Dutting, John Horton, and Yash Kanoria for co-organizing the workshop. Check the workshop website for the program details.

 

5) AMD INFORMS Cluster at the Annual Meeting in October 24: We are excited to have organized  ~25 invited sessions on a wide range of topics as part of the AMD cluster at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting (Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, 2024); special thanks to Thodoris Lykouris, Ali Makhdoumi, Pengyu Qian for serving as the cluster co-organizers.

 If you want to learn more about AMD, please check out the AMD website, people involved, and past activities. We'd be excited to have you as part of our growing community of market designers!"

Recent kidney transplant papers

 Here are two new papers on kidney exchange that caught my eye, and one on incentivizing deceased donation by prioritizing registered donors on the deceased donor waiting list.

This one concerns organizing international kidney exchanges between countries while making sure that each one gets their fair share. (All exchanges are between 2 pairs.)

Benedek, Márton, Péter Biró, Daniel Paulusma, and Xin Ye. "Computing balanced solutions for large international kidney exchange schemes." Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 38, no. 1 (2024): 1-41.

Abstract: To overcome incompatibility issues, kidney patients may swap their donors. In international kidney exchange programmes (IKEPs), countries merge their national patient–donor pools. We consider a recently introduced credit system. In each round, countries are given an initial “fair” allocation of the total number of kidney transplants. This allocation is adjusted by a credit function yielding a target allocation. The goal is to find a solution that approaches the target allocation as closely as possible, to ensure long-term stability of the international pool. As solutions, we use maximum matchings that lexicographically minimize the country deviations from the target allocation. We perform, for the first time, a computational study for a large number of countries. For the initial allocations we use two easy-to-compute solution concepts, the benefit value and the contribution value, and four classical but hard-to-compute concepts, the Shapley value, nucleolus, Banzhaf value and tau value. By using state-of-the-art software we show that the latter four concepts are now within reach for IKEPs of up to fifteen countries. Our experiments show that using lexicographically minimal maximum matchings instead of ones that only minimize the largest deviation from the target allocation (as previously done) may make an IKEP up to 54% more balanced.

"We consider IKEPs in the setting of European KEPs which are scheduled in rounds, typically once in every three months.

...

"We first note that the search for an optimal exchange scheme can be done in polynomial time for 2-way exchanges (matchings) but becomes NP-hard as soon as 3-way exchanges are permitted."

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Here's a paper that reports simulations on Using deceased donor kidneys to start living donor kidney exchange chains

Verma, Utkarsh, Nayaran Rangaraj, Viswanath Billa, and Deepa Usulumarty. "Long term simulation analysis of deceased donor initiated chains in kidney exchange programs." Health Systems (2023): 1-12.

ABSTRACT: Kidney exchange programs (KEPs) aim to find compatible kidneys for recipients with incompatible donors. Patients without a living donor depend upon deceased donor (DD) donations to get a kidney transplant. In India, a DD donates kidneys directly to a DD wait-list. The idea of initiating an exchange chain starting from a DD kidney is proposed in a few articles (and executed in Italy in 2018), but no mathematical formulation has been given for this merger. We have introduced an integer programming formulation that creates DD-initiated chains, considering both paired exchange registry and DD allocations simultaneously and addressing the overlap issue between the exchange registry and DD wait-list as recipients can register for both registries independently. A long-term simulation study is done to analyse the gain of these DD-initiated chains over time. It suggests that even with small numbers of DDs, these chains can significantly increase potential transplants.

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And here's the paper on incentivizing registration to be a deceased donor.

Li, Mengling, and Yohanes E. Riyanto. "Incentivizing Organ Donation Under Different Priority Rules: The Role of Information." Management Science (2024).

Abstract: This paper examines the incentive to register for deceased organ donation under alternative organ allocation priority rules, which may prioritize registered donors and/or patients with higher valuations for organ transplantation. Specifically, the donor priority rule grants higher priority on the organ waiting list to those who have previously registered as donors. The dual-incentive priority rules allocate organs based on donor status, followed by individual valuations within the same donor status, or vice versa. Both theoretical and experimental results suggest that the efficacy of the donor priority rule and the dual-incentive priority rules critically depends on the information environment. When organ transplantation valuations are unobservable prior to making donation decisions, the hybrid dual-incentive rules generate higher donation rates. In contrast, if valuations are observable, the dual-incentive priority rules create unbalanced incentives between high- and low-value agents, potentially undermining the efficacy of the hybrid dual-incentive rules in increasing overall donation rates.

The ethics of field experiments in Economics, in the Financial Times

 The Financial Times has a column about the recent twitter (X) discussion concerning our paper Social Media and Job Market Success: A Field Experiment on Twitter, by Jingyi Qiu, Yan Chen, Alain Cohn, and Alvin E. Roth.

That twitter-up concerned whether it is ethical to do field experiments in economics, in which some argued that the benefits that might accrue to treated market participants may disadvantage untreated market participants, including those not involved in the experiment and from whom consent was not obtained. (The FT column has a paragraph in which Douglas MacKay*, a bio-ethicist from UNC considers ethical issues that might arise if the market "is a zero sum competition.") 

Here's the FT article, and the snippet that covers our paper.

When is it OK for economists to experiment on people? A recent study has raised ethical questions about research.  by Soumaya Keynes, Financial Times.

"While most economic debates are about as spicy as boiled potatoes, others generate a bit more heat. A recent stir fell into the second category, in response to a new study of junior academics angling for jobs in economics. 

...

"Alvin Roth, one of the authors of that experiment, says: “I can’t imagine economists thinking of a market as zero sum.” Perhaps a social media post could alert someone to a candidate so impressive that they persuade their university to make an extra position available. He points out that plenty of people share papers on social media, adding: “It seems to me that things that aren’t unethical to do shouldn’t be unethical to study to find out their effect.”

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Here's my earlier post, of the paper, with some thoughts on the ethics of experimenting.

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Social Media and Job Market Success: A Field Experiment on Twitter, by Qiu, Chen, Cohn, and Roth

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*And here is an interesting looking bibliography, including some papers by economists.

Ethics of Field Experiments: A Bibliography

Prepared and Managed by Emma Cohn and Douglas MacKay

Workshop in Honor of Elizabeth Hoffman, today at University of Iowa

Betsy Hoffman is celebrated in Iowa today.

Workshop in Honor of Elizabeth Hoffman Sponsored by the Clarence Tow Fund. Organizers: Yan Chen, David J. Cooper, Laura Razzolini, and Lise Vesterlund, The University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, Department of Economics, June 7th, 2024

Here is the tribute on the website (and below that is the program of the conference):

"Elizabeth Hoffman, Professor of Economics, Iowa State University, President Emerita, University of Colorado,Systems

"Elizabeth Hoffman has enjoyed an extraordinary career as a researcher, mentor, and administrator. She began her career as a historian, earning a PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. Dr. Hoffman then returned to graduate school in economics, earning her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1979. This led to a distinguished career as an economics professor, working at Northwestern, Purdue, Wyoming, and Arizona.

"Dr. Hoffman’s research featured seminal contributions to experimental economics, law and economics, and cliometrics. The experiments that Dr. Hoffman conducted with Kevin McCabe, Keith Shachat, and Vernon Smith using double blind techniques to socially isolate subjects remain some of the most influential work ever conducted on other-regarding preferences, fundamentally changing how economists conceptualize other-regarding preferences. Her work with Matt Spitzer used insights from economic experiments to address fundamental issue in law and economics.

"In the late 90s, Dr. Hoffman began her work mentoring two groups of junior women economists through programs sponsored by the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. This mentoring work was enormously influential, helping launch the careers of many prominent women economists (Bogan, Chen, Croson, Malmendier, Razzolini, Solnick, Vesterlund, and Washington). In large part due to her work as a mentor, Dr. Hoffman was awarded the American Economic Association’s 2010 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award for improving the status of women in the economics profession. It is a sign of Dr. Hoffman’s vast influence that three of her mentees have also won this award. Dr. Hoffman has served the profession in many other ways beyond mentorship. She served as the fourth president (and first woman president) of the Economic Science Association, the primary professional organization for experimental economics. She also served as a founding trustee for the Cliometric Society and the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics.

"Midway through her career, Dr. Hoffman shifted to a focus on administration. She served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Iowa State (1993 – 1997), Provost at the University of Illinois, Chicago (1997 – 2000), President at the University of Colorado (2000 – 2005), and Provost at Iowa State (2005 – 2012). Since stepping down as provost, Dr. Hoffman has continued her productive career as a professor, producing numerous research articles and advising large numbers of PhD students."

Here's the program:

8:30 am – 9:00 am Welcomes and Introductions

Opening Remarks: David J. Cooper Tippie and Rollins Chair in Economics Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa

9:00 am – 10:00 am Speaker: Catherine Eckel University Distinguished Professor in Dept of Economics Texas A&M University Paper Title: Dictator Games

10:00 am – 10:20 am Coffee Break

10:20 am – 10:50 am Speaker: Tony Kwasnica  Rob and Hope Brim Eminent Scholar Chair Florida State University Paper Title: Pennies from Heaven? Costly vs Free Bids in Penny Auctions

10:50 am – 11:20 am Speaker: Tanya Rosenblatt  Professor of Information and Economics University of Michigan  Paper Title: I've Got News for You!

11:20 am – 11:30 am Break

11:30 am – 12:00 pm Speaker: Yuanxiang Li Assistant Professor, Information Systems & Operations Management Soffolk University Paper Title: Designing an incentive mechanism for information security policy compliance: An experiment

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm Speaker: Yan Chen  Daniel Kahneman Collegiate Professor of Information School of Information University of Michigan  Paper Title: Social Media and Job Market Success: A Field Experiment on Twitter

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm – 2:00 pm Speaker: Tom Rietz  Soumyo Sarkar Professor in Finance  Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa  Paper Title: Peering into the Black Box: Trader Strategies in the Iowa Electronic Markets

2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Speaker: Laura Razzolini  Department Head of Economics, Finance, and Legal Studies Professor of Economics Culverhouse College of Business, University of Alabama Paper Title: What have I learned from the Dictator Game over the years

2:30 pm – 2:40 pm Break

2:40 pm – 3:10 pm Speaker: Lise Vesterlund  Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Economics  University of Pittsburgh Paper Title: The Effect of Experimenter-Demand on Inference Across Populations

3:10 pm – 3:40 pm Speaker: Kevin McCabe Professor of Economics and Law  George Mason University Paper Title: An agent-based model of path-dependent market formation

3:40 pm – 4:00 pm Coffee Break

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm Speaker: Tom Palfrey Flintridge Foundation Professor of Economics and Political Science California Institute of Technology  Paper Title: Team Equilibrium: A General Theory of Team Games with an Application to Crisis Bargaining

5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Cocktail Hour and Betsy Hoffman Tribute Video

(The website also contains bios of each of the speakers).

HT: thanks to David Cooper for the link...

Medical aid in dying debated in NY, extended in the Netherlands

 Here are two related stories, one from the NYT about a debate on whether to allow medical aid in dying in New York State. The other is from Fox News, about the medically assisted death of a physically healthy young woman afflicted with a frightful psychiatric disorder.

In New York, there's a debate about whether to become the 11th state to legalize medical aid in dying.  Some of the opponents worry about a slippery slope, leading to the Netherlands, where mental illnesses can qualify candidates for such aid.

Here's the NYT on the debate in NY:

Doctor-Assisted Death Is Legal in 10 States. Could New York Be No. 11? Activists have renewed attention on legislation related to the emotional issue of so-called medical aid in dying that has long languished in Albany.

"New York is one of 19 states where lawmakers are considering bills that would legalize medical aid in dying, a practice that is legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C.

"The bill in New York would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults with no more than six months to live to request prescriptions from their doctors for life-ending medication. The patients would have to be able to ingest the medication on their own, and only the person seeking to die could request the prescription.

...

"Opponents worry that some patients might choose to end their lives based on an inaccurate prognosis or after being pressured to do so. And while the current bill is restricted to terminally ill people, they worry that lawmakers could expand eligibility for medical aid in dying after any initial legislation is passed."

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

Here's Fox News on the Netherlands:

Physically healthy Dutch woman dies by assisted suicide at age 29. Zoraya ter Beek died by assisted suicide in the Netherlands last week.  By Kendall Tietz Fox News,  June 1, 2024

"29-year-old Zoraya ter Beek's life was terminated last week after waiting three years for final approval for her euthanasia, which is legal in the Netherlands if the patient is deemed to be experiencing "unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement."

...

"she tried various things to treat her mental illness, including 33 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy, in which electric currents jolt the brain. But, after her last treatment in August 2020, her psychiatrist told her, "There’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never going to get any better."

...

"My whole friends and my support system, we really did it together," she had told The Free Press. Ter Beek reportedly saw herself as an ambassador for the Dutch euthanasia program and believed there is proper protocol in place to prevent abuse of the system. 

"We’ve had this law for more than 20 years," she had told the outlet. "There are really strict rules, and it’s really safe."

Paying college athletes before it was legal

 Yesterday I blogged about the new NCAA rules on allowing college athletes to be paid: The ban on paying college athletes is history

It will no doubt shock you to learn that payments were made long before they were legal.  

The Guardian has a book review about that:

Hot Dog Money: behind the bribery scandal that rocked college basketball. A new book looks back at the federal investigation that found bribery and corruption within a major industry, by Andrew Lawrence, Tue 4 Jun 2024

"On 26 September 2018, 10 prominent US college sports figures were arrested in connection with a federal investigation into fraud and corruption. Specifically, the government alleged that business managers and financial advisers had bribed basketball coaches to secure business with NBA-bound players, and that a senior executive with Adidas had further conspired with them to funnel payments to high school players and their families in exchange for their commitment to Adidas-sponsored college sports programs.

"The scandal – which ensnared the top NBA draft pick Deandre Ayton, hall of fame coach Rick Pitino and Kobie Baker, the associate athletic director at Alabama, one of the country’s premier talent factories – was a black eye for the NCAA, the keystone cops who style themselves as virtuous defenders of amateurism in college sports while reaping billions off the backs of student-athletes, the majority of them Black and quite economically disadvantaged. The extent of the scheme wasn’t fully understood until one of the schemers, a middle-aged moneyman named Marty Blazer, was turned into an FBI informant. 

...

"Lawson’s latest nonfiction book, Hot Dog Money, is Blazer’s Goodfellas story – one largely told from Lawson’s one-on-one interviews with Blazer

...

"He was a mid-level financial adviser making six figures trading stocks and bonds with a client roster that slowly grew to include select members of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. The story of William “Tank” Black, the powerful football agent indicted for running a Ponzi scheme fueled with Detroit coke money, sparked Blazer’s larger ambitions.

"Blazer teamed up with an agent and recruited football players from Pennsylvania colleges with the aim of attaching himself to future pros. That’s where the “hot dog money” came in. Blazer didn’t just pass cash-filled envelopes under the table. He sent money home to players’ struggling families, supplied them with luxury cars, paid for lavish trips to Miami and Las Vegas, and comped their inevitable strip club binges. Sometimes he’d arrange to have girls flown in for parties closer to campus. “The girls are being trafficked, the kids are being trafficked,” says Lawson. “Forget morality, how do you even describe the decency of it all? This is what the swirling of a flushing toilet looks like.”

"In a typical hot dog money scheme, a college player receives cash in the form of a forgivable loan with the understanding that the bagman’s aboveboard services will be retained once the player turns pro; depending on the player, the bagman can make his money back many times over in boring management fees. A proudly devoted husband and father of three, Blazer was more interested in helping his clients make the most out of a corrupt system and went the extra mile to look out for them, paying for information that could help clients avert potential disaster.

The ban on paying college athletes is history

 The idea that paying college athletes is wrong has given way to the realities of the sports markets in which they perform.  For many years, college athletes were required to be unpaid amateurs, but that time has passed.

The WSJ has the story.

NCAA Agrees to Share Revenue With Athletes in Landmark $2.8 Billion Settlement. Breaking with more than a century of policy, the NCAA will pay billions in damages to former athletes and allow schools to pay athletes up to $20 million a year    By Laine Higgins  and Jared Diamond

"The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the five most prominent athletic conferences agreed to a $2.77 billion settlement of a class-action lawsuit on Thursday, ushering in a new era of college sports in which schools can pay athletes directly. 

"The move marks a dramatic shift for the NCAA, breaking with its century-old stance that college athletes are amateurs and therefore cannot share in any of the money they generate for their universities.

...

"It also marks the latest rule the NCAA has been forced to change amid an onslaught of legal challenges in recent years. 

"First, the NCAA allowed athletes to receive academic bonuses and profit from their name, image and likeness. Now, the biggest domino of all has fallen: For the first time ever, some players are going to be paid directly by their schools for playing their sports—a seismic shift that will completely reshape the business model for the top end of this billion-dollar industry. 

"The result is the creation of a system that will give Division I schools the ability to distribute roughly $20 million a year to their athletes, said people familiar with the matter. "