A liver for a kidney?

One consequence of the growth of kidney exchange is that there is more discussion of novel modes of exchange. Here's an article forthcoming in the American Journal of Transplantation that cautiously discusses the ethical issues that would be involved in a kidney-liver exchange.  I found the most interesting of the issues discussed to be those surrounding the excuse that medical teams give to prospective donors who don't really want to donate: they say e.g. that the kidney isn't suitable, or that the donor's kidney function isn't sufficient to allow him/her to donate. So the article discusses how this might pressure a reluctant donor if the question "but how about his/her liver"? could be asked...

The main case being discussed of course is one in which two lives could be saved by an exchange of donors, as in kidney exchange (or liver exchange, as has been employed a bit in Asia...).

(Incidentally, the article is written in the future hypothetical, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear that somewhere in the U.S. one such exchange has already taken place.)

New in the AJT:

A Liver for a kidney: Ethics of trans-organ paired exchange

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• Accepted manuscript online: 14 February 2018 
• DOI: 10.1111/ajt.14690
• American Journal of Transplantation (forthcoming)
• Abstract
• Living donation provides important access to organ transplantation, which is the optimal therapy for patients with end-stage liver or kidney failure. Paired exchanges have facilitated thousands of kidney transplants and enable transplantation when the donor and recipient are incompatible. However, frequently willing and otherwise healthy donors have contraindications to donation of the organ that their recipient needs. Trans-organ paired exchanges would enable a donor associated with a kidney recipient to donate a lobe of liver and a donor associated with a liver recipient to donate a kidney. This paper explores some of the ethical concerns that trans-organ exchange might encounter including unbalanced donor risks, the validity of informed consent, and effects on deceased organ donation.

Liver exchange: prospects and challenges

Might liver exchange be attempted in the U.S.?  (Maybe at Penn?). Here's a forthcoming article that considers how the challenges would be similar and different from the development of kidney exchange.

Liver Paired Exchange: Can the Liver Emulate the Kidney?
by Ashish Mishra, Alexis Lo, Grace S. Lee, Benjamin Samstein, Peter S. Yoo, Matthew H. Levine, David S. Goldberg, Abraham Shaked, Kim M. Olthoff, Peter L. Abt
Liver Transplantation, Accepted manuscript online: 10 February 2018

Abstract: Kidney paired exchange (KPE) constitutes 12 percent of all living donor kidney transplants in the United States. The success of KPE programs has prompted many in the liver transplant community to consider the possibility of liver paired exchange (LPE). Though the idea seems promising, the application has been limited to a handful of centers in Asia.  In this manuscript we consider the indications, logistical issues, and ethics for establishing a LPE program in the United States with reference to the principles and advances developed from experience with KPE. 

Auctions and Market Design Section of INFORMS

Martin Bichler writes:

We are excited about the successful formation of the Auctions and Market Design Section of INFORMS! Please visit and bookmark the INFORMS Auctions and Market Design homepage.

Events organized by the new INFORMS Section in 2018 include:

Cluster on Auctions and Market Design at the INFORMS Annual Meeting Nov. 4-7, 2018 in Phoenix, Arizona

As in the last few years, the cluster (previously the Auctions Cluster) will be chaired by Bob Day. Please email Bob at robert.day@uconn.edu if you are interested in being a session chair or want to have him find a spot for you in a session.  Please try to respond in the next two weeks (by March 4) to assure your session. Later requests by individual authors will be considered, but the sooner the better to lock in a slot.

Workshop on Mathematical Optimization in Market Design
June 18-19, 2018, Gates Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (co-located with ACM EC 2018)

We are pleased to announce a new focused workshop co-located with and immediately preceding ACM EC 2018. The workshop will have invited speakers from academia and industry including Itai Ashlagi (Stanford), Peter Cramton (Cologne), Scott Kominers (Harvard), Sébastien Lahaie (Google), Sasa Pekec (Duke), Tuomas Sandholm (CMU), and many more.

The final program and registration will be online end of March at the event website. Please direct questions to Martin Bichler (bichler@in.tum.de).

Section Officers:

• President: Robert Day, School of Business, University of Connecticut
• Vice-President: Martin Bichler, Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Munich
• Secretary: Ben Lubin, School of Business, Boston University
• Treasurer: Thayer Morill, Department of Economics, NC State University

Advisory Board

• Itai Ashlagi, Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
• Karla Hoffman, School of Engineering, George Mason University
• Paul Milgrom, Department of Economics, Stanford University
• Sasha Pekec, School of Business, Duke University
• Al Roth, Department of Economics, Stanford University
• Tuomas Sandholm, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Justice and Game Theory: DOJ inaugurates Jackson-Nash Address

Here's the announcement of a new lecture series at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, the home of many fine economists with long government service.

Antitrust Division Establishes the “Jackson-Nash Address” and Announces Professor Alvin Roth as Inaugural Speaker

Professor Alvin Roth, Nobel laureate in economics, will address Antitrust Division attorneys, economists, and invited guests on Monday, Feb. 26, 2018.

The Antitrust Division is pleased to announce the establishment of the Jackson-Nash Address, and to announce that Professor Alvin Roth, the McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, will be the inaugural speaker.  Professor Roth is the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design, and the author of “Who Gets What and Why.”  He will deliver his address on February 26, 2018, at The Great Hall, The Robert F. Kennedy Building, Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, at 2:00 p.m.

“The goals of the Jackson-Nash Address series are to recognize the contributions of former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson and Nobel Laureate economist John Nash, and to honor the speaker, recognizing and celebrating the role of economics in the mission of the Division,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim.  “Professor Roth’s important contributions to game theory and market design make him an exemplary inaugural speaker.”

Justice Jackson served as Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court.  During his tenure at the Division, he set the stage for the expanded role of economics in antitrust, replacing vague legal standards with the “protection of competition” as the goal of antitrust law.

Professor John Nash’s research has provided the Division’s economists with the analytic tools necessary to protect competition.  In particular, Professor Nash’s strategic theory of games and his axiomatic bargaining model have had a profound effect on the Division’s enforcement mission.  The Division’s economists commonly rely on these theories to guide investigations and to help evaluate the effects of mergers, monopolization, and collusion.  

Non-Division attendees must enter through the entrance between 10th and Constitution Avenue, NW, and clear building security.  Any inquiries regarding security and logistics should be directed to Jeremy Edwards in the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 514-2007 or jeremy.m.edwards@usdoj.gov.
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Update: Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Delivers Remarks for the Inaugural Jackson-Nash Address

Appreciations of Paul Milgrom from the CME-MSRI prize ceremony

Here is a link if you can't activate the video above.

I blogged about the prize here.

Debt traps and money lending

Credit for poor borrowers is a subject of importance in both the developing and developed world. Here's a new paper...

Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines

Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, Benjamin N. Roth

NBER Working Paper No. 24272
Issued in February 2018
NBER Program(s):Development Economics, Law and Economics, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship 

A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by re-financing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of households in dire circumstances, and also for setting appropriate consumer protection policies. We conduct a simple experiment in three sites in which we paid off high-interest moneylender debt of individuals. Most borrowers returned to debt within six weeks. One to two years after intervention, treatment individuals were borrowing at the same rate as control households.

SITE experimental economics conference, August 2018, call for papers

Call for Papers

SITE Experimental Economics Conference

August 6 - 7, 2018

  

The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics: Workshop in Experimental Economics will be hosted this year on August 6th and 7th at Stanford University.  

The workshop seeks to showcase recent contributions in experimental economics. We hope you will consider submitting your work, and encourage others with interesting work to do so as well.

The deadline for submission is April 1, 2018.  To submit a paper, please follow the instructions at the following link:  https://site.stanford.edu/call-papers.  The submission platform this year requires you to create an account. While this platform is outside of our control, if you have any difficulty with the online submission, please feel free to email your paper directly to Christine (clexley@hbs.edu) or to the SITE program coordinator, Dorian (siteworkshop@stanford.edu).

SITE Experimental Economics Organizers

Luke Coffman, Harvard University

Christine Exley, Harvard Business School

Muriel Niederle, Stanford University

Al Roth, Stanford University 

Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh

Kidney exchange in India

Right now, kidney exchange in India is all done in single transplant center programs. Here's an article advocating inter-hospital exchange to increase accesss to transplantation.

Kidney-paired donation to increase living donor kidney transplantation in India: Guidelines of Indian Society of Organ Transplantation – 2017
Kute VB, Agarwal SK, Sahay M, Kumar A, Rathi M, Prasad N, Sharma RK, Gupta KL, Shroff S, Saxena SK, Shah PR, Modi PR, Billa V, Tripathi LK, Raju S, Bhadauria DS, Jeloka TK, Agarwal D, Krishna A, Perumalla R, Jain M, Guleria S, Rees MA
Indian Journal of Nephrology, 2018  |  Volume : 28  |  Issue : 1  |  Page : 1-9

"Conclusion: KPD transplant is legal, cost-effective, rapidly expanding modality with good long-term outcome, and being implemented in several centers in India with the potential to increase LDKT by 25%. KPD transplant should be encouraged over ABOiKT and desensitization protocol. The quality of matching and number of KPD will be superior in national program versus single-center program due to large donor pool. Transplant team members, stakeholder, and policy-makers should work together to expand KPD.

...
These are recommendation on KPD transplantation after the Indian Society of Organ Transplantation (ISOT) midterm meeting organized at Chennai on March 18, 2017, and 1-day Workshop organized at Hotel Pullman, Aerocity, New Delhi, on April 29, 2017, under the Aegis of ISOT and participation of NOTT organization to discuss various issues related to expanding KPD and starting the National KPD program. Transplant surgeons, physicians, and other stakeholders from major centers across the country participated and had a robust discussion on the related issues."

Organ donation in Germany

Organ donation in Germany is declining, from an already low rate.
 Die WirtschaftsWoche has the story in their February 19 issue:

Die Zahl der Organspenden in Deutschland geht immer stärker zurück. Ökonomen machen dafür auch falsche Anreize verantwortlich. Sie schlagen Modelle vor, um mehr Menschen fürs Spenden zu gewinnen.

Google translate: "This could lead to incentives for organ donation
The number of organ donations in Germany is decreasing more and more. Economists blame it for wrong incentives. They suggest models to get more people to donate."

The article refers in part to this lab experiment investigating giving registered organ donors priority should they need an organ:

Organ donation in the lab: Preferences and votes on the priority rule
by Annika Herr and Hans-Theo Normann
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Volume 131, Part B, November 2016, Pages 139-149

"Abstract: An allocation rule that prioritizes registered donors increases the willingness to register for organ donation, as laboratory experiments show. In public opinion, however, this priority rule faces repugnance. We explore the discrepancy by implementing a vote on the rule in a donation experiment, and we also elicit opinion poll-like views. We find that two-thirds of the participants voted for the priority rule in the experiment. When asked about real-world implementation, participants of the donation experiment were more likely to support the rule than non-participants. We further confirm previous research in that the priority rule increases donation rates. Beyond that, we find medical school students donate more often than participants from other fields."

The newspaper article also quotes German transplant officials as saying that this would be an unethical organ market, and that it would open the door to illegal black markets...

Tim Bresnahan, Ariel Pakes and Rob Porter win BBVA Award, for their pioneering work in industrial organization, and Bill Nordhaus wins for his work in climate change

Breaking news:
The BBVA Foundation recognizes Bresnahan, Pakes and Porter for opening up the field of empirical industrial organization

"The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category goes, in this tenth edition, to Timothy Bresnahan, Ariel Pakes and Robert Porter for founding and shaping the field of empirical industrial organization, a branch of economics that has developed fundamental techniques to measure market power (understood as the ability of a firm to control prices in a given industry). “Motivated by important and policy-relevant questions in applied economics,” remarks the jury in its citation, “they developed methodologies that had a significant and long-lasting impact on subsequent work in industrial organization as well as other applied fields.”
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William Nordhaus, the father of climate change economics, wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

"The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category goes, in this tenth edition, to economist William Nordhaus, of Yale University (USA) for founding the field of climate change economics, by “pioneering a framework that integrates climate science, technology and economics to address the critical question: What should the world do to limit climate change?”:

Israel celebrates Sergiu Hart

The Israel Prize goes to Sergiu Hart! Here's a picture of him I once took in Jerusalem:

Sergiu Hart

Here's the story from the Jerusalem Post:
PROF. SERGIU HART TO RECEIVE ISRAEL PRIZE IN ECONOMIC RESEARCH, STATISTICS

"Prof. Sergiu Hart of the Hebrew University will be awarded the Israel Prize for economic research and statistics, the Education Ministry announced on Thursday.
...
"In its decision, the prize committee called Prof. Hart – a former president of the World Association of Game Theory and member of the Academy of Sciences of Israel, Europe and the United States – one of the world’s leading economists.

“Prof. Hart specializes in the field of game theory and its comprehensive implications in various economic fields. Among other things, it has an important contribution to the understanding of the convergence to market equilibrium, the value of a player in the game, how cartels are created in the markets and the development of objective risk indices,” the committee wrote.

"In recent years, it added, Hart’s research has focused on “designing mechanisms such as tenders, which are important in online trade.”

"Hart was born in Bucharest, Romania, and immigrated to Israel at the age of 14 along with his family. After serving in the IDF, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tel Aviv University in mathematics with honors before completing his post-Doctoral studies at Stanford University in California.

"In 1991, Hart founded the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University, whose academic committee he now chairs.
“Under his leadership the center became a unique leader in the world in the study of game theory with its implications in a wide range of fields such as economics, statistics, psychology, law, biology, philosophy and more,” the prize committee wrote in its decision.

"The Israel Prize is largely regarded as the state’s highest honor. It is presented annually on Independence Day in a state ceremony in Jerusalem attended by the president, the prime minister, the Knesset speaker and the Supreme Court president."

Making algorithms fair

Fairness is elusive, even in algorithms. "Color blindness" doesn't do the trick, since minority populations may differ in other ways from majority populations.
My attention was drawn to this news story  about ongoing work by U. Penn computer scientists: Combatting ‘Fairness Gerrymandering’ with Socially Conscious Algorithms

And here's the article on which the story is based:

Preventing Fairness Gerrymandering: Auditing and Learning for Subgroup Fairness

Michael Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Roth, Zhiwei Steven Wu

(Submitted on 14 Nov 2017 (v1), last revised 8 Jan 2018 (this version, v3))

The most prevalent notions of fairness in machine learning are statistical definitions: they fix a small collection of pre-defined groups, and then ask for parity of some statistic of the classifier across these groups. Constraints of this form are susceptible to intentional or inadvertent "fairness gerrymandering", in which a classifier appears to be fair on each individual group, but badly violates the fairness constraint on one or more structured subgroups defined over the protected attributes. We propose instead to demand statistical notions of fairness across exponentially (or infinitely) many subgroups, defined by a structured class of functions over the protected attributes. This interpolates between statistical definitions of fairness and recently proposed individual notions of fairness, but raises several computational challenges. It is no longer clear how to audit a fixed classifier to see if it satisfies such a strong definition of fairness. We prove that the computational problem of auditing subgroup fairness for both equality of false positive rates and statistical parity is equivalent to the problem of weak agnostic learning, which means it is computationally hard in the worst case, even for simple structured subclasses.
We then derive two algorithms that provably converge to the best fair classifier, given access to oracles which can solve the agnostic learning problem. The algorithms are based on a formulation of subgroup fairness as a two-player zero-sum game between a Learner and an Auditor. Our first algorithm provably converges in a polynomial number of steps. Our second algorithm enjoys only provably asymptotic convergence, but has the merit of simplicity and faster per-step computation. We implement the simpler algorithm using linear regression as a heuristic oracle, and show that we can effectively both audit and learn fair classifiers on real datasets.

Harm reduction (for opioids) in Canada

Here's a story from the Washington Post:
At the heart of Canada’s fentanyl crisis, extreme efforts that U.S. cities may follow

"the Overdose Prevention Society, took over a vacant building next door, giving users a clean indoor place to inject drugs. There are 29 similar sites in British Columbia, the epicenter of Canada’s drug crisis, and more across the country.

“To save lives, you need a table, chairs and some volunteers,” said Sarah Blyth, the manager here.
...
"As fentanyl rampages across North America, several U.S. cities have announced that they will open the first supervised drug-consumption sites like those in Canada. Their plans illustrate the gulf between the two nations: While Justin Trudeau’s government is doubling down on its “harm reduction” approach, any U.S. organization that tries to follow suit would be violating federal law and risking a confrontation with the Justice Department.
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See also this academic paper
Addressing the Nation’s Opioid Epidemic: Lessons from an Unsanctioned Supervised Injection Site in the U.S.
Alex H. Kral and Peter J. Davidson
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 53, 6, 2017, 919 - 922

and this January 2017 news story
Awash in overdoses, Seattle creates safe sites for addicts to inject illegal drugs

School choice and privilege in Washington D.C. [updated]

A benefit (or a cost) of having clearly defined rules is that you can see when exceptions are made. (What could look like flexibility in a private sector environment can look like corruption in a public school system.) The Washington Post has the story:

D.C. deputy mayor resigns after allowing chancellor to bypass school lottery

"A D.C. deputy mayor resigned Friday after helping the public schools chancellor bypass the city’s notoriously competitive lottery system and secure a coveted slot for his teenage daughter at a top high school.

"The resignation of Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer C. Niles is immediate, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said Friday. The mayor said in an interview that she has ordered Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson to issue a public apology and has referred the matter to the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability and to the inspector general to examine whether the head of the city’s traditional public school system violated the code of conduct.

“My decision was wrong and I take full responsibility for my mistake,” Wilson said in a statement. “While I understand that many of you will be angered and disappointed by my actions, I’m here today to apologize and ask for your forgiveness.”

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From the Mayor's twitter stream:

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Update: the Chancellor has resigned as well.
Here's the Washington Post story, which includes a video distributed by the school system describing the school choice process:
D.C. Public Schools leader to resign after skirting school assignment rules

"Parents and council members quickly rallied behind the mayor’s decision, saying the chancellor cheated a system that D.C. families struggle to navigate."

Sex work, Craigslist, and the law; podcast with Scott Cunningham

Here's a link to an interview with Scott Cunningham, whose work on sex work I've blogged about before. There's a surprising amount of discussion about causal inference and differences in differences. (I always suspected that econometrics was sexy, but this is the first time I’ve heard a podcast about that.)

PODCAST

SEX WORK, CRAIGSLIST, AND DECRIMINALIZATION WITH SCOTT CUNNINGHAM

JANUARY 26, 2018 GARRETT M. PETERSEN   

"My guest for this episode is Scott Cunningham of Baylor University. We discuss his work on the decriminalization of indoor sex work and on the impact of Craigslist’s erotic services page on violence against women.

"The working paper on Craigslist generated a lot of media attention, with articles at Huffington Postand ThinkProgress. The most quoted statistic is that “Craigslist erotic services reduced the female homicide rate by 17.4 percent.” We discuss this statistic, its possible causes, and whether or not it is implausibly large.

---

Lynn Arditi’s article on the accidental decriminalization of prostitution in Rhode Island."

Bermuda steps backward on same sex marriage

The NY Times has the story:
Bermuda Outlaws Gay Marriage, Less Than a Year After It Became Legal

"Bermuda has forbidden same-sex marriage, only nine months after legalizing it, in what advocates for gay and lesbian rights called a disappointing setback.

"Same-sex marriage became legal in Bermuda, a British overseas territory, in May as a result of a ruling by the island’s Supreme Court.

"But the unions are unpopular with some voters.

"In 2016, Bermudians voted against same-sex marriage in a referendum, and after the court ruling in May, the territory’s legislature drafted a bill banning same-sex marriage but giving all couples legal recognition as domestic partners. Parliament adopted the Domestic Partnership Act in December, and on Wednesday the territory’s governor, John Rankin, signed it into law.

"The British prime minister, Theresa May, said Britain was “seriously disappointed,” but the Foreign Office said on Thursday it would be inappropriate to block the measure.

"Same-sex marriage became legal in England, Wales and Scotland in 2014, but it is not permitted in Northern Ireland. The issue has been divisive in Britain’s overseas territories, which control their own internal affairs but rely on Britain for defense and for representation in the international community."

Algorithms for Valentines Day, in the WSJ (update: and elsewhere)

The "Numbers" column in the Wall Street Journal salutes Valentines Day by discussing the deferred acceptance algorithm, and mentioning some of its applications.
You May Now Kiss the Algorithm
A mathematical solution ensures no one is paired with an unacceptable mate
by Jo Craven McGinty

It opens with this encouraging line about stable matching:
"Sorry, love birds. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get."

If you can't read the rest at the above link, try the link at Ms. McGinty's twitter account (or maybe it will even work from here:  #TheNumbers https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-may-now-kiss-the-algorithm-1518184800 … via @WSJ).

One thing not emphasized in the column is that the man-optimal stable matching and the woman-optimal stable matching are very often the same or nearly so.
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Update: even the Nobel foundation can't resist the Valentine's Day connection. Here's their facebook post

Nobel Prize

18 hrs · 

#ValentinesDay. Would you let an economist set you up on a date?  which links to

How a matchmaking algorithm saved lives

Long before dating sites, a pair of economists delved into the question of matchmaking, and hit upon a formula with applications far beyond romance.

Market design and artificial intelligence (AI) by Milgrom and Tadelis

Two veteran market designers reflect on how AI is entering market design, building on their recent work on the incentive spectrum auction, and on identifying problematic online sellers from text analysis of post-transaction messaging:

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Can Impact Market Design

Paul R. Milgrom, Steven Tadelis

NBER Working Paper No. 24282
Issued in February 2018
NBER Program(s):Industrial Organization, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship 

In complex environments, it is challenging to learn enough about the underlying characteristics of transactions so as to design the best institutions to efficiently generate gains from trade. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as an important tool that allows market designers to uncover important market fundamentals, and to better predict fluctuations that can cause friction in markets. This paper offers some recent examples of how Artificial Intelligence helps market designers improve the operations of markets, and outlines directions in which it will continue to shape and influence market design.

Here's an ungated version:
How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Can Impact Market Design
by Paul R. Milgrom  and Steve Tadelis

Congratulations to Paul Milgrom: 2017 CME Group-MSRI Prize

The award ceremony is today:  2017 CME Group-MSRI Prize

The 12th annual CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications will be awarded to PAUL MILGROM, Shirley and Leonard Ely professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics and professor, by courtesy, at both the Department of Management Science and Engineering and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, at a luncheon in Chicago on February 12, 2018.

The CME Group-MSRI Prize is awarded to an individual or a group to recognize originality and innovation in the use of mathematical, statistical or computational methods for the study of the behavior of markets, and more broadly of economics.

About Paul Milgrom

Paul Milgrom's primary research is directed to designing auctions for multiple unique but related items. Along with Robert Wilson, he introduced the initial design for sales of radio spectrum licenses in the United States. He has designed new auctions for Internet advertising and for procuring complex services. Research on incentives and complexity are combined to create auctions that are simple and straightforward for bidders, yet which dramatically improve resource allocation compared to traditional auction designs.

After earning his PhD at the GSB, Milgrom taught at Northwestern University and Yale before returning to Stanford. He has made well-known contributions to many areas of economics, including auctions, incentive theory, industrial economics, economic history, economics of manufacturing, economics of organizations, and game theory. His book coauthored with John Roberts, Economics, Organization and Management, opened a new area to economic research.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and winner of the 2008 Nemmers Prize in Economics and the 2012 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge award.

About the event

Prior to the lunch and award presentation, a panel discussion on Frontiers of Research in Market Design will be held with the following panelists:

• Mohammad Akbarpour, Assistant Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
• Piotr Dworczak, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Chicago
• Shengwu Li, Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Department of Economics, Harvard University
• Ellen Muir, Research Fellow, School of Mathematics & Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Luncheon remarks, an appreciation of the life and work of Paul Milgrom:

• Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago

Paul Milgrom will present at talk on A Market Process to Reallocate Radio Spectrum.

2017 CME Group-MSRI Prize Selection Committee: David Eisenbud (chair), Director, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Lars Peter Hansen, Homer J. Livingston Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Economics and Statistics at the University of Chicago. 2008 CME-MSRI Prize. 2013 Nobel Prize Winner Bengt Holmström, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 2013 recipient of the CME-MSRI Prize. 2016 Nobel Prize Winner. R. Preston McAfee, Chief Economist & Corp VP, Microsoft Leo Melamed, Chairman Emeritus, CME Group Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago. 2007 Nobel Prize Winner Maureen O'Hara, Robert W. Purcell Professorship of Management; and Professor of Finance, SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University Myron Scholes, Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business Hugo Sonnenschein, Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Jean Tirole, Scientific Director of Industrial Economics Institute (IDEI) and Member of the Toulouse School of Economics and 2010 recipient of the CME-MSRI Prize

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Here's an earlier announcement, of this prize and some others. Paul is deservedly a prize magnet, and this year he won three notable prizes.
Paul wins CME-MSRI Prize

Update:  and here's today's story from the CME
WHY PAUL MILGROM IS AN ECONOMIST YOU SHOULD KNOW

Opioids and pharma sales

Prescription pain medicines have played a significant role in the opioid epidemic.  Recently, the makers of OxyContin have decided to stop direct marketing it to doctors. Stat has the story:
End of an era: Purdue to stop marketing opioids to doctors

"Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, said it would no longer actively market opioid products — a major about-face for a company increasingly viewed as a principal culprit in the country’s addiction and overdose crisis.

The company said it is reducing its sales staff by more than half, and that its remaining salespeople will no longer visit doctor’s offices to push their product. Instead, the company said it will direct prescribers to materials published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the office of the U.S. surgeon general.

...

"The health insurer Cigna also announced in October it would no longer cover OxyContin through employer-based plans, shortly after the pharmaceutical industry lobby group PhRMA broadly endorsed policies that limit opioid prescriptions to seven days."

Where man's best friend also tastes good: the market for dog meat in Korea

The winter Olympics in Korea is bringing out stories about the restaurants there that have dog meat on the menu, and about how foreigners might not be charmed:

The Daily Mail headlines it this way (with lots of pictures):
The trade in dog meat South Korea doesn't want Olympics tourists to see is exposed at market where they are slaughtered, chopped up and served in bubbling red broth for just $8 a bowl
Here are their sub-headlines

• "Dogs and even puppies are sold openly for food in Moran market, Seongnam, outside of Seoul, South Korea, Dailymail.com reveals - showing claims it would be closed last May are false 
• The dogs are kept in freezing, dark cages until they are slaughtered, their fur burned off and their carcasses are put on display
• Up to 80,000 dogs are sold and slaughtered at the market a each year to be made into an $8 soup, which folklore claims boosts eaters' sex drive 
• But ahead of the Olympic Winter Games coming to PyeongChang on Friday, officials issued guidelines for when it comes to eating dog meat, urging citizens not to consume the animals during the Olympics 
• Two-month-old puppies fare little better, being sold for just $9.20 or £6.50 out of metal crates and cardboard boxes, with some saying they can be eaten too "

USA Today puts it this way:
Winter Olympics shines spotlight on dog meat trade in South Korea

"Eating dog meat is common and legal in Korea, as well as many parts of Asia, and is mainly eaten by older people. Dotted around the country are thousands of restaurants serving “gaegogi” dishes that, according to folklore, have strengthening and medicinal properties."