Judd Kessler interviewed about organ donor registration on NPR

Shankar Vedantam interviews Judd Kessler about how to ask for registration as a deceased organ donor, on NPR's Morning Edition:

Attempt To Get More People On Board With Organ Donation Backfires
MAY 27, 2015 8:56 AM ET

 The transcript is below, or you may be able to listen to the audio at the link above.

To increase the number of organ donors in the U.S., psychologists have advocated for changes to how we ask people to donate. In California, officials tried something new — but it may have backfired.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Many patients in the United States die because there are not enough organs available for transplantation. This is because compared to many other Western nations, fewer people in this country sign up to be organ donors. Policymakers and researchers try experimenting with different ways to boost the rate at which people sign up to be donors, but there's disturbing evidence that one widely used technique is actually backfiring. NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam joined our colleague Steve Inskeep to talk about this.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: When you go to the DMV to apply for a driver's license, there's a question about whether you want to be an organ donor.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Sure.

VEDANTAM: And for many years, Steve, the question was you either could check the box that said yes or you could leave the question blank. There was no option to say no. And researchers, a few years ago, suggested it might be better to give people both the yes and the no choices. And the thinking was that people were not saying yes because they were at the DMV and they were thinking about other things. But if you force them to answer yes or no and not leave the question blank, more people would say yes because they'd actually think about it.

INSKEEP: Oh, the notion is you've got to check one box otherwise your application is not complete.

VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. Now, most states have moved to this approach. It's called an active choice approach. And there's new data now from the state of California. Judd Kessler at the Wharton School and Alvin Roth at Stanford analyzed 6 million choices people made before and after this California change, and they compared it with outcomes to 60 million other people in 25 other states. Here's Kessler.

JUDD KESSLER: We found that switching to a yes-no frame actually did not increase the rate at which people registered as organ donors. In fact, we find that fewer people sign up to be organ donors when you put them on the spot and force them to say yes or no.

INSKEEP: Whoa. So when people are told, you must make a choice or your application is not complete, they say, oh, I'm out of here - no.

VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. Now, Kessler and Roth were worried that they were measuring something idiosyncratic to California. So in addition to sort of analyzing the California data, they ran a control lab experiment linked to the Massachusetts Organ Donor Registry. So people came into the experiment, and they could choose to either join or to leave the registry. And again, the researchers found is that when you force people to make a choice - say yes or say no - fewer people signed up to be organ donors.

INSKEEP: Why?

VEDANTAM: Well, it's not quite clear exactly what's happening and why they're making that choice. It could be that actually people were thinking about their decision about whether to be organ donors in the initial case and they were choosing not to be organ donors. Some countries are also experimenting with the idea that you get to be first in line to receive an organ if you've previously signed up to be an organ donor, and that links self-interest to being an organ donor. Kessler thinks his experiment might have actually discovered something else. During the Massachusetts lab experiment, he found that although everyone in the study had previously been asked whether they wanted to be a donor, just the act of asking them again prompted many people to say yes.

KESSLER: Subjects who came into the laboratory had the option of changing their organ donor status. So that meant people who were currently registered could remove themselves from the registry or stay on, and people who were not registered could choose to add themselves to the registry. And what we found in our study was that subjects were 22 times more likely to add themselves to the registry than remove themselves from the registry.

INSKEEP: When they're asked more than one time, which makes a kind of basic human sense. If I'm in the DMV and I'm confronted with this question, I haven't thought about it maybe in advance - I mean, I just say no. I get out of there. But when I'm asked a second time, maybe I've had a chance to think it over.

VEDANTAM: Yeah. And the other thing that might actually work is to not just ask people at the DMV. It might not be the best timing to ask people when they've just spent 45 minutes waiting in line to get a driver's license. In Alaska, people get asked whether they want to be organ donors at the same time that the state sends them their annual dividend check. This is the check that Alaskans receive as part of the state's oil revenue. And it turns out that Alaska has the highest rate of organ donors in the whole country.

INSKEEP: So give people money - they're feeling good - then ask them for their liver.

VEDANTAM: Precisely.

INSKEEP: Shankar, thanks very much.

VEDANTAM: Thank you, Steve.

Leon Lederman's 1988 Nobel Physics medal up for auction--closing May 28

Another Nobel medal up for auction--this could be the start of a trend...
Nobel Prize Awarded to Physicist Leon Lederman in 1988 -- Won for His Groundbreaking Discovery of a New Atomic Particle -- One of Only 10 Nobel Prizes Ever to Be Auctioned

The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to particle physicist Leon Lederman for his discovery of the muon neutrino, a particle 200 times the size of an electron. Lederman, along with colleagues Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, found the muon neutrino in 1962 while using a high energy particle accelerator. They discovered that in some cases a muon (rather than an electron) was produced, illuminating the existence of a new atomic particle. Lederman was also instrumental in the discovery of the bottom quark in 1977, and was the champion of the Superconducting Super Collider. His popular 1993 book ''The God Particle: If the Universe is The Answer, What is The Question'' was released to critical acclaim. This Nobel Prize is made of 18kt gold, plated in 24k gold, as were all Nobel Prize medals awarded after 1980. Medal features the relief portrait of Alfred Nobel to front, with his name and the years of his birth and death. Verso features a relief of the Goddess Isis, whose veil is held up by a woman who represents the genius of science. Encircling the medal are the words ''Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes'', translating to ''And they who bettered life on earth by their newly found mastery''. Lederman's name and 1988 in Roman numerals are engraved on a plaque below the relief of the two women, with ''Reg. Acad. Scient. Suec.'' also written, an abbreviation for The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Etched upon the medal is the name of Erik Lindberg, designer of the Nobel medal. Housed in the original red leather case with Leon Lederman's name gilt stamped. Medal weighs 173 grams or just over 6 oz. and measures 2.5'' in diameter, consistent with the original Nobel Prize awarded in 1988. Case measures 5.5'' x 5.5'' x 1''. Presented in near fine condition, and with an LOA from Leon Lederman.

Click above for larger image.

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Fuhito Kojima and Parag Pathak receive the 2016 Social Choice and Welfare Prize

 Congrats to Fuhito and Parag:)

FUHITO KOJIMA AND PARAG PATHAK RECEIVE THE HEIGHT SOCIAL CHOICE AND WELFARE PRIZE

A jury composed of Claude d'Aspremont (chair, President-elect of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare), Vincent Conitzer, Bhaskar Dutta (President of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare), Marc Fleurbaey and Tim Roughgarden has chosen to award the height Social Choice and Welfare Prize jointly to Fuhito Kojima (Stanford  University) and Parag Pathak(MIT).

The purpose of the Social Choice and Welfare Prize is to honour young scholars of excellent accomplishment in the area of social choice theory and welfare economics. The laureate should be 40 years or less as of January of the year when the International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare is scheduled to take place. During this meeting, the prize winner(s) will give a one-hour lecture.

The SCW prize medal "La Pensée" ("The Thought") is due to Raymond Delamarre (1890-1986), a rather well-known French sculptor associated with what has been called "Art Deco" (Chrysler Building and Empire State Building in New York, the architects Mallet-Stevens or Le Corbusier in France). He is in particular famous for his work at the entrance of the Suez Canal. A web site: www.atelier-raymond-delamarre.fr.



PAST LAUREATES :

2014: VINCENT CONITZER and TIM ROUGHGARDEN

2012 : LARS EHLERS and ADAM MEIROWITZ

2010 :  FRANZ DIETRICH and CHRISTIAN LIST

2008 :  TAYFUN SOMNEZ

2006  : JOHN DUGGAN

2004 :  FRANCOIS MANIQUET

2002 : MATTHEW JACKSON

Bob Aumann remembers John Nash

From Ynet..

.
John Nash, a teacher and a mentor

Nash was definitely one of the giants of game theory, writes Israeli Nobel laureate Yisrael Aumann, and the science world will miss him.

Prof. Yisrael Aumann

Published:  05.25.15, 19:15 / Israel Opinion

"I am so sorry to hear of John Nash's death. I have known John for more than 60 years.

•  

I met him in 1953, when he was a young lecturer who had just started teaching at the university and I was coming to the end of my doctorate. He was the one who first introduced me to game theory. He is my first mentor and teacher on the subject.

John Nash. A giant in his field. (Photo: Peter Badge / Typos 1)

The truth is that I didn't give the field much thought at the time because I was busy with pure mathematics. Later, however, when I moved to a performance studies consulting firm, I encountered a difficult problem and then I realized the importance of game theory – and I recalled my conversations with Nash.

John Nash is definitely one of the giants of game theory, which is an important tool in economics and numerous other areas. He invented it, the key concept known as "equilibrium strategy;" and not only did he found the field, but he was also a game-theory giant. And he was also one of the first to receive a Nobel Prize for game theory. It was in 1994, and he shared it with two others. I am shocked to hear of his death.

In recent years, we met at least once a year at international conferences. He knew a lot – not only about mathematics but about everything, and you could talk to him about what is happening in the world.

Nash came to Israel in 1995, on my 65th birthday, which took place at the Tower of David in the form of a celebration and conference. It was a year after he received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The science world and I will certainly miss him."

Claudia Goldin interview on the history of labor force participation by women, among other things

The interview is in Econ Focus, published by the Richmond Fed: Claudia Goldin

Here's one paragraph:
"EF: What changed in society that allowed this revolution to occur?

Goldin: One of the most important changes was the appearance of reliable, female-controlled birth control. The pill lowered the cost to women of making long-term career investments. Before reliable birth control, a woman faced a nontrivial probability of having her career derailed by an unplanned pregnancy — or she had to pay the penalty of abstinence. The lack of highly reliable birth control also meant a set of institutions developed around dating and sex to create commitment: Couples would "go steady," then they would get "pinned," then they would get engaged. If you're pinned or engaged when you're 19 or 20 years old, you're not going to wait until you're 28 to get married. So a lot of women got married within a year or two of graduating college. That meant women who pursued a career also paid a penalty in the marriage market. But the pill made it possible for women who were "on the pill" to delay marriage, and that, in turn, created a "thicker" marriage market for all women to marry later and further lowered the cost to women of investing in a career."

John Nash: 1928-2015. RIP

John and Alicia Nash have died in a car accident.

Here's the news story: Famed Princeton mathematician John Nash, wife killed in taxi crash

Here's the NY Times obituary: John F. Nash Jr., Mathematician Whose Life Story Inspired ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ Dies at 86

Same sex marriage becomes legal in Ireland, by popular vote

Ancient repugnances can be swept away in a matter of decades, and now it's Ireland's turn. The NY Times has the story: Ireland Votes to Approve Gay Marriage, Putting Country in Vanguard

 "Ireland has become the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by a popular vote, sweeping aside the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church in a resounding victory Saturday for the gay rights movement and placing the country at the vanguard of social change.

"With ballots from 34 out of the 43 voting areas counted, the vote was almost two to one in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. All but one of the districts that were counted voted yes, and it appeared to be statistically impossible for opposition votes to overcome the ayes.

"Turnout was large — more than 60 percent of the 3.2 million people eligible to vote cast ballots. Government officials, advocates and even those who had argued against the measure said that the outcome was a resounding endorsement of the constitutional amendment.

"Not long ago, the vote would have been unthinkable. Ireland decriminalized homosexuality only in 1993, the church dominates the education system and abortion remains illegal except when a mother’s life is at risk. But the influence of the church has waned amid scandals in recent years, while attitudes, particularly among the young, have shifted.

Continue reading the main story

When Same-Sex Marriages Became Legal

About 20 countries have already legalized same-sex marriages. Here is a list of when each did.

• 2001 The Netherlands 
  2003 Belgium
  2005 Canada and Spain
  2006 South Africa 
  2009 Norway and Sweden
  2010 Argentina. Iceland and Portugal 
  2012 Denmark
  2013: Brazil, England and Wales, France, New Zealand and Uruguay
  2014 Luxembourg and Scotland
  2017 (Law becomes effective.) Finland 

The vote is also the latest chapter in a sharpening global cultural clash. Same-sex marriage is surging in the West, legal in 19 nations before the Irish vote and 37 American states, but almost always because of legislative or legal action. At the same time, gay rights are under renewed attack in Russia, in parts of Africa and from Islamic extremists, most notably the Islamic State.

The results in Ireland, announced on Saturday, showed wide and deep support for a measure that had dominated public discourse and dinner-table conversation, particularly in the months before the lead-up to the vote on Friday. Supporters celebrated in gatherings and on the streets, with the rainbow colors of the gay rights movement and Yes vote buttons conspicuously on display.

Ali Hortaçsu talks to the Turkish American Scientists & Scholars Association about market design

A Conversation with Ali Hortaçsu

"Our guest on this issue of The Bridge is Ali Hortacsu, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.

The Bridge : Could you please give us a brief summary of your background?

Ali Hortaçsu : I was born in Istanbul in 1974 and grew up near Boğaziçi University where my parents are (emeritus) professors of chemical engineering. I went to Robert College for secondary school, and attended Stanford University, where I got my B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and my Ph.D. in Economics. I joined the University of Chicago Department of Economics as an assistant professor in 2001. I am currently the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Economics there.

T.B. :  Could you also summarize your studies/research?  

A. H. : Most of my research falls under the rubric of "market design." Most economists believe markets are a wonderful method of allocating scarce resources and facilitating exchange. However, we know of many conditions under which markets can fail miserably; especially when market participants have incentives to strategize around the stated rules of the marketplace. What is needed, then, is a well-thought out re-writing of the "rules of the game" that takes into account the fact that many market participants are highly rational, strategic actors who will understand and game the system. How should we go about designing such rules? There is now an elegant and extremely well established body of theoretical knowledge on this topic, starting e.g. with the work of my Nobel winning colleague Roger Myerson. What we have learned over time, however, is that theory does not always give sharp answers as to what to do; the specific parameters of the particular system we are analyzing matters a lot. What I have tried to advance in my research is a "data driven" approach to market design, in which we utilize very detailed data from existing markets, estimate the relevant parameters using econometric/statistical methods, and simulate the parametrized behavior under a slew of alternative market rules to arrive at improved market designs. My collaborators and I have utilized this framework to help guide the design of many real world markets, including electricity markets, financial markets, online auctions, and even Internet matchmaking sites. I am also happy to see the econometric and simulation methods I have developed being used in many exciting applications in this domain.

T.B. :   Where do you see studies of your area of specialty in Turkey? What are your suggestions to improve the research in Turkey in this area?

A. H. :  "Market design" has a long and distinguished history in Turkey, especially with the theoretical work of Murat Sertel, Ahmet Alkan, and Semih Koray. Tayfun Sönmez and Utku Ünver, who are also pioneers in this area, did much of their trailblazing research while they were colleagues at Koç University. Although the tradition of market design research is very strong in Turkey, I think improving collaborations between theoretical researchers and market operators would be very beneficial from both the applied and scientific point of views."

Mohammad Akbarpour defends his dissertation

We welcomed a new market designer into the profession today:

Dave Kreps, Paul Milgrom, MOHAMMAD AKBARPOUR, Al Roth, Matt Jackson, Amin Saberi

I can't help noticing that most of the facial hair in this picture is gray and belongs to faculty members, while most of the head hair belongs to Mohammad:)

Welcome to the club, Mohammad!

The market for early book reviews: commercial, crowd sourced, and bootleg

My book, Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design isn't due to be published until June 2.  But there are already some reviews, from commercial reviewers (Kirkus Reviews), from crowd sourced  reviews from Amazon, and at least one of what looks like a bootleg review from someone writing for Newsweek Europe, who may have ignored the label on the boxes of books warning folks to respect the June 2 "publication date" (the books will be in stores by then, so they are floating around).


The Amazon reviewing process is through what they call Vine Customer Review of Free Product, which they describe as follows:

"Amazon Vine invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make informed purchase decisions. Amazon invites customers to become Vine Voices based on their reviewer rank, which is a reflection of the quality and helpfulness of their reviews as judged by other Amazon customers. Amazon provides Vine members with free products that have been submitted to the program by participating vendors. Vine reviews are the independent opinions of the Vine Voices. The vendor cannot influence, modify or edit the reviews. Amazon does not modify or edit Vine reviews, as long as they comply with our posting guidelines. A Vine review is identified with the green stripe Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program."

They classify the reviews as positive or critical, so far there are 15 positive and 1 critical, here's the critical one:

Showing 1-1 of 1 reviews (critical)show all reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3Marketing Design for Dummies Written by a Nobel Laureate in Economics With a Sense of Humor and Humanity

ByLita Perna "Clinical Professional Counselor/ Retired"VINE VOICEon April 14, 2015

Format: HardcoverVine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Note: Advance Reading Copy

Alvin E. Roth, Nobel Prize laureate in economics has written a comfortable and conversational book explaining complex concepts of market design for the lay person. A more apt title, I think would be Problems, Challenges and Solutions in Market Design or Marketing Design for Dummies. “Who Gets What and Why” makes this book sound simple. It is not. It is also not for every casual reader with a mild curiosity.

Dr. Roth defines and explains the new economics of market design which he says brings science to matchmaking. He shows how market design helps solve problems that existing market places haven’t been able to solve naturally.

The author discusses his design of clearing houses for markets that are not commodity markets like: the kidney exchange; the medical labor market; new labor markets for Ph.D.s in economics and school choice systems in New York and Boston.

He defines the challenges and solutions and explains that to achieve efficient outcomes, market places need to make markets:

Thick: Those with enough potential transitions available at one time.
Congested: Enough time for offers to be made and/or accepted or rejected.
(and) Safe to participate in.

He defines matching markets where one can’t just choose, but must also be chosen.
He gives concrete examples to explain his concepts like attributes of three different kinds of restaurants. He discusses design inventions to make markets smarter, thicker and faster.

This book is detailed. It reads like Dr. Roth has taken pains to be clear about those details.

For more in dept discussion of market design you can watch Dr. Roth’s lecture at Stanford University on the web.

Thos book is not for everyone, but is worth the effort to gain new insight and understanding of markets and “Who Gets What.”

Royal Economic Society-York Symposium and Mini-Courses on Game Theory, 21-23 May 2015

The 2015 RES-York Symposium and Mini-Courses on Game Theory, the 6th of the series of York Annual Symposium on Game Theory, will be held on 21-23 May 2015 at the Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, UK. 

The four keynote speakers of the Symposium (21-22 May 2015) are: 

Bhaskar Dutta (Warwick)

Stephen Morris (Princeton)

Michael Ostrovsky (Stanford)

Eyal Winter (HUJerusalem & Leicester)

The event is organised by the Micro Theory Research Cluster at the Department of Economics and Related Studies (DERS), University of York, and is jointly supported by the Royal Economic Society and the departmental Research Impact Support (RIS) Fund at DERS, University of York.

 Mini-Courses

Right after the Symposium, on Saturday 23 May 2015, we will run two mini-courses delivered by Professor Bhaskar Dutta (Warwick) and Professor Michael Ostrovsky (Stanford), respectively.

Professor Bhaskar Dutta will deliver a mini-course on "Games on Networks". 

Professor Michael Ostrovsky will deliver a mini-course on the topic "Matching in Trading Networks". The background reading can be downloaded below at this webpage.

The schedule on Saturday 23 May 2015 is as follows.

9:00-10:30 Course by Prof. Bhaskar Dutta

10:45-12:15 Course by Prof. Michael Ostrovsky

12:15-13:15 Lunch

13:15-14:45 Course by Prof. Bhaskar Dutta

15:00-16:30 Course by Prof. Michael Ostrovsky

IIPSC: the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice

Over at the Dell Foundation (which funds a lot of work on public school choice), they have a Q&A on school choice and enrollment: Neil Dorosin and Gaby Fighetti from The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice

"The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice (IIPSC) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to support groups of people in cities in designing and implementing school choice and enrollment processes. They work with consortiums of people in cities to bring them through a process they call market design: creating a group of policies and operations that, when taken together as a whole, govern the way kids apply to and are accepted to schools.

IIPSC is hosting a conference on May 20, 2015 where education leaders from all over the country will gather to immerse themselves in unified enrollment theory and practice. Practitioners from cities that have already implemented or are implementing unified enrollment – Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Oakland, and Washington DC – will be on hand to share their knowledge and experiences. The goal is for all participants to emerge from the conference with a concrete set of knowledge and tools to use in advancing this critical work in their own cities.

Neil Dorosin is the Executive Director and Gaby Fighetti is the Deputy Executive Director of IIPSC. Read more about their work below.

...

How has IIPSC effectively launched this current reform movement with unified enrollment?

Neil: IIPSC principals first worked together in New York City in the very early Joel Klein years, and in this environment there were almost no charter schools. This illustrates that the ideas within unified enrollment are not specific to any particular type of school- charter schools, district schools, non-public schools, etc. They are ideas that allow administrators to serve families better. To bring efficiency, equity, and transparency to enrollment and choice systems.

When we began working with Denver we realized that what we were doing requires district and charter sectors to work together in a whole new way, and these changes are fundamental to the way cities manage school choice and then hopefully implement portfolio reform strategy. We are committed to political neutrality and always make sure that people in cities know that our work is meant to advance healthy choice processes, not to advance any political position. We love the fact that people in cities all over the country now see the ideas and guiding principles of unified enrollment systems as things that they believe in and want to advance in their cities.

Tell us about the team who helped design the unified enrollment system.

Neil: Al Roth shared the Nobel Prize in economics for applying matching theory science to solve real world problems. Most famous examples include the Medical Residency match (matching residents and hospitals), kidney donor exchange programs (identifying compatible pairs of donors and recipients from VERY long waitlists, and saving many lives), and for unified enrollment work.Parag Pathak was his student, and is now a full professor at MIT. Atila Abdulkadiroglu co-wrote the seminal paper on the market design approach to school choice in 2003 and joined Al and Parag in the first schools project – in New York City in 2003. Al, Parag and Atila are all now members of our advisory board and active participants in our projects with cities.

It turns out that matching science can be adapted to solve these and other problems, and to make people’s live better in real and meaningful ways. We are motivated by this every day."

Everything for Sale? The Ethics and Economics of Compensation for Body Parts (Video of the panel discussion)

Here's the video of the panel discussion I participated in at Johns Hopkins on May 7, Everything for Sale? The Ethics and Economics of Compensation for Body Parts: the panelists were James Childress, Michele Goodwin, Alvin Roth and Debra Satz

The video, including introductions before and questions after, is an hour and 20 minutes. The introduction by Mario Macis starts around minute 6:40, and includes audience voting on questions of whether they would be in favor of regulated markets for kidneys, for hearts, for blood, for human eggs and sperm, and for breast milk. The panel discussion, moderated by Jeff Kahn, starts at minute 14, with each of the panelists, in alphabetical order, giving an 8 minute opening statement. (Mine begins at 33:20, and ends at 41:41, pretty close to the 8 minute guideline:) .)

School Choice: video of an interview I did in Israel

Here's an interview I did while in Israel in April, mostly about school choice (but also about some of my personal history, game theory, etc.) It starts at minute 4:00 of this news broadcast, and goes until minute 12:45...

Public schools and private philanthropy

Public school budgets are always stretched to their limits, and one of the ways those limits are sometimes surmounted is with an infusion of private funds, from big foundations with an interest in education, and also, apparently, from wealthy individuals. The NY Times has a story on how this part of school financing for New York City schools flourished more under the former mayor than it appears to be under the current one.
Public Schools Fund, Under de Blasio, Is Struggling to Lure Wealthy Donors

"The Fund for Public Schools, the nonprofit organization that former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellors built into a fund-raising juggernaut, has struggled to attract donations under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The fund, which raised an average of $29 million a year over the last decade, has raised just $18 million this fiscal year, which ends June 30, fund officials said. About half of that comes from two large multiyear grants that began under the Bloomberg administration."

9th workshop Matching in Practice June 8 - June 9 in Barcelona

9th workshop Matching in Practice, June 8 - June 9

The program for the 9th workshop of Matching in Practice is up:

Scientific Program

Day 1: June 8, 2015 

11:00 – 11:30     Welcome Coffee 

11:30 – 12:00     Registration

12:00 – 13:30    Keynote presentation – Christopher Avery (Harvard Kennedy School of Government)

The Common Application and the DA Algorithm in School Assignment (with Cara Nickolaus and Parag Pathak)

13:30 – 14:30     Lunch

14:30 – 16:30     Strategic Choice and Affirmative Action

Dynamic Reserves in Matching Markets with Contracts: Theory and Applications, by Orhan Aygün and Bertan Turhan

College Admission with Multidimensional Privileges: The Brazilian Affirmative Action Case, by Orhan Aygün and Inacio Bo

Self-selection in School Choice, by Li Chen and Juan Sebastián Pereyra

16:30 – 17:00     Coffee break

17:00 – 18:30     Empirical Estimation of Preferences in School Choice

Demand Analysis using Strategic Reports: An application to a school choice  mechanism, by Nikhil Agarwal and Paolo Somaini

Structural Estimation of a Model of School Choices: the Boston Mechanism vs. Its Alternatives, by Caterina Calsamiglia, Chou Fu and Maia Güell

20:00                  Dinner

Day 2: June 9, 2015 

9:30 – 11:00       Educational Choice, Incentives and Welfare

College Diversity and Investment Incentives, by Thomas Gall, Patrick Legros and Andrew F. Newman

 Socio-economic status and enrollment in higher education: Do costs matter? by Koen Declercq and Frank Verboven

 11:00 – 11:30     Coffee break 

11:30 – 12:15       Re-matching

The Design of Teacher Assignment: Theory and Evidence, by Julien Combe, Olivier Tercieux and Camille Terrier

12:15 – 13:00      Panel discussion on matching practices (TBD)

13:30                     Lunch

Scientific Committee: Dorothea Kübler, Antonio Miralles and Joana Pais

Registrations If you plan to attend the meeting (and are not a speaker), please contact Antonio Miralles at amirallesasensio@gmail.com

Venue: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Edifici Balmes, Carrer Balmes 132, Barcelona

High Frequency Trading in Santa Cruz today

Featuring Stanford students Josh Mollner and Markus Baldauf, and open to the public:

Market Design: High Frequency Trading

Program, May 15, 2010

Welcome & Keynote, 10:00 - 10:45 am

• Sayee Srinivasan, Chief Economist, Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Session 1, 10:45 am - 12:15 pm

Market Integration and High Frequency Trading

• Jonathan Brogaard, UW Foster School of Business, Department of Finance

High-Frequency Trade and Market Performance

• Joshua Mollner,  Stanford University, Department of Economics

Lunch, 12:15 - 1:30 pm

Session 2, 1:30 - 3:00 pm

Knew the News: Infrastructure Dynamics of Trading Surrounding Prescheduled Economic Announcements

• Greg Laughlin, UC Santa Cruz, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics

"Need for Speed? Exchange Latency and Market Quality"

• Albert Menkveld, VU University Amsterdam, Department of Finance

Break, 3:00 - 3:30 pm

Session 3, 3:30 - 5:45 pm

Performance Evaluation of Algorithmic Trading Strategies

• Iaryna Grynkiv, Barclays, Equities Algorithmic Trading

Competition Among Exchanges

• Markus Baldauf,  Stanford University, Department of Economics

The Random Walk of High Frequency Trading

• Eric Aldrich, UC Santa Cruz, Department of Economics

Dinner, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

The workshop will take place in Engineering 2, Room 499.

The Guardian on Iranian kidney sales

The Guardian reports on a bad outcome in Iran's market for kidneys--the recipient dies, and the donor isn't doing well: Kidneys for sale: Iran’s trade in organs

"Iran is the only country in the world where it is legal to sell a kidney. Donors get money from the buyer and from the state, a system which eradicated waiting lists but, detractors say, exploits the poor and vulnerable. Here, we follow one terrible story"

Recent travels...Nigeria

Nigeria's Daily Independent covers the talk I gave there on Monday:
Exchange Programme’ll Improve Kidney Transplant In Africa – Expert

By Oyeniran Apata, Lagos

A Nobel Prize winner for Economic Science, Professor Alvin Roth, has declared that the poor state of Nigerian patients with chronic renal disease can be improved through effective kidney exchange programme.

Roth identified high cost of management, poor infrastructure, low awareness and non-direct donors as some of the factors contributing to the prevalence of the pitiable conditions in the country and the continent of Africa as a whole.

Delivering a paper as the keynote speaker at the second Covenant University International Conference on African Development Issues tagged, “Biotechnology, ICT, Materials and Renewable Energy: Potential Catalyst for African Development,” Roth lamented that Nigeria with a poor renal registry was able to successfully carry out only 143 Kidney Transplants (KTs) in 10 years against 11,000 carried out successfully in the United States of America.

Professor Ruth in his paper entitled, “Kidney Disease in Nigeria and the U.S. and Possibilities of Co-operation and Mutual Aid,” lamented that despite the huge number of successes recorded in the U.S., America is still falling behind in the treatment of kidney failure.

“I want to talk to you today about how we have taken some initial steps to increase kidney transplant in the U.S. through kidney exchange, and how such a programme might be extended to Africa and be a catalyst to build medical infrastructure in Africa,” he said.

He added that the kidney transfer waiting list in the USA was getting longer year in year out as more people are dying while waiting to be treated.

"In his words he said, “In 2003, 83,000 Americans were in immediate need of a kidney transplant; in 2014, 100,000 Americans were in immediate need of a kidney transplant. More patients on the wait list are dying every year. In 2003, 4,000 Americans died waiting for a kidney transplant, in 2013, 4,500 Americans died waiting for a kidney.”



He lamented that as similar epidemiological data is hard to come by in Africa, the prevalence of chronic renal failure and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) have remained high worldwide and the epidemiology has changed significantly in the last decade in industrialised countries, contending that patients’ outcome is still appalling in developing countries.

He added: “There is paucity of information on the magnitude of the burden of renal disease in our environment. Obtaining accurate data is hampered by the poor socio-economic status of most patients with lack of access to specialised care in tertiary institutions, where most of the data are generated.”

Chancellor of the university and General Overseer of the Living Faith Bible Church Worldwide, Dr. David Oyedepo, stated that the conference was aimed at enabling the country to benefit from the wealth of experience of the experts and particularly Roth’s application of economic theory in finding solutions for “real world” problems."

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Update: here's some more coverage: Faith-Based Organizations, Private Sector, Crucial to Successes in Kidney Transplantation – Professor Alvin Roth