Death with dignity law in California

The NY Times has the story: California Governor Signs Assisted Suicide Bill Into Law

"California will become the fifth state to allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law on Monday, ending his months of silence on one of the most emotional issues in the state this year.

In an unusually personal signing message, the governor, a former Jesuit seminarian, signaled how torn he was by the issue.

“I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain,” he wrote. “I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”

...

"Oregon has allowed what opponents call “assisted suicide” and supporters term “aid in dying” since 1997, and, after a Supreme Court ruling in 2006 that affirmed the law, Washington, Montana and Vermont have also approved the practice.

"Opponents have long raised concerns that ill and disabled people could be coerced into choosing death over more care, which can be expensive and burdensome. The Catholic Church, which considers suicide a sin, also helped lead opposition.

...

"In 2014, four states considered bills to allow physicians to help terminally ill patients end their lives; this year, that number increased to 24 states plus the District of Columbia, according to Compassion and Choices, a group that supported the law.

...

"The California law includes protections designed to assuage concerns about potential abuse. Patients must be terminally ill and mentally sound; they must be capable of administering the medication themselves; and two different doctors must approve it.

"Hospitals and doctors will also have the option of not offering end-of-life drugs..

American Economic Association election results, and a request for suggestions...

The American Economic Association has announced the results of the recent election of new officers, who join the existing officers:

2016 Election Results--American Economic Association

President-Elect
Alvin RothStanford University

Vice-Presidents
Daron AcemogluMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyMarianne BertrandThe University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Executive Committee
John CampbellHarvard UniversityHilary Hoynes

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


As one of the new officers, I will be interested in hearing suggestions about projects that a soon-to-be president with a one year term might usefully undertake.

how can David sue Goliath? A new marketplace for litigation funding

Justice and the courts are in principle available to all, but litigation is expensive. So it may be hard for a plaintiff of limited means (call him David) to receive justice by suing a defendant with deep pockets, such as an insurance company. That will be particularly true if the plaintiff's need is urgent, if the defendant can afford to delay the proceedings (and add to their expense) through legal maneuvering.

But firms that offer to finance lawsuits often have bad reputations, in part because lawsuits themselves often have bad reputations. So litigation financing has suffered from some repugnance, including legislation limiting it.

A new marketplace for litigation financing, called Mighty, has just been launched. It is intended to allow potential investors to bid to support meritorious cases, and thus bring some market discipline to the process.

I earlier had a chance to chat with one of its founders, Joshua Schwadron, who accompanied the launch with this essay: Power to the Plaintiff, from which these quotes are taken:

"Well aware of plaintiffs’ precarious situations, insurance companies often prolong the legal process, waging a war of attrition to get plaintiffs to accept quick, less-than-fair settlements. This happens even in the most clear-cut cases. It’s called “frivolous defense,” a phrase you will have heard much less frequently than “frivolous lawsuits,” even though many scholars believe it is the former that causes our courts to clog, not the latter. And frivolous defense works — it almost always does. It’s a systemic scandal.

The fundamental problem is that defendants enjoy what economists call“monopsony power.” Monopsony power is just like monopoly power, except that one buyer has all the market power instead of one seller. Essentially, the defendant is the only legally authorized “buyer” of the plaintiff’s liability claim. As Stephen Gillers, one of the most prominent legal ethicists in the United States, explains:

“[The defendant] is under no time pressure. It is, furthermore, the only authorized purchaser of [the plaintiff’s] claim, the only one allowed to bid on it. Now it requires no MBA to recognize that if one person is under duress and needs to sell something and another person is the only one legally allowed to buy it, the buyer has an enormous advantage.”

...
" Plaintiff financing provides plaintiffs with funds that enable them to live their lives while they wait for fair settlement offers. It’s not a loan; it’s an investment, which yields a return to the investor only if a plaintiff’s case settles or is won.
...
"The insurance industry has consistently fought the adoption of plaintiff financing. Just last year, The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies awarded State Legislature of the Year Awards to three legislators who helped regulate plaintiff financing out of existence in Tennessee.
...
"If plaintiff financing is such a commonsense solution, why is it not more widespread? First, the market is nascent. A handful of early participants have been bad actors and stifled the practice’s growth by engaging in opaque tactics. Second, skeptics claim that plaintiff financing could lead to an increase in frivolous litigation. But in reality, empirical studies have shown that plaintiff financing does not increase non-meritorious litigation because investors are rational actors who invest only in the cases most likely to win. Finally, plaintiff financing can be rhetorically reduced to the “financing of lawsuits,” a description that is plagued by the ick factor and offends the sensibilities of many."
***************


Here is a WSJ blog post: Personal Injury Plaintiffs May Benefit from New Litigation Funding Marketplace

Here are some older links to litigation financing, and it's repugnance...

February 10, 2015  Updated 02/11/2015
Litigation-finance firms bet on the little guy
Hedge funds, private-equity players fund small businesses' lawsuits.

Litigation Finance Firm Raises $260 Million for New Fund

Litigation Financing Firm Exits Tennessee As New Law Goes Into Effect
By Andrew G. Simpson | July 3, 2014
By WILLIAM ALDEN

LITIGATION OR LAWSUIT FUNDING TRANSACTIONS 2014 LEGISLATION  summary of state laws

Janos Kornai on recent developments in Hungary and its political and economic institutions

Janos Kornai, the eminent Hungarian economist, is not optimistic about recent developments there.

Hungary's U-Turn

Janos Kornai 

Harvard University; Corvinus University of Budapest
July 11, 2015

Capitalism and Society, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 2, 2015 
Abstract:      

For two decades Hungary, like the other Eastern European countries, followed a general policy of establishing and strengthening the institutions of democracy, rule of law, and a market economy based on private property. However, since the elections of 2010, when Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party came to power, Hungary has made a dramatic U-turn. This article investigates the different spheres of society: political institutions, the rule of law, and the influence of state and market on one another, as well as the world of ideology (education, science and art), and describes the U-turn’s implications for these fields and the effect it has on the life of people. It argues against the frequent misunderstandings in the interpretation and evaluation of the Hungarian situation, pointing out some typical intellectual fallacies. It draws attention to the dangers of strengthening nationalism, and to the ambivalence evident in Hungarian foreign policy, and looks into the relationship between Hungary and the Western world, particularly the European Union. Finally, it outlines the possible scenarios resulting from future developments in the Hungarian situation.

His first paragraph:

"Hungary is a small country, poor in raw materials, with a population of only 10 million. No civil wars are being waged on its territory, nor are there any popular uprisings or terrorism. It has not become involved in any local wars, and it is not threatened by immediate bankruptcy. So why is it still worth paying attention to what is going on here? Because Hungary, a country that belongs to NATO and the European Union, is turning away from the great achievements of the 1989–1990 change of regime—democracy, rule of law, freely functioning civil society, pluralism in intellectual life—and attacking private property and the mechanisms of the free market before the eyes of the whole world; and it is doing all this in the shadow of increasing geopolitical tensions"

Repugnance watch: sports gambling is largely illegal, while fantasy sports leagues are thriving

Itai Fainmesser points me to this story in the NY Times, about how some things are illegal while similar things are legal--the legal distinction being between games of chance and games of skill:

Daily Fantasy Sports and the Hidden Cost of America’s Weird Gambling Laws

"An entire industry has emerged out of a legal loophole for something that looks a whole lot like sports gambling, which is illegal outside of Nevada and a few other states.
...
"The fantasy sports industry argues that its service is not gambling at all, but rather a game of skill. It’s the sort of game specifically allowed by most state laws and by a 2006 federal law restricting online gambling that carved out protections for fantasy sports leagues. The industry is right about that much. It is a skill, and it unquestionably rewards those who apply dogged analytics to assembling their fantasy lineups.

Although daily fantasy sports advertisements target casual fans, a disproportionate share of the contest entries — and even more disproportionate share of the winnings — go to people who play the game on a scale most armchair sports fans couldn’t imagine. An analysis of Major League Baseball contests by Ed Miller and Daniel Singer published in the Sports Business Journal found that 1.3 percent of fantasy players paid $9,100 in entry fees on average, accounting for 23 percent of all entry fees and 77 percent of all profits."

Who Gets What and Why: podcast at Ideas Books

Craig Barfoot at IdeasBooks interviews me about Who Gets What and Why: our conversation ranges over repugnant transactions, kidney exchange, and my treadmill desk.  You can find the podcast (about 20 minutes) here: http://www.ideasbooks.org/news/2015/10/1/episode-9-alvin-roth-who-gets-what-and-why
***********

It looks like you can find it here too:
http://podacademy.org/bookpods/matching-markets-who-gets-what-and-why/

Cap and Gown at Exeter

When I was at Exeter University in July, I not only attended a conference on market design, but also put on a cap and gown and became an honorary graduate. (I had to give back the cap, but some pictures arrived in the mail just now...)
Here I am with the Chancellor, Baroness Floella Benjamin.

Baroness Floella Benjamin and Al Roth.Exeter.July 2015

BBC show on algorithms and kidney exchange (tv documentary)

David Manlove writes from Scotland:

"BBC4 have just shown a documentary on algorithms, which featured the Gale-Shapley algorithm and kidney exchange in the UK.  In particular, it shows an excerpt of you and Lloyd Shapley receiving the Nobel Prize.

The programme was shown on 24 September – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/algorithms.  Viewers outside the UK probably cannot watch the footage, but I noticed that someone has posted the programme on YouTube.  It can currently be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itvwa85YkEg.  The stable marriage part starts at 20:50 and the kidney exchange part follows (from 25:40).  You and Lloyd Shapley are shown at 21:35.

In general I reckon they did a great job of making a complex subject accessible - and I thought that Marcus du Sautoy in particular was very engaging.”

*********

David's work on kidney exchange in the UK is featured in the video, which you can also see below

The Integration of Immigrants into American Society --report of the National Academies

There's a new report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine: The Integration of Immigrants into American Society

"The United States prides itself on being a nation of immigrants, and the country has a long history of successfully absorbing people from across the globe. The integration of immigrants and their children contributes to our economic vitality and our vibrant and ever changing culture. We have offered opportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fully incorporated into our society and in exchange immigrants have become Americans—embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting our country through service in our military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, and enriching everything from the nation’s cuisine to its universities, music, and art.

Today, the 41 million immigrants in the United States represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S.-born children of immigrants, the second generation, represent another 37.1 million people, or 12 percent of the population. Thus, together the first and second generations account for one out of four members of the U.S. population. Whether they are successfully integrating is therefore a pressing and important question. Are new immigrants and their children being well integrated into American society, within and across generations? Do current policies and practices facilitate their integration? How is American society being transformed by the millions of immigrants who have arrived in recent decades?

To answer these questions, this report summarizes what we know about how immigrants and their descendants are integrating into American society in a range of areas such as education, occupations, health, and language. "

Here's the press release, and here's the report in brief, and you can purchase the whole report here.


Some snippets:
from the press release...
"“Integration is a twofold process that depends on the participation of immigrants and their descendants in major social institutions such as schools and the labor market, as well as their social acceptance by other Americans,” said Mary Waters, M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and chair of the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report. “The U.S. has a long history of accepting people from across the globe, and successful integration of immigrants and their children contributes to our economic vitality and a vibrant, ever-changing culture.”  There are 41 million immigrants and 37.1 million U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States today.  Together, the first and second generations account for one-quarter of the U.S. population."

from the report in brief:

A new college admissions coalition

Inside Higher Ed has the story: (the url is as informative as the headline--
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/27/80-colleges-and-universities-announce-plan-new-application-and-new-approach

Admissions Revolution

September 27, 2015

By

Scott Jaschik

Eighty leading colleges and universities are today announcing a plan to reverse a decades-long process by which colleges have -- largely through the Common Application -- made their applications increasingly similar.

Further, the colleges and universities are creating new online portfolios for high school students, designed to have ninth graders begin thinking more deeply about what they are learning or accomplishing in high school, to create new ways for college admissions officers, community organizations and others to coach them, and to emerge in their senior years with a body of work that could be used to help identify appropriate colleges and apply to them. Organizers of the new effort hope it will minimize some of the disadvantages faced by high school students without access to well-staffed guidance offices or private counselors.

While the goals of the effort are ambitious, so are the resources and clout of the colleges today announcing this campaign. These colleges include every Ivy League university, Stanford University and the University of Chicago; liberal arts colleges such as Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams Colleges; and leading public institutions such as the Universities of Michigan, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia. The 80 members expect more institutions to join.

While they aim to create a new way for students to apply, they also hope that the portfolio system they create prods changes in high school education that could have an impact beyond those who apply to these institutions.

The new group is called the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success. It will be open to public institutions with “affordable tuition along with need-based financial aid for in-state residents,” according to an outline provided by the coalition.

Private colleges may join if they “provide sufficient financial aid to meet the full, demonstrated financial need of every domestic student they admit.” That means colleges need not be need blind (in which admissions offers are made without regard to financial need) to participate. And indeed a number of colleges that have joined are “need aware” for some students, meaning that, for some of their slots, they consider only those students who do not have financial need. But colleges that engage in “gapping,” in which some admitted students are not provided enough aid to attend, will not be allowed to join. Gapping is common among private colleges that do not have substantial endowments.

To participate, colleges also must have a six-year federal graduation rate of 70 percent, a threshold that will exclude many public institutions.

...

A new application system. The coalition will introduce a new online application. Like the Common Application, there will be some factual information that students would need to enter only once (name, high school, etc.). But once an applicant hits short answers or essay or other sections, each college would prepare its own questions. The idea is to link many of the questions to material that applicants would have put in their portfolios, so applicants are not scrambling for ideas on essays but are relying on work they did in high school. (Standardized test scores and high school transcripts would continue to be provided to colleges.)

The goal of these three features is to change the way students, colleges and society think about the admissions process. “The idea isn't about how you should pad your résumé, but about how you should have significant experiences as part of your education,” said Horne.

Stephen M. Farmer, vice president for enrollment and undergraduate admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said UNC was joining because of the opportunity in this new approach to interact with low-income students much earlier, and to help them prepare for admission. “We’ve got to broaden our thinking about what constitutes talent,” he said, adding that this approach will lead universities to focus on developing the talent of high school students, not just picking already talented high school seniors.

...

A Challenge to the Common App?

One big question about the new system is how much of a challenge it will represent to the Common Application, which has more than 600 members, including most if not all of the new coalition's members. Over its 40-year history, the Common Application has grown from a small group of small liberal arts colleges to a dominant player in college admissions, attracting all kinds of colleges with competitive admissions, many of which have reported boosts to application numbers after joining the Common App.

All of the coalition members contacted for this article said that they plan to offer, but not require, the coalition application, and that they expect to continue having a majority of applicants (certainly in the coalition's early years) apply through the Common App.

...

The Universal College Application -- now up to 44 colleges -- gained ground in the wake of the Common App’s technical failures in 2013, but Universal has never had the critical mass or recognition among high school students of the Common App.

Kidney exchange in Australia: steady progress

Here's a cheerful story about a 3-way kidney exchange in Australia,
Paired kidney exchange program gives patients waiting for organ donation new chance at life.

The Australian Paired Kidney Exchange Programme, run by Paolo Ferrari, seems to be making steady progress.

Here's the Australian Paired Kidney Exchange (AKX) programme Biannual Report #5 as of 30 June 2015
"To date the AKX programme has facilitated 121 live donor kidney transplants...
"Several innovations have been introduced or are under way this year. The NOMS-PKE platform has
undergone significant system revision and improvement, increasing its stability and performance; a
clearly defined process for enrolment of altruistic donors was made available to interested participating units and a pathway for hepatitis B core antibody positive donors as well as the corresponding matching option in NOMS have been developed and will be available from the next
match cycle in August 2015. A working party of Australian and New Zealand delegates is exploring
process and policies that may enable collaboration between the two countries with the AKX programme. This is a very exciting prospect that will benefit both Australian and New Zealand
incompatible pairs."
*********

Incidentally, in the  Queen's Birthday 2015 Honours List, Professor Ferrari was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in recognition of his work in establishing kidney exchange in Australia.

Wie krijgt wat - en waarom (Who Gets What and Why--the Dutch translation)

Who Gets What - and Why is now available in Dutch: Wie krijgt wat - en waarom

Here are the other editions, so far, British and Romanian...

Matching, repugnance, and refugee resettlement

A Swiss review of my book Who Gets What and Why raises the issue of refugee resettlement:

Le Prix Nobel qui intervient sur des marchés répugnants by Emmanuel Garessus

His final paragraph:
"La comparaison avec l’immigration n’est pas impossible. Aujourd’hui, la demande s’adresse à des passeurs qui se moquent de la vie des individus et de leurs perspectives. Et l’offre ne réfléchit qu’en termes de planification, de barrières et de quotas. Pourquoi ne pas faire appel aux chercheurs qui, comme Alvin Roth, ont conçu, grâce à de vastes bases de données, des systèmes d’allocation permettant de satisfaire les besoins d’échanges des individus?"

Google translate renders that as
"Comparison with immigration is not impossible. Today, the demand is for smugglers who make fun of people's lives and their perspectives. And the offer does not reflect that in terms of planning, barriers and quotas. Why not appeal to researchers who, like Alvin Roth, designed through extensive databases of allocation systems to meet the needs of exchanges of individuals?"
***********

I agree: here are my previous posts on refugees.

Boston is considering a unified enrollment system for district and charter schools

Unified enrollment systems cut down on congestion.
The Boston Globe has the story:

Plan would simplify Boston public school enrollments
"Boston officials plan to unveil a proposal Thursday for a unified system that would streamline the sometimes cumbersome school enrollment process, allowing students for the first time to simultaneously apply to charter and district schools.

Similar to the Common Application for college admissions, the system would clear up confusion among many parents by allowing them to enter a single lottery for Boston public schools and charters, officials said. Currently, families enter one lottery for district seats and another for each charter school.

Rather than have to fill out an application for each school, parents would fill out only one application through Boston public schools for whatever schools — charter or non-charter — they seek to enroll their child in.

“This is about moving forward and advancing education for . . . all kids, not just BPS kids,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a City Hall interview Wednesday. “They all deserve top-quality education.”

Israeli law internships serve multiple purposes, as recent changes make clear

Internships and pre-licensing employment under other names serves multiple purposes. One purpose is to train future professionals. Another might be to limit entry into a profession. Both things seem to be at issue with law internships in Israel.

Ynet has the story:
New two-year internship challenges Israeli law students
While senior lawyers welcome new regulations announced by Justice Minister Shaked, law students complain internship is akin to 'modern slavery.'

"Israeli law students will now have to complete a two-year internship in order to become certified lawyers as part of new regulations announced by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Tuesday.

"The current requirement is of a one-year internship. The new regulations will come into effect for all students starting law studies this fall.

"In her remarks at the annual conference of the Israel Bar Association, Shaked clarified that the process of being admitted to the bar would now take five years including studies.

"I decided to extend the length of the required internship period to two years believing that law students will be much better qualified and prepared to take their bar exam, and will have to show a great deal of dedication in order to become lawyers," Shaked said.

"This will lead to a decline in the number of lawyers, and an increase in their professional expertise," she concluded."

The kidney market in Iran: Russ Roberts interviews Tina Rosenberg (podcast)

This summer, Tina Rosenberg of the NY Times wrote about the Iranian kidney market, which I blogged about here:  Iran's market for kidneys in the NY Times

Now Russ Roberts at EconTalk has a podcast in which he interviews her:Tina Rosenberg on the Kidney Market in Iran

(He starts off by saying that in the podcast he did with me, I mentioned that there was a cash market in Iran, but he hadn't had time to follow up on that...)

Ms. Rosenberg spends some time talking about the fact that Iranian donors seem to feel stigmatized by selling a kidney, and prefer to remain anonymous, sometimes to the extent of not coming in for post surgical care, having given false contact information to the administrators involved.

Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct

Here is the new AAU report on sexual assault and sexual misconduct.

It focuses on non-consensual sexual conduct, and some of the questions reflect evolving notions of (affirmative) consent.

Here's one bit:

"Since you have been a student at [University], has someone had contact with you involving penetration or oral sex without your active, ongoing voluntary agreement? Examples include someone:
 initiating sexual activity despite your refusal
 ignoring your cues to stop or slow down
 went ahead without checking in or while you were still deciding
 otherwise failed to obtain your consent

"Females and those identifying as TGQN were the most likely to be victimized by this type of tactic. For example since enrolling at the IHE, 11.4 percent of undergraduate females and 14.8 percent of undergraduates who identify as TGQN were victimized by this tactic compared to 2.4 percent of males."

"TGQN = Transgender, Genderqueer or non-conforming, questionning or not listed."

eBay is 20

The Guardian has a nice column by John Naughton noticing that eBay is 20 years old this month, and suggesting that one of it's biggest innovations was its early reputation system:

How eBay built a new world on little more than trust--The ratings system introduced by the biggest car boot sale on earth is now used by everyone from Uber to Airbnb

The real estate broker cartel is tough in India

Here's a report of real estate brokers in India roughing up the employees of a company that seeks to help buyers and sellers manage without realtors:
Sign of things to come? Property brokers rough up NoBroker.in CEO and employees
Property brokers in Bengaluru resorted to physical assault to shut NoBroker.in.

"Bengaluru-based online real estate startup NoBroker.in claimed that its office was “attacked” by local agents and brokers on Tuesday. As the name suggests, the startup helps customers to save money paid as brokerage, something which would worry traditional property brokers."

HT: Sangram Kadam

Economists' declaration on universal health coverage

Larry Summers has organized a widely signed open letter supporting universal health coverage as a sensible global development goal. Here's the press release:

267 ECONOMISTS WORLDWIDE AGREE: UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE
18 SEPTEMBER 2015 – A global coalition of 267 economists representing 44 countries is calling on policymakers to prioritize universal health coverage as an essential pillar of economic development. The Economists’ Declaration on Universal Health Coverage, published today in The Lancet medical journal, was convened by The Rockefeller Foundation and led by Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University.

Signatories include Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Kenneth Arrow, Alvin Roth, Vernon Smith and Christopher Pissarides; the current and former chief economists of the World Bank, Kaushik Basu and Justin Yifu Lin; noted health economists Anne Mills and Victor Fuchs; and renowned economic thinkers Thomas Piketty, Linah Mohohlo, Bjørn Lomborg, Tony Atkinson, John Irons and Paul Collier. Economists on every continent are supporting the Declaration.

Launched as global leaders prepare to enact the Sustainable Development Goals – an ambitious agenda for the next 15 years that includes universal health coverage among its targets – the Economists’ Declaration proclaims that ensuring everyone can obtain high quality essential health services without suffering financial hardship is right, smart and affordable.

“Universal health coverage isn’t only the right thing to do – it’s also the economically smart thing to do,” said Lawrence H. Summers. “The data clearly show that health is essential to eradicating extreme poverty and promoting economic growth. I launched this Declaration to urge world leaders to act on that evidence.”

The Economic Case for Universal Health Coverage

The Declaration cites the considerable evidence supporting the signatories’ assertion that all countries have the opportunity to achieve universal health coverage and should prioritize reforms and investments toward it.

• Historic Opportunity: With the right investments to increase availability of today’s health tools and discover, develop and deliver new interventions, the world has an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically reduce preventable maternal, child and infectious disease deaths and achieve a “grand convergence” in health across the world’s population by 2035.
• Cost of Health: 150 million people fall into poverty every year paying for health. The 100+ countries already taking steps toward universal health coverage are demonstrating that it protects families from this risk, fostering more cohesive societies and more productive economies.
• Driving Economic Growth: In the past decade, health improvements were responsible for nearly a quarter of full income growth in low- and middle-income countries. It is estimated that the economic benefits of investing in basic health care will be 10 times greater than the costs.
• Building Resilience: Universal health coverage lessens the impact of shocks on communities. The debilitating effects of Ebola could have been mitigated by building up public health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone at one third the cost of the Ebola response so far.

“With nearly half the world’s population now living in a country advancing toward universal health coverage, the case for universal coverage is strong and growing stronger. There is still work to be done to ensure more equitable access to life-saving services for the poorest and most vulnerable people,” said Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. “The Rockefeller Foundation convened this Declaration by the world’s leading economists to demonstrate the financial benefits and feasibility of universal health coverage. With their resounding support, it is time to invest the resources to make health for all a reality.”

“We are at a juncture of history where the world can afford basic health coverage for all,” saidKaushik Basu, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. “Given economic growth, donor country commitments and new mechanisms to raise local funds, countries, no matter at what stage of development, can provide universal health coverage.”

Health Is an Investment, Not a Cost

More than 100 countries across the development spectrum have begun working toward universal health coverage, increasingly demonstrating its feasibility. The Economists’ Declaration calls for increased domestic funding, donor country commitments and political leadership to advance pro-poor reforms toward universal health coverage.

“Healthy people are the engine of a country’s economic growth. Universal health coverage ensures that engine is constantly fueled,” said Linah Mohohlo, the Governor of the Bank of Botswana. “Our ability to build the planet we deserve depends on governments and global leaders stepping up to deliver on the promise of health for all people.”

“As the gap between rich and poor keeps growing, we must prioritize policies that work to counter inequality,” said Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University. “Universal health coverage does just that, ensuring everyone has access to health care, without which they cannot succeed, and strengthening economies as a result.”
*************
Here's the full text of the letter.

Matching pets to homes: HBS celebrates Christine Exley and Wagaroo

HBS Working Knowledge interviews Christine Exley about Wagaroo, a marketplace for "rehoming" dogs who need a home:

Can Applied Economics Save Homeless Puppies?
"At a startup she co-founded while pursuing a doctorate in economics, Christine L. Exley is rescuing dogs with principles of market design"

"“Instead of people having to give their dog to the shelter, we can help them skip the shelter and directly rehome their dog into a new loving family,” says Exley, noting that the program also helps families follow best practices about rehoming their dogs via financial and informational resources, periodic tip emails, and individualized consultations where appropriate.
...
"For Exley and Battles, establishing safety meant preventing unethical breeders from posing as families needing to rehome their dogs. Wagaroo deals with that issue by not allowing owners in the Family2Family program to receive fees for their dogs. The logic: Puppy mills are in it for the money, which discourages them from posting on Wagaroo.

Some people don’t want pets to go to a family not willing to pay for it, and are hesitant to give their dogs away for free. Wagaroo agrees with this concern, Exley says, and thus encourages families to charge a different kind of rehoming fee that goes to Wagaroo, rather than to the previous owner. In return, Wagaroo uses the fee to help other dogs find homes and to support organizational operating costs."

My earlier posts about Wagaroo can be found here.

Two and a half talks at U of Iowa

I'll be giving Thursday and Friday talks at the University of Iowa, on Thursday at the medical school (to transplant surgeons in the morning, and a more public talk in the afternoon), and on Friday a public talk at the Business School.

Here are some announcements, if you're on campus...

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

Distinguished Biomedical Scholar Lecture - Alvin Roth, PhD

Thursday, September 17 at 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Medical Education Research Facility, 1110A 375 Newton Road, Iowa City, Iowa

Alvin Roth, PhD, recipient of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University, will give a presentation on "Market Design and Medical Marketplaces" on September 17, 4:00-5:00 p.m. in the Prem Sahai Auditorium (1110 MERF). This event is co-sponsored by the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the Tippie College of Business Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorship.
***************

Ida Cordelia Beam Lecture: Nobel Laureate Al Roth

Friday, September 18 at 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Pappajohn Business Building, Room S401 21 East Market Street, Iowa City, Iowa

Alvin Roth, Ph.D., is the McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and is one of the world’s leading experts in the fields of market design and game theory. He was the co-recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics. He will speak on "Who Gets What and Why – Market Design and Marketplaces."

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

And here is a story from The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette:

Nobel Prize winning economist to speak at University of Iowa
Economist to talk about who gets what

It ran on Saturday in this set of headlines:

Police make arrest in 2014 Cedar Rapids double homicide

Iowa City man convicted of stabbing wife with broken piece of glass  

Nobel Prize winning economist to speak at University of Iowa

Scalping tickets to see the Pope

The NY Times has the story: After Lottery in New York to See Pope Francis, Some Winners Scalp Tickets Online

"Tickets to the Central Park procession have been offered on eBay from $200 to $400.

The mayor’s office vowed on Friday to crack down on online scalpers, and officials said that eBay and Craigslist had been quick to remove the ads at the city’s request.

“The city, along with the United States Secret Service, are monitoring ticket sales sites to remove tickets that are for sale,” said Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
...
"Roman Catholic Church officials have been predictably unhappy that some are seeking to capitalize off the chance to glimpse the pope.

“Papal tickets are never intended to be sold,” said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in a statement, adding that it had asked eBay and Craigslist to remove the ads. “Scalping of tickets to papal events is shameful and reprehensible.”

New discussions of assisted suicide/death with dignity

California Assembly approves right-to-die legislation
"Ater nearly a quarter-century of efforts in California to afford terminally ill patients the right to end their lives with a doctor’s help, state lawmakers and the governor may be on the verge of granting the dying that authority.

The state Assembly on Wednesday passed a bill that would allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to the terminally sick. The End of Life Option Act, which the Catholic Church and others oppose, awaits final approval by the Senate -- three months after that chamber passed a similar bill by a thin margin.

The fate of the legislation is likely to rest with Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student who has yet to articulate his position on the measure. Brown has expressed concern about it, based more on legislative procedure than his own beliefs."

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California Legislature Approves Assisted Suicide
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a landmark victory for supporters of assisted suicide, the California State Legislature on Friday gave final approval to a bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill people end their own lives.

Four states — Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont — already allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to some patients. The California bill, which passed Friday in the State Senate by a vote of 23-14, will now go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who will roughly triple access to doctor-assisted suicide across the country if he signs it. Mr. Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian, has given little indication of his intentions.

But leaders of the “death with dignity” movement said they hoped the passage of the California law could be a turning point in efforts to expand options for suffering patients at the ends of their lives.

“It allows for individual liberty and freedom, freedom of choice,” said Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, who compared the issue to gay marriage. “We’re doing something not only right today but profoundly important.”

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In the NY Times a discussion of whether terminal illness is the only reason:
Helping a Suicide When the End Isn’t Near

Kieran Healy on Nuance in Sociology

In market design, we often have to think about how much detail is useful, for what purposes, and how much abstraction remains useful for theoretical models intended to inform detailed practice.

Something similar is discussed in a delightful paper by Kieran Healy on how much and what kind of nuance sociologists should embrace for different purposes in constructing social theories.

His paper and abstract set the stage, but don't do justice to the nuance in his argument:

Fuck Nuance
Kieran Healy
Duke University

Abstract: "Seriously, fuck it."

Here are some quotable quotes...

"often it is easier to embrace complexity than cut through it...

"This sort of nuance is fundamentally anti-theoretical. It blocks the process of abstraction that theory depends on.
...
" three nuance traps. First is the ever more detailed, merely empirical description of the world. This is the nuance of the fine-grain. It is a rejection of theory masquerading as increased applicability or range. Second is the ever more extensive expansion of some theoretical system in a way that effectively closes it offš from rebuttal or disconfirmation by anything in the world. This is the nuance of the conceptual framework. It is an evasion of the demand that a theory be refutable. And third is the insinuation that your sensitivity to nuance is a  manifestation of one’s distinctive (oftŸen metaphorically expressed and at times seemingly ineffšable) ability to grasp and express the richness, texture, and žflow of social reality itself. is is the nuance of the connoisseur. It is mostly a species of self-congratulatory symbolic violence.

...

"Demands for more nuance actively inhibit the process of abstraction that good theory depends on.

...

"Connoisseurs call for the contemplation of complexity almost for its own sake, or remind everyone that things are more subtle than they seem, or than you just said. The  attractive thing about this move is that it is literally always available to the person who wants to make it. Theory is founded on abstraction, abstraction means throwing away detail for the sake of a bit of generality, and so things are always “more complicated than that”—for any value of “that”. Connoisseurship gets its aesthetic bite, and a little kick of symbolic violence, from the easy insinuation that the person trying to simplify things is, sadly, a bit less sophisticated a thinker than the person pointing out that things are more complicated

...

"it is traditional in Sociology to deride the way Economists work, depending as they do on an extremely pared-down model of human action. There is no less nuanced a character than Homo Economicus. While it is easy to snipe at theory on this basis, the strategy of assuming a can opener (as the old desert-island joke goes) turns out to be an unreasonably šeffective way of generating some powerful ideas.

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The paper contains some interesting facts about sociology as it is practiced (e.g. I didn't know that Foucault appreciated Becker)...

Healy has a blog post explaining the title of the paper here.

Julian Jamison on the long history of randomized control trials, in the field and in the lab

A Controlled History of Randomized Assignment in Social Science*
Julian C. Jamison†
August 2015
Abstract:
Although the concept of randomized assignment in order to control for extraneous factors reaches back hundreds of years, the first known empirical use occurred in 1884 in an experiment on psychophysics by CS Peirce. Meanwhile, the first use of a control group in order to test the effect of an intervention occurred in medicine, informally in 1768 and then more carefully (but without randomization) in 1898. Remarkably, the combination of the two – a randomized control trial – was first instantiated in four different domains between 1924 and 1931, likely independently. These fields were agricultural science (with the celebrated contributions of RA Fisher); clinical medicine; educational psychology; and perhaps most surprisingly political science, in a voting experiment by HF Gosnell. Although this approach did not immediately become popular within social science broadly, there was a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s for both social policy experiments and formal laboratory experiments
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update: link fixed...

Ethical issues concerning living donors: a European conference

ELPAT (it stands for Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Organ Transplantation) is organizing a conference on issues involving (chiefly) non-directed anonymous kidney donation in Brussels:

	ELPAT Specialty Update Symposium Living donor kidney exchange: Medical, Ethical, Legal, and Psychological Issues
Sunday, 13 September, 09:00 - 12:50
Moderated by: Annette Lennerling, Gothenburg, Sweden and Willem Weimar, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
	Antonia Cronin: "Is it unethical for doctors to encourage healthy adults to donate a kidney to a stranger" Antonia Cronin is Consultant Nephrologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the MRC Centre for Transplantation, King's College, London. She is chair of the British Transplantation Society Ethics Committee and appointed member of the UK Donation Ethics Committee. Her presentation will examine the legitimacy of allowing individuals to donate an organ to a stranger and explore the circumstances in which encouraging such a form of donation may be justified.
	Willij Zuidema: "Unspecified donors and domino-paired chains" Willij Zuidema is working at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. For years she is involved in the alternative living donation programs. Especially the program of the unspecified donors has her interest. The living donation program in Rotterdam is one of the largest in Europe with an expertise in unspecified donors and domino-paired chains. She will present the data and logistics of the unspecified donations and domino-paired transplants.
	Mihaela Frunza: "Acceptability of public solicitation, the role of social media" Mihaela Frunza is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. She will present a presentation where public solicitation of organs is critically assessed from a legal, moral, and practical perspective. Several recommendations are discussed that aim at maximizing the organ donor pool while safeguarding the interests of potential living donors.
	Leonie Lopp: "The legal debate on anonymous donation" Leonie Lopp studied law in Münster, Germany. Afterwards, she wrote her doctoral thesis with the title "Regulations regarding Living Organ Donation in Europe - Possibilities of Harmonisation". She will today present the results of comparing the legal regulations on living organ donation in Europe by focusing on anonymous living organ donation.
	Hannah Maple: "Psychological outcomes after unspecified donation" Hannah Maple is a trainee Renal Transplant surgeon in London, United Kingdom. She will present an overview of the psychosocial issues pertinent to unspecified donation. Additionally she will discuss the results of her UK based study into psychosocial outcomes after unspecified donation.
	Linda Wright: "Ethical and practical issues of breaking anonymity" Linda Wright conducts research on transplantation ethics with the Canadian National Transplant Research Programme in Toronto, Canada. She will discuss the experience of contact between anonymous living donors and their recipients and recommend a strategy to address this, in the absence of evidence to support best practice.