New school choice system in San Francisco

Board Approves New Student Assignment System for San Francisco Schools (now here)

Most of the last minute discussion was about what priorities different kinds of students will have at different kinds of schools. That is something that is likely to be adjusted from year to year. But the nice thing is that the underlying choice architecture will make it safe for parents to state their true preferences however the priorities are adjusted.

From the press release: "The choice algorithm was designed with the help of a volunteer team of market design experts who have previously been involved in designing choice algorithms for school choice in Boston and New York City. Volunteers from four prominent universities contributed to the effort, including Clayton Featherstone and Muriel Niederle of Stanford University, Atila Abdulkadiroglu of Duke University, Parag Pathak of MIT, and Alvin Roth of Harvard.
“We are pleased that the district has decided to adopt a choice architecture that makes it safe for parents to concentrate their effort on determining which schools they prefer, with confidence that they won’t hurt their chances by listing their preferences truthfully,” said Niederle and Featherstone, the Stanford research team."

Here are Rachel Norton's comments (she's a school board member with a blog), and here's the story from the SF Chronicle. Here are some of my recent posts on school choice; many of the recent ones tell the SF story as it unfolded.

Now, on to implementation.

Peter Lorentzen interviews me about market design (podcast)

 Peter Lorentzen interviews me about market design, and my book Who Gets What and Why. (We have an interesting conversation on market design and my career, not closely related to the book...)

"In our interview, we range far beyond the examples from the book to discuss the implications of his work for the design of tech’s market-making “platform” businesses like Airbnb, Amazon, Lyft, or Uber, the challenges he faces when countries or people view some kinds of transactions as “repugnant” or morally unacceptable, and the reasons why San Francisco’s school district (unlike Boston’s or New York’s) chose not to implement the un-gameable school choice plan his team devised for them.

"Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics."

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Matching and Market Design at INFORMS in San Francisco, Sunday November 9

There's a lot of market design at the INFORMS annual meeting, Nov 9-12.

On Sunday I'll start the day off with a talk from  10-10:50 called
"Market Design and the Economist as Engineer."

That will be followed by a cluster of talks organized by Itai Ashlagi called (embarrassingly)
Matching and Market Design (in honor of Al Roth), consisting of the following sessions

Cluster :	Matching and Market Design (in honor of Al Roth)
Session Information		: Sunday Nov 09, 11:00 - 12:30
Title:	Empirical Market Design
Chair:	Ramesh Johari,Stanford University,
Abstract Details
Title:	Quality Externalities and the Limits of Reputation in Two-Sided Markets
	Presenting Author:	Steve Tadelis,Professor, UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business, 2220 Piedmont Ave, Berkeley, United States of America, stadelis@haas.berkeley.edu
	Co-Author:	Chris Nosko,Booth School of Business, University Of Chicago, Chicago, United States of America, cnosko@chicagobooth.edu
Abstract:		Using data from eBay, we argue that platforms can mitigate externalities by actively screening sellers and promoting the prominence of better quality sellers. Exploiting the bias in feedback, we create a measure of seller quality and demonstrate the benefits of our approach through a controlled experiment that prioritizes better quality sellers to a random subset of buyers. .
Title:	On the Near Impossibility of Measuring the Returns to Advertising
	Presenting Author:	Randall Lewis,Economic Research Scientist, Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View Ca 94043, United States of America, randall@econinformatics.com
	Co-Author:	Justin Rao,Economic Research Scientist, Microsoft Research, New York City NY, United States of America, Justin.Rao@microsoft.com
Abstract:		Firms have a hard time measuring the causal impact of advertising expenditures on profit. In twenty-five online field experiments, individual-level sales are volatile relative to the per capita cost of a campaign--a small impact on a noisy dependent variable can generate positive returns. Experiments can need more than ten million person-weeks. Further, small selection biases can severely bias observational estimates. Weak informational feedback and technological advances shape ad marketplaces.
Title:	Corporate Prediction Markets: Evidence from Google, Ford, and Firm X
	Presenting Author:	Bo Cowgill,UC Berkeley, 1931 Diamond St Apt 3, SAN FRANCISCO Ca 94131, United States of America, bo.cowgill@gmail.com
	Co-Author:	Eric Zitezwitz,Dartmouth College, 6106 Rockefeller Hall, Hanover NH, United States of America, zitzewitz@dartmouth.edu
Abstract:		We examine data from prediction markets run by Google, Ford and Firm X (a large private materials company). Despite theoretically adverse conditions, we find these markets are relatively efficient, and improve upon the forecasts of experts at all three firms by as much as a 25% reduction in MSE. The most notable inefficiency is an optimism bias in the markets at Google and Ford. The inefficiencies that do exist become smaller over time for reasons we document.
Title:	At What Quality and What Price? Inducing Separating Equilibria as a Market Design Problem
	Presenting Author:	John Horton,Professor, NYU Stern School of Business, Kaufman Management Center, 44 West Fourth St, 8-81, New York NY 10012, United States of America, john.joseph.horton@gmail.com
	Co-Author:	Ramesh Johari,Stanford University, Huang 311, Stanford, United States of America, ramesh.johari@stanford.edu
Abstract:		A tool to promote revelation of buyers' price/quality preferences was experimentally introduced into an online labor market. In the treatment cells of the experiment, upon posting a job, buyers chose what price/quality level they were seeking from sellers. We find that buyers readily reveal their preferences and that this revelation---which itself was experimentally manipulated---strongly induced seller-side sorting.

Title:	******** Matching and Market Design
Chair:	Jacob Leshno,Columbia University,
Abstract Details
Title:	Matching in Networks
	Presenting Author:	Michael Ostrovsky,Associate Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 655 Knight Way, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, ostrovsky@stanford.edu
Abstract:		In this talk, I will present results on the existence and properties of stable outcomes in trading networks.
Title:	Matching with Peers in School Choice
	Presenting Author:	Atila Abdulkadiroglu,Professor, Duke University, 213 Social Sciences Building, Durham NC 27708, United States of America, atila.abdulkadiroglu@duke.edu
Abstract:		We develop a theory for matching of students to schools with peers and study various matching mechanisms with field data.
Title:	Endogenous preferences and the role of the mechanism in school choice
	Presenting Author:	Estelle Cantillon,Senior Research Fellow, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ECARES), 50, av FD Roosevelt, CP 114, Brussels 1050, Belgium, Estelle.Cantillon@ulb.ac.be
Abstract:		We consider a school choice model where preferences over schools are endogenous because students care about the quality of their peers. In such a setting, the mechanism affects the degree of preference polarization. We show how mechanisms can be designed to reduce polarization and improve the distribution of ranks of assigned schools in students’ preferences. A policy change in the city of Ghent (Belgium) provides a test for the predictions of the theory.
Title:	Evidence of Strategic Behavior in Hospital Claims Reporting
	Presenting Author:	Hamsa Bastani,Stanford University, Stanford, Stanford, United States of America, hsridhar@stanford.edu
	Co-Author:	Mohsen Bayati,Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, bayati@gsb.stanford.edu
		Joel Goh,joelgoh@stanford.edu
		Stefanos Zenios,Charles A. Holloway Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology and Professor of Health Care Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 655 Knight Way, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, stefzen@GSB.Stanford.Edu
Abstract:		We provide evidence from Medicare claims data that hospitals engage in upcoding behavior when reporting hospital-acquired infections that are no longer reimbursed by Medicare. In particular, we show that hospitals sometimes mark a hospital-acquired infection as present-on-admission, presumably in order to collect greater reimbursement.

*******

Title:	Matching Markets
Chair:	Yash Kanoria,Columbia Business School,
Abstract Details
Title:	Stable Matching in Large Economies
	Presenting Author:	Fuhito Kojima,Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford CA 943055007, United States of America, fkojima@stanford.edu
Abstract:		Complementarities of preferences have been known to jeopardize stability of two-sided matching markets, yet they are a pervasive feature in many matching markets. In large markets, we demonstrate that if each firm's choice changes continuously as the set of available workers changes, then there exists a stable matching even if firm preferences exhibit complementarity. Building on this result, we show that there exists an approximately stable matching in any large finite economy.
Title:	The Prior-Independence Approach
	Presenting Author:	Inbal Talgam-Cohen,PhD Candidate, Stanford University, 86 Hulme Ct, Apt 108, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, italgam@stanford.edu
	Co-Author:	Tim Roughgarden,Stanford, 353 Serra Street, Stanford, United States of America, tim@cs.stanford.edu
Abstract:		The matching literature has recently begun to consider priors on agents’ utilities. One of the barriers to adopting this potentially very fruitful approach is that priors add significant informational assumptions to the model. We survey a successful alternative approach from mechanism design called prior independence, which alleviates such assumptions while still reaping most benefits. We discuss both sampling-based methods and methods based on ensuring sufficient competition in the market.
Title:	The structure of the core in assignment markets
	Presenting Author:	Yash Kanoria,Columbia Business School, 404 Uris Hall, New York NY 10027, United States of America, ykanoria@columbia.edu
	Co-Author:	Daniela Saban,Columbia University, Uris Hall, 4I, New York, United States of America, dhs2131@columbia.edu
		Jay Sethuraman,Columbia University, IEOR Department, New York, United States of America, jay@ieor.columbia.edu
Abstract:		Assignment markets (Shapley & Shubik 1971) involve matching with transfers, as in labor markets and housing markets. We consider a two-sided assignment market with agent types and stochastic structure similar to models used in empirical studies. Each agent has a randomly drawn "productivity" associated with each type on the other side. We characterize how the structure of the core, i.e., the set of stable outcomes, is determined by market characteristics.

SF School Board Meeting, Feb 17: new choice system

At the latest public meeting of the San Francisco Board of Education (last night, Wednesday, Feb. 17), the commissioners and the public were engaged in a detailed discussion of the algorithms and priorities being proposed for the new school choice system.

Muriel Niederle explains and answers questions about the new Assignment with Transfers school choice plans being proposed (with variations for elementary school, middle school, and high schools). She comes on just after minute 36 of this video of the 3 hour meeting, and her presentation, interspersed with questions and answers, continues for a little over an hour (to minute 1:39), although she's back answering questions at the end again. Also presenting the general plan and answering questions is Orla O'Keefe, the SFUSD official leading the effort to design the new school choice system.

There's something very encouraging about seeing the public policy discussion focusing on choice systems that are non-wasteful (Pareto efficient, for you economists), strategically simple for parents (so that truthful preference revelation is a dominant strategy), and flexible (so that the school board can tweak the system in years to come without harming the first two properties). The 'political' issues are the priorities that different children have at different schools.

Another attractive aspect of the proposal (discussed by Ms. O'Keefe following Muriel's presentation) is that data would be collected each year for continual monitoring of how the choice and assignment system is working.

The discussion touches on a number of interesting questions. (Even if the algorithm makes truthful preference revelation the best strategy, there are still issues of checking e.g. addresses in any system in which priorities at schools depend on home address...). But it looks like SF is well launched on adopting a sensible, workable, well thought out and flexible framework.

Choosing schools (in NYC and SF)

I've written elswhere about the school choice process for public schools in San Francisco and for high schools in New York City. But, regardless of whether the process is a good one or not, the problem facing parents who have to decide how much they like each school can be a tough one, especially if there are a lot of schools.

Two articles help you feel the pain:

New Plan on School Selection, but Still Discontent discusses San Francisco, and
It’s a nightmare to apply for high schools in city discusses New York.

Some more background information here.

HT: Parag Pathak

Strategy-proofness and strategy sets: residency fraud in school choice

When we speak of strategy-proofness in the context of school choice, we are most often speaking about whether it is safe for parents to reveal their true preferences when asked to submit a rank ordering of possible school assignments. Of course, parents have other private information as well, and they may have incentives to misprepresent that also.

I'm reminded of this by the fact that the San Francisco Unified School District has recently sent a letter to the address of record to each student regarding an Amnesty Period for Residency Fraud.
(It includes the line "This letter is directed to families that have committed residency fraud. Parents/Guardians who have never submitted false residency information to the District may disregard this letter.")

Joel Klein on school choice

Joel Klein, who was Chancellor of NYC schools when school choice was introduced in New York City high schools, writes in the Daily News: Harness the power of school choice: Competition works in education, too

Of course, details matter: see yesterday's post on an effort that didn't quite work out as planned, in San Francisco. Yesterday's post also has links to some school choice efforts that seem quite promising, however.

Deferred rejection: longer college admission wait lists

College waiting lists are a bit of a misnomer--they aren't ordered lists, they are more like waiting pools from which candidates can be drawn if the yield from regular admissions falls short.

The WSJ has the story:
College Wait Lists Are Ballooning as Schools Struggle to Predict Enrollment
The chance of getting off the wait list has plummeted at many schools as the pool has expanded

"As hundreds of thousands of high-school seniors face a May 1 deadline to put down deposits at their college of choice, many still face uncertainty over where they will end up. Their futures are clouded by the schools’ use of wait lists to make sure they have the right number, and type, of students come fall.

"The University of Virginia increased the number of applicants invited onto wait lists by 68% between 2015 and 2017. At Lehigh University, that figure rose by 54%. And at Ohio State University, it more than tripled.
...
"[Carnegie Mellon University], with a target of 1,550 freshmen, offered wait-list spots to just over 5,000 applicants this year.

"“You can take stock and ‘fix’ or refine the class by gender, income, geography, major or other variables,” said Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School. “A large waiting list gives you greater flexibility in filling these gaps.”

"This year, applications to Carnegie Mellon rose 19%. With more students accepting its offers of admission, it couldn’t risk over-enrolling. The school admitted 500 fewer students and expects to go to some of its wait lists to make sure each undergraduate program meets enrollment goals, and that there is a good mix of students, including enough aspiring English majors or kids from South Dakota. The school can also take into account the financial situations of wait-listed candidates."

School choice in SF moves forward

Yesterday Muriel Niederle and Clayton Featherstone were among the presenters to the San Francisco Board of Education, speaking about possible designs for a new school choice system there. It seems that they are well on the way to a good outcome.

One of the Board members, Rachel Norton, has a blog on which she posted before and after accounts of the meeting:
Tonight’s student assignment meeting should be interesting!
Recap: Closing in on a student assignment policy

Here is a video of the whole meeting (but you can navigate a bit so you don't have to watch the full 3 hours: Muriel's testimony, from her slide presentation through answering of questions from the board is from 1:09 to 2:09 on the video).

For the technically inclined, papers about our prior work on school choice systems in NYC and Boston are here.

It has been mentioned in the SF discussions that our team of market designers has worked on a number of problems aside from school choice, so here are background links on some of them for SF readers who are interested:
National Resident Matching Program and related medical labor markets
Gastroenterologists, Orthopaedic surgeons
Kidney Exchange
AEA market for new economists

Matching and Market Design at INFORMS in San Francisco, Monday, Nov 10

More matching and market design today:

Cluster :	Auctions
Session Information		: Monday Nov 10, 13:30 - 15:00
Title:	Analysis of Matching Markets
Chair:	Thayer Morrill,NC State University, NC, thayer_morrill@ncsu.edu
Abstract Details
Title:	New Algorithms for Fairness and Efficiency in Course Allocation
	Presenting Author:	Hoda Atef Yekta,PhD Candidate, University of Connecticut, School of Business, 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041, Storrs CT 06269, United States of America, Hoda.AtefYekta@business.uconn.edu
	Co-Author:	Robert Day,University of Connecticut, 2100 Hillside Road, U-1041, Storrs CT, United States of America, Bob.Day@business.uconn.edu
Abstract:		This research formulates the course allocation problem as a multi objective mathematical model considering both efficiency and measures of fairness. Results of four proposed heuristic algorithms are compared with existing mechanisms and we show that our new algorithms can improve both efficiency and fairness of the results.
Title:	Internally Stable Matchings and Exchanges
	Presenting Author:	Yicheng Liu,liuyicheng1991@hotmail.com
	Co-Author:	Pingzhong Tang,Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, kenshinping@gmail.com
Abstract:		We propose an alternative notion of stability for matchings and exchanges, coined internal stability, which only requires stability among matched agents. For internal stability, we analyze the social welfare bounds and computational complexity. Our results indicate that internal stability addresses both the social welfare and computational difficulties associated with traditional stability.
Title:	The Secure Boston Mechanism
	Presenting Author:	Thayer Morrill,NC State University, NC, thayer_morrill@ncsu.edu
	Co-Author:	Umut Dur,umutdur@gmail.com
		Robert Hammond,robert_hammond@ncsu.edu
Abstract:		We introduce a new algorithm that is a hybrid between the Boston and Deferred Acceptance algorithm. While not strategy-proof, this ``secure’’ Boston algorithm significantly reduces the incentive for students to strategically manipulate their reported preferences while maintaining the desirable feature of the Boston mechanism of assigning as many students as feasible to their favorite school. We run an experiment in order to test the performance of our new assignment procedure.
Title:	Two-sided Matching with Incomplete Information
	Presenting Author:	Sushil Bikhchandani,UCLA Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles CA, United States of America, sushil.bikhchandani@anderson.ucla.edu
Abstract:		Stability in a two-sided matching model with non-transferrable utility (NTU), interdependent preferences, and one-sided incomplete information is investigated. The notion of incomplete-information stability used here is similar to that of Liu et al. (2014). With anonymous preferences, all strictly individually-rational matchings are incomplete-information stable. An ex post incentive-compatible mechanism exists for this model. Extensions to two-sided incomplete information are investigated.

Cluster :	Applied Probability Society
Session Information		: Monday Nov 10, 08:00 - 09:30
Title:	Matching in Markets
Chair:	Ciamac Moallemi,Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, Uris 416, New York NY 10027, United States of America, ciamac@gsb.columbia.edu
Co-Chair:	Costis Maglaras,Columbia Business School, New York NY, United States of America, cm479@columbia.edu
Abstract Details
Title:	Dynamic Matching Markets with an Application in Residential Real Estate
	Presenting Author:	Hua Zheng,Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, Uris 4S, New York NY 10027, United States of America, hzheng14@gsb.columbia.edu
	Co-Author:	Costis Maglaras,Columbia Business School, New York NY, United States of America, cm479@columbia.edu
		Ciamac Moallemi,Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, Uris 416, New York NY 10027, United States of America, ciamac@gsb.columbia.edu
Abstract:		We study a dynamic microstructure model of a dynamic market where buyers and sellers arrive stochastically over time, and are heterogeneous with respect to their product characteristics and preferences and their idiosyncratic financial information. We analyze its dynamics, market depth, and buyer/seller bidding strategies. The motivating application stems from residential real estate.
Title:	Optimal Allocation without Money: An Engineering Approach
	Presenting Author:	Itai Ashlagi,MIT, 100 Main st., Cambridge MA, United States of America, iashlagi@mit.edu
	Co-Author:	Peng Shi,MIT, 70 Pacific St, Apt. 348C, Cambridge MA 02139, United States of America, pengshi@mit.edu
Abstract:		We study the allocation of heterogeneous services to agents without monetary transfers under incomplete information. The social planner's goal is to maximize a possibly complex public objective. We take an ``engineering'' approach, in which we solve a large market approximation, and convert the solution into a feasible finite market mechanism that still yields good results. We apply this framework to real data from Boston to design a mechanism that assigns students to public schools.
Title:	Managing Congestion in Dynamic Matching Markets
	Presenting Author:	Nick Arnosti,Stanford University, Stanford CA, United States of America, narnosti@stanford.edu
	Co-Author:	Ramesh Johari,Stanford University, Huang 311, Stanford CA, United States of America, ramesh.johari@stanford.edu
		Yash Kanoria,Columbia Business School, 404 Uris Hall, New York NY 10027, United States of America, ykanoria@columbia.edu
Abstract:		It is often costly for agents in matching markets to determine whether potential partners are interested in forming a match. This creates friction in the marketplace, lowering welfare for all participants. We use a dynamic model to quantitatively study this effect. We demonstrate that by reducing visibility, the market operator may benefit both sides of the market. Somewhat counter-intuitively, benefits of showing fewer sellers to each buyer are greatest when there is a shortage of sellers.

Cluster :	Auctions
Session Information		: Monday Nov 10, 16:30 - 18:00
Title:	Dynamic Matching Markets
Chair:	John Dickerson,CMU, 9219 Gates-Hillman Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213, United States of America, dickerson@cs.cmu.edu
Abstract Details
Title:	Dynamic Matching Using Approximate Dynamic Programming
	Presenting Author:	Nikhil Bhat,Columbia University, nbhat15@gsb.columbia.edu
	Co-Author:	Ciamac Moallemi,Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, Uris 416, New York NY 10027, United States of America, ciamac@gsb.columbia.edu
Abstract:		We provide tractable algorithms for a large number of challenging dynamic decision making problems such as 1) Allocation of cadaveric kidneys to patients, 2) Matching ads with impressions, 3) Cyclic paired transfer of kidneys, by analyzing them using a general model. Our policies are easy to compute and interpret, and further come with approximation guarantees. With simulation experiments on kidney allocation, we show that we obtain gain over existing algorithms in literature.
Title:	Dynamic Matching Market Design
	Presenting Author:	Mohammad Akbarpour,Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, 265F, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, mohamwad@stanford.edu
	Co-Author:	Shengwu Li,Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, 265B, Stanford CA 94305, United States of America, shengwu@stanford.edu
		Shayan Oveis Gharan,UC Berkeley, Berkeley Ca 94105, United States of America, oveisgharan@berkeley.edu
Abstract:		We show that, in dynamic matching markets, waiting to thicken the market can be substantially more important than increasing the speed of transactions. In particular, simple local algorithms that wait to thicken the market can perform very close to optimal algorithms. We prove our claims by analyzing a simple but illuminating model of dynamic matching in networked markets where agents arrive and depart stochastically.
Title:	The Roles of Common and Private Information in Two-Sided Matching with Interviews
	Presenting Author:	Sanmay Das,Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis, sanmay@seas.wustl.edu
	Co-Author:	Zhuoshu Li,Washington Univ. in St. Louis, One Brookings Dr, CB 1045, Saint Louis MO 63130, United States of America, zhuoshuli@wustl.edu
Abstract:		We consider two sided matching markets where employers have a fixed budget for the number of applicants they may interview. Employers receive noisy signals of how good each applicant is, and these signals include common and private components. We analyze how the strengths of these two components affect matching outcomes (both differentially across different quality candidates, and in the aggregate number of matches) when decisions about whom to interview are strategic.
Title:	FutureMatch: Learning to Match in Dynamic Environments
	Presenting Author:	John Dickerson,CMU, 9219 Gates-Hillman Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213, United States of America, dickerson@cs.cmu.edu
	Co-Author:	Tuomas Sandholm,Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15213, United States of America, sandholm@cs.cmu.edu
Abstract:		Kidney exchange, an innovation where willing but incompatible donor-patient pairs can exchange organs, is inherently dynamic. We present FutureMatch, an empirical framework for learning to match in a general dynamic model. We validate it on real data. Not only does dynamic matching result in more expected transplants than myopic, but even dynamic matching under economically inefficient (equitable) objectives can result in significant increases in social welfare over efficient myopic matching.

Surgery Grand Rounds at UCSF. "Kidneys and Controversies: Kidney Exchange Within and Across Borders" Oct 21 (7am PST)

 Tomorrow at dawn I'll give a seminar to the surgeons at UCSF, about kidney exchange, and the controversies it has overcome, and is overcoming.

Surgery Grand Rounds | Kidneys and Controversies: Kidney Exchange Within and Across Borders

Date: October 21, 2020 Time: 7:00am-8:00am Place: Webinar

Rishwain Visiting Speaker: Alvin E. Roth, PhD

Al Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. He shared the 2012 Nobel memorial prize in Economics. His research interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and market design. In the 1990’s he directed the redesign of the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) and currently is a member of the Board of Directors. He has been involved in the design and organization of kidney exchange, which helps incompatible patient-donor pairs find life-saving compatible kidneys for transplantation. He is on the Advisory Board of the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC). His work on kidney transplantation led him to become interested in repugnant transactions, and more generally how markets, and bans on markets, gain or fail to gain social support.

The University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.  CME Course MGR21045

UCSF designates this live activity for a maximum of 43 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

*The above credit is inclusive of credit for all Fiscal Year 2020-2021 Department of Surgery Grand Rounds.

Disclosure declaration – No one in a position to control the content of this activity has a relationship with an ACCME-defined commercial interest. Planners  Wen Shen, MD, Julie Ann Sosa, MD, MA, Lygia Stewart, MD, and Ryutaro Hirose, MD, have stated that they have no relationships to disclose. Speaker Roth has stated that he has no relevant relationships to disclose.

This activity is supported by the Department of Surgery’s Howard Naffziger Endowment Fund.

Join Webinar: https://ucsf.zoom.us/j/252447171?pwd=MWt0bG9vTjBSZEo1UnpidXRVWWU2UT09 

What do policy makers want from a market design? And what would be the consequences of giving it to them? Clayton Featherstone on rank efficiency.

A surprising variety of allocation mechanisms, such as those used for school choice, ask participants to rank-order the alternatives; i.e. to indicate their first choice, second, third, and so forth. Not surprisingly, one thing that policy makers want to know about any proposed mechanism is how many people will receive their first choice, second, third, and so on.

Clayton Featherstone is a market designer who already has an unusual amount of experience in designing and implementing choice mechanisms. (If you recently got an assignment from Teach for America, or were assigned to a country for your global immersion requirement at HBS, you've benefited from his work.) His job market paper is an investigation of the properties of "rank efficient" mechanisms, which are designed to produce outcomes whose distribution of ranks can't be stochastically dominated:
Rank Efficiency: Investigating a Widespread Ordinal Welfare Criterion 

 Here's the Abstract: "Many institutions that allocate scarce goods based on rank-order preferences gauge the success of their assignments by looking at rank distributions, that is, at how many participants get their first choice, how many get their second choice, and so on. For example, San Francisco Unified School District, Teach for America, and Harvard Business School all evaluate assignments in this way. Preferences over rank distributions capture the practical (but non-Paretian) intuition that hurting one agent to help ten might be desirable. Motivated by this, call an assignment rank efficient if its rank distribution cannot feasibly be stochastically dominated. Rank efficient mechanisms are simple linear programs that can be solved either by a computer or through a sequential improvement process where at each step, the policy-maker executes a potentially non-Pareto-improving trade cycle. Both methods are used in the field. Preference data from Featherstone and Roth (2011)'s study of a strategy-proof match shows that if agents were to truthfully reveal their preferences, a rank efficient mechanism could significantly outperform alternatives like random serial dictatorship and the probabilistic serial mechanism. Rank efficiency also dovetails nicely with previous literature: it is a refinement of ordinal efficiency (and hence of ex post efficiency). Although rank efficiency is theoretically incompatible with strategy-proofness, rank efficient mechanisms can admit a truth-telling equilibrium in low information environments. Finally, a competitive equilibrium mechanism like that of Hylland and Zeckhauser (1979) generates a straightforward generalization of rank efficiency and sheds light on how rank efficiency interfaces with fairness considerations."

Clayton’s paper also solves an empirical puzzle about those matching mechanisms that we see “in the wild”. The theory literature has paid a good deal of attention to ordinally efficient mechanisms, as first described by Bogomolnaia and Moulin, who showed that ordinal efficiency can be obtained through a class of “simultaneous eating” mechanisms. But, despite the appeal of ordinal efficiency, no one has ever reported that such mechanisms have been observed in use. Clayton shows that a class of linear programming mechanisms  and an equivalent class of incremental improvement mechanisms that we do observe in practice produce rank efficient outcomes. So, he shows, there are ordinally efficient mechanisms in use; just not those that were previously known to produce ordinally efficient outcomes before he showed that they produced rank efficient outcomes and that rank efficiency implies ordinal efficiency.

Clayton is an unusually experienced market designer whose field experience motivates novel theoretical insights. He's also a talented experimenter who studies market design issues in the lab. He's a Stanford Ph.D. who is finishing up a two-year postdoc with me at Harvard. His other papers are on his Stanford job market page; you could hire him this year.

The (American) market for assault rifles

There was a time when Americans thought that rifles were for hunting game, and assault weapons were banned.  That has changed.

The Washington Post has the story:

The gun that divides a nation. The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche. By Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton 

"The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller.

"The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

...

"Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults — or roughly 16 million people — own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.

...

"One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, introduced a bill in February to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

"It also has become a stark symbol of the nation’s gun violence epidemic. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s.

...

"the U.S. firearms industry came to embrace the gun’s political and cultural significance as a marketing advantage as it grasped for new revenue.

"The shift began after the 2004 expiration of a federal assault weapons ban that had blocked the sales of many semiautomatic rifles. 

...

"Today, the industry estimates that at least 20 million AR-15s are stored and stashed across the country.

"More than 13.7 million of those have been manufactured by U.S. gunmakers just since the Newtown massacre in late 2012"

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NPR puts some history into perspective:

The Nashville school shooting highlights the partisan divide over gun legislation , by Ron Elving, April 1, 2023

"The Stockton schoolyard shooting in 1989

...

"The Stockton story was national news, featured on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "Armed America." Public alarm at Stockton pushed the legislature to be the first to prohibit the sale of assault weapons that year.

"Stockton was still reverberating three years later when California, the home of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, sent two liberal Democrats, both women, to the U.S. Senate It also stocked its legislature and congressional delegation with big Democratic majorities and gave its Electoral College vote to Bill Clinton.

"One of the two women senators elected that year was former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who had first become mayor when her predecessor was shot to death in his office in the 1970s. She had long been outspoken on gun control and brought that commitment to Washington, D.C., becoming one of the principal sponsors of a bill banning assault weapons ban in her first year.

"The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994

"Feinstein and her cosponsors wanted to end the sale or manufacture of 14 categories of semi-automatic assault weapons. They also wanted to go beyond the California ban by outlawing copycat versions of earlier models and high-volume detachable magazines that held more than 10 rounds.

"But the bill did not address the status of an estimated one million assault weapons nationwide. "Essentially what this legislation does is create a freeze," she said. She lamented the resistance that rarely produced actual arguments among her colleagues. She said had never realized "the power of the NRA in this town."

...

"There were literally hundreds of exceptions included in the final version, distressing many of the bill's supporters. But getting the ban into the crime package to be passed in that Congress (with billions in new police funding) required many compromises. Ultimately, to get to a majority, Feinstein would have to accept a sunset provision by which her restrictions would need reenactment after 10 years.

...

"So when the 10-year expiration date on Feinstein's bill arrived in 2004, Democrats were no longer the majority party in Congress and all attempts to extend the 1994 ban were unavailing.

...

"The Sandy Hook Test in 2012

The next time serious energy developed behind renewing the ban was in the winter of 2012-2013. Barack Obama had just been reelected president, and the Senate was still in Democratic hands.

"Just as important, the effort to address the gun issue had been given an enormous boost by a new and more horrific tragedy.

"On Dec. 12, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20 — described by counselors as fascinated with mass shootings — killed his mother and took guns she had legally purchased to a Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"There he shot dead 20 children, ages 6 and 7. He also killed six adults on the school staff. Then he killed himself.

"The national shock at the time is hard to appreciate a decade later, as there have been so many like it. 

...

"But the 113th Congress came and went in 2013 and 2014 without passing notable gun legislation. A compromise measure on background checks, offered by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, got 54 votes in the Senate but needed 60.

"As for prospects for reviving gun legislation in the current Congress, the situation looks much as it did a decade ago. The 118th Congress has a Senate where Democrats have a nominal majority that depends on the cooperation of several independents. Feinstein is still in the Senate, the longest-serving incumbent Democrat, but planning to retire next year.

"The current House, like that of a decade ago, has a Republican majority led by a speaker whose power depends on placating a hardcore group known as the House Freedom Caucus."

Congratulations to the winners of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)

Here's the announcement from the NSF:

President Obama honors early career scientists with top White House award

Twenty-one researchers nominated by the National Science Foundation receive awards for innovation, outreach in scientific community

and here's the list (one of which has "economics" in the citation...):

February 18, 2016

President Barack Obama today named 106 researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), granting them the U.S. government's highest award for scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The National Science Foundation (NSF) nominated 21 of the awardees.

PECASE recognizes scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Winners demonstrate the ability to broadly advance fundamental research and help the United States maintain its position as a leading producer of scientists and engineers.

"The awardees are outstanding scientists and engineers," said NSF Director France Córdova. "They are teacher-scholars who are developing new generations of outstanding scientists and engineers and ensuring this nation is a leading innovator. I applaud these recipients for their leadership, distinguished teaching and commitment to public outreach."

The NSF-nominated awardees come from universities around the country and excel in areas of science represented by NSF directorates: biology, computer and information science, education and human resources, engineering, geosciences, mathematics and physical sciences and social and behavioral sciences.

NSF vetted the research of its nominees through its rigorous peer review process. All of the NSF nominees have received five-year grants from the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. CAREER awardees have proven themselves exemplary in integrating research and education. Selection is highly competitive: in 2012, NSF funded fewer than 20 percent of the 2,612 CAREER award applicants.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President coordinated the PECASE awards, which were established by President Clinton in 1996. Awardees are selected on the basis of two criteria: pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and a commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education or community outreach.

This year's NSF recipients are:

Adam Abate, University of California, San Francisco

For his development of microfluidic approaches for creating single-cell bioreactors that may be applied to massively parallel approaches in single-cell genomics and transcriptomics and that can be implemented across a variety of disciplines including evolutionary biology, immunology, and cancer biology and for his outreach to underrepresented groups and veterans.

Marcel Agüeros, Columbia University

For his groundbreaking research in stellar astrophysics, and for his restless desire to ensure that minority students in sciences become tomorrow's leaders.

Arezoo Ardekani, University of Notre Dame

For research aimed to fundamentally understand, model and control bacterial biofilm formation through imaginative computations and elegant experiments, and for demonstrated commitment to increase underrepresented minority participation in STEM-related research.

Cullen Buie, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

For research to create highly sensitive systems that probe microbial physiology and thereby illustrate the coupling of cell phenotypes with virulence, and to train a new generation of underreprented minority scientists who become faculty.

Erin Carlson, Indiana University

For discovery of chemistry underlying a new approach to treat antibiotic-resistant infections, for leadership in the chemistry and women-chemists communities, and for developing new hands-on laboratory activities to engage K-12 students in natural product chemistry.

Antonius Dieker, Georgia Tech Research Corporation

For outstanding research on the stochastic behavior in engineered and physical systems; and for educational activities involving high school, undergraduate and graduate students.

Erika Edwards, Brown University

For innovative research leading to exciting breakthroughs in understanding the drivers of plant evolutionary innovation, and particularly the evolution of plant form and photosynthesis systems, and for engaging public outreach on plant biology.

Julia Grigsby, Boston College

For her work on the invariants of 3-manifolds, running advanced workshops, training graduate and undergraduate students, contributions to increasing participation of women in mathematical sciences and introducing talented middle-school girls to research mathematics.

Todd Gureckis, New York University

For his innovative work at the boundary of cognitive science, learning science and machine learning; for his work with museums to enhance the learning potential for children; and for creating an integrated, multidisciplinary curriculum for computational cognitive science for the workforce of the 21st century.

Tessa Hill, University of California, Davis

For her transdisciplinary research that places modern ocean acidification and ocean oxygenation into a long-term Earth-system context, and for training and outreach to K-12 teachers and students that offers them a better understanding of ocean science and climate change through inquiry-based learning.

Daniel Krashen, University of Georgia

For his work on local-to-global principles, organizing conferences and workshops, training graduate students and serving as a role model to underrepresented minorities in mathematics.

Daniel McCloskey, College of Staten Island, City University of New York

For research combining modeling, neurophysiology and systems biology/network science that will transform the field of social neuroscience by providing a comprehensive approach towards understanding the role of neuropetides in complex behavioral systems.

Rahul Mangharam, University of Pennsylvania

For inventing a new formal methodology to test and verify the correct operation of medical device software, saving lives and reducing care costs.

David Masiello, University of Washington

For his cutting-edge research in the emerging field of theoretical molecular nanophotonics, and for his comprehensive educational and outreach programs including an exemplary focus on enhancing the scientific communication abilities of young researchers.

Shwetak Patel, University of Washington

For inventing low-cost, easy-to-deploy sensor systems that leverage existing infrastructures to enable users to track household energy consumption and make the buildings we live in more responsive to our needs.

Aaron Roth, University of Pennsylvania

For visionary research on protecting personal data via differential privacy, and outstanding outreach that fosters interaction between the many communities that study data privacy from theoretical computer science to economics.

Sayeef Salahuddin, University of California, Berkeley

For pioneering research on the foundations of nanostructures as new, low-power electronics with potential influence on energy efficient systems, and for impact on industry, education and mentoring future scientists.

Jakita Thomas, Spelman College

For her research on how African-American middle-school girls develop computational algorithmic thinking within the context of designing games, a research project that explores the challenges African-American girls face and their self-perceptions as problem-solvers while at the same time educating them in mathematics, programming and reasoning.

Joachim Walther, University of Georgia

For building research capacity in engineering education by defining quality in qualitative research methods and leading communities of practice in this research, germane to and commonly used in broadening participation efforts.

Kristen Wendell, University of Massachusetts Boston

For her outstanding research work on how to integrate a community-based engineering design model into pre-service science elementary school teachers focused on crosscutting concepts, disciplinary core ideas and scientific and engineering practices.

Benjamin Williams, University of California, Los Angeles

For a comprehensive vision to advance Terahertz quantum-cascade lasers and devices for communications, sensing and imaging, and for leadership in enhancing undergraduate and graduate student learning experiences.