Arrow Lecture in Jerusalem by Drew Fudenberg - Learning and Equilibrium in Games (video)

Drew begins his general-audience lecture by saying "I can't imagine anyone I would rather give a talk for than Ken Arrow." He then continues with a brief history of game theory.

"The practical power of game theory"

That's the title of Northwestern's news release about my 2010 Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture. (The title of the lecture was "Market Design," and after some general introduction to market design I focused mostly on kidney exchange.) Here's the video (1 hour, 20 minutes).

Experimental Economics in the Tradition of John Kagel (video)

 In October there was an in-person celebration of John Kagel, which I was delighted to participate in, in Tucson, Arizona. (It was my first in-person conference since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, during a brief window of optimism.) Now it's been posted on YouTube by the hosts, at the Economic Science Lab of the University of Arizona:

Keynote lecture of Professor Alvin Roth at the Workshop in Honor of John Kagel, Tucson, Arizona, October 2021

My talk was called Experimental Economics in the Tradition of John Kagel, and I began by explaining this photograph, which has John in the middle.

I eventually focused on how the following experiment helped shape a good deal of practical market design:

Kagel, John H. and A.E. Roth, "The dynamics of reorganization in matching markets: A laboratory experiment motivated by a natural experiment," Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 2000, 201-235.

And I concluded by giving John some unnecessary advice as he embarks on his tenth decade.

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You can see more from the 2021 North-American Economic Science Association Conference (including the above video) here.

Stanford Engineering Hero Lecture: Ken Arrow on his intellectual history and the history of Operations Research (video)

I've had occasion to think about Operations Research recently, and it's relationships with Economics.  Here's Ken Arrow recalling some early history.



Ken speaks about his intellectual history, and the history of Operations Research as a field and at Stanford. The question and answers at the end are a lot of fun too.

Ken's talk begins at around 7:30 of the video, after an introduction.
The occasion is the March 4, 2014 celebration of Ken as an Engineering Hero. 

More Milgrom

Northwestern has put up a page of material following the 2009 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics Lecture and Conference, including Paul's slides, and a video of his lecture.

There are also links to the slides and bibliographies of the talks given on Friday (including the 10 minute presentations given by panelists; now I'm working on my 1 minute talk...)


Vijay Krishna (Pennsylvania State University): Auctions and Information[Presentation and Bibliography - PDF]

Larry Ausubel (University of Maryland): Auctions with Multiple Objects[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]

Panel Discussion: Market Design.Moderated by Rakesh Vohra (Northwestern University)
Susan Athey (Harvard University) [Slides]
Preston McAfee (Yahoo! Inc.) [Slides]
Paul Milgrom (Stanford University) [Slides]
Alvin Roth (Harvard University) [Slides]

Stephen Morris (Princeton University): Trade and Information[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]

Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Agency Models[Presentation - PDF] [Bibliography - PDF]

John Roberts (Stanford University): Organizational Economics[Presentation - PDF]

And here is my previously posted unofficial conference photo.

Paul Milgrom's Marshall Lectures are now available on video

Auctions are ancient, but the linked auctions Paul talks about in his lectures are stunningly modern, and depend on high powered, thoughtfully deployed, state of the art computation.

"Market Design When Resource Allocation is NP-Hard," in two lectures.
Here they are:

Lecture 1

and Lecture 2:

Video of my Sackler lecture on learning, with Ido Erev

The title of the paper that this will become is "Maximization, Learning and Economic Behavior."



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9cl_aKIHuc
This video is from the colloquium In the Light of Evolution VIII: Darwinian Thinking in the Social Sciences, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, organized by Brian Skyrms, John Avise and Francisco Ayala, and held January 10-11, 2014 at the Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.

Scott Kominers speaks about Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency and Marginal Returns -- video

Here's a video of a recent lecture by Scott Kominers: Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency and Marginal Returns

"In this presentation, Scott Duke Kominers noted that mechanism design tends to examine only the market clearing stage. The field treats human capital as a fixed or predetermined input, rather than a dynamic range of possibilities. His own model uncovers a relationship between three variables: strategy-proofness, investment efficiency, and marginal rewards."

Who Gets What and Why: The Economics of Life Choices from School Admissions to Kidney Exchange: SFUEconomics (video)

A video of the Bank of Montreal Lecture I gave at Simon Fraser University in November is now available:

Video of market design talk at USF

Not long ago I gave a talk at the University of San Francisco. My host was Professor Ludwig Chincarini, and he has posted this video of my lecture:

Kidney exchange, in Microeconomic Insights

 The team at Microeconomic Insights has published an easy to read summary of my just published paper with Itai Ashlagi in the September issue of Management Science:

Kidney Exchange: An Operations Perspective

"No country is presently able to supply all the kidney transplants required by its population, and most people with kidney failure will die without receiving a transplant. Kidney exchange is a way to increase the number of transplants by allowing incompatible patient-donor pairs to exchange kidneys. For logistical reasons, early exchanges involved just two patient-donor pairs, but the rise in donors without a particular recipient in mind has enabled long chains of non-simultaneous transplants. However, barriers between kidney exchange programs, both within and across countries, continue to make it difficult to find matches for some patient-donor pairs. Breaking down these barriers will be challenging, but the potential rewards are large—both in terms of lives saved and reduced healthcare costs."

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Here's a link to the original paper:

1. Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth, “Kidney Exchange:  an Operations Perspective,” Management Science, September 2021, Volume 67, Issue 9, September 2021, Pages 5301-5967, iii-iv, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3954 

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Here's a video of a lecture I gave about the paper in June to an INFORMS audience, starting at minute 2:55.

Market design (I talk to the entering Ph.D. class at Escola Nacional de Administração Pública)

 Yesterday I gave what I think was the first lecture to the entering class of Ph.D. students at the Escola Nacional de Administração Pública (ENAP) in Brasilia.  I spoke about market design, using as my main examples school choice and kidney exchange.  Afterwards there was Q&A on a variety of subjects, including black markets and repugnance.

Here's a video (I start to speak around minute 8):

Mini course in market design: video of the short course (4 lectures) I gave in Brazil

Here is the link to lecture 1 of 4, with links to the other three lectures as well.

IWGTS 2014 - Mini-course: Market Design

These lectures were delivered as part of the  Conference on game theory in honor of Marilda Sotomayor: July 2014.

Webcast of the luncheon talks on market design from the 2014 AEA Annual Meeting

The AEA has posted a collection of webcasts from the 2014 annual meeting in Philadelphia, including from the
Nobel Laureate Luncheon
William Nordhaus; Paul Milgrom; Roger Myerson 
View Webcast

The video is a little less than an hour: and consists of brief introductions by Nordhaus, and talks on market design and its history by Milgrom and Myerson, and a short talk by me with some thoughts on the future of market design as economic engineering and the science that supports it.  (spoiler: I think it will be important to study congestion...)
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Eleven 2014 Annual Meeting sessions are available online. (I enjoyed Claudia Goldin's magisterial address on gender and jobs, which reminded me of the work following up on this and the matching aspects of pursuing both careers and marriages, of our joint student Stephanie Hurder.):

•    AEA Presidential Address "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter" (Claudia Goldin)
•    AEA Awards Ceremony (William Nordhaus)
•    Richard T. Ely Lecture "Retirement Security in an Aging Population" (James Poterba)
•    Nobel Laureate Luncheon (Paul Milgrom, Roger Myerson, and Alvin Roth)
•    AEA/AFA Joint Luncheon (Jeremy Stein)
•    Chairman Bernanke Presentation (Ben Bernanke, Kenneth Rogoff, and Anil Kashyap)
•    What's Natural? Key Macroeconomic Parameters after the Great Recession
•    Discounting for the Long Run
•    Financial Globalization
•    Climate Change Policy after Kyoto
•    Macroeconomics of Austerity

Matching with Couples - Video of my lecture at the Rothblum conference at the Technion

Here's the talk I gave at the memorial conference for Uri Rothblum at the Technion:
Matching with Couples (55 minutes)

Video from the AEA meetings (including my presidential address)

If you missed the AEA/ASSA meetings that just finished in Philadelphia, you can still hear some of the talks.

Here's mine (it's about an hour, but afterwards you'll know everything I know):
AEA Presidential Address - Marketplaces, Markets and Market Design
Alvin E. Roth, introduced by Olivier Blanchard
View Webcast

Update: it turns out the AEA website included this picture...

And here are the other videos:

2018 AEA Annual Meeting Webcasts of Selected Sessions

View Webcasts of selected sessions from the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on January 5-7, 2018! (compliments of the AEA):

January 5, 2018

Climate Policy and Trade
Presiding: Mar ReguantRegulating Mismeasured Pollution: Implications of Firm Heterogeneity for Environmental Policy Eva Lyubich, Joseph Shapiro, and Reed Walker
How Trade-sensitive are Energy-intensive Sectors? Carolyn Fischer and Alan Fox
Measuring Leakage Risk Meredith Fowlie and Mar Reguant
Discussants: Matilde Bombardini, Thibault Fally, and Teresa Fort
View Webcast

TrumpEconomics: a First Year Evaluation
Presiding: Dominick Salvatore
The Effects of Policy Uncertainty Olivier BlanchardThe Impact of the Trump Tax Reforms Martin FeldsteinWhat's Lacking in Trumpean Economic Policy Edmund PhelpsTrump and Globalization Joseph E. StiglitzContinuing Relevance of Secular Stagnation Lawrence H. SummersDiscussant: Dominick Salvatore
View Webcast

AEA/AFA Joint Luncheon - Liquidity and LeveragreRaghuram Rajan, introduced by David Scharfstein
View Webcast

New Measures of the EconomyPresiding: Betsey Stevenson
Estimating Changes in Well-being Using Massive Online Choice Experiments Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers, and Avinash Gannamaneni
Measuring Social Progress: Evidence from Advanced Economies Daniel Fehder, Scott Stern, and Michael E. Porter
Using Online Prices to Measure Standards of Living Across Countries Alberto Cavallo, W. Erwin Diewert, Robert Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel Timmer
Internet Rising, Prices Falling: The Era of e-Commerce and its Macroeconomic Implications Austan Goolsbee and Pete Klenow
Discussants: Carol Corrado, Betsey Stevenson, Dennis Fixler, and Leonard Nakamura
View Webcast

AEA Richard T. Ely Lecture: Competition, Equilibrium, Freedom, and PaternalismDavid Laibson
View Webcast

January 6, 2017

Central Bank Communications
Presiding: Andrew HaldaneFuture of Monetary Policy Communications Alan Blinder
Central Bank Forward Guidance and the Signal Value of Market Prices Hyun Song Shin and Stephen MorrisCentral Bank Communications and the General Public Michael McMahon and Andrew HaldaneDiscussants: Ricardo Reis, Michael Ehrmann, and Refet Gurkaynak
View Webcast

Global Inequality and Policy
Presiding: Emmanuel SaezThe Elephant Curve of Global Inequality and Growth Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman
From Communism to Capitalism: Private Versus Public Property and Inequality in China and Russia Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, and Gabriel Zucman
Applying Generalized Pareto Curves to Inequality Analysis Thomas Blanchet, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, and Clara Martinez-Toledano
Extreme Inequality: Evidence from Brazil, India, the Middle-East, and South Africa Facundo Alvaredo, Lydia Assouad, Lucas Chancel, and Marc Morgan
Discussants: Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez, and Li Yang
View Webcast

AEA Nobel Laureate Luncheon Honoring the 2016 Nobel Laureates in Economics: Oliver Hart (Harvard University) and Bengt R. Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Presiding: Olivier Blanchard
Luigi Zingales 
Daron Acemoglu
View Webcast

Economic Consequences of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Presiding: Erik Brynjolfsson
Demographics and Robots Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo
What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for the Occupations and Industries? Erik Brynjolfsson, Tom Mitchell, and Daniel Rock
Linking Advances in Artificial Intelligence to Skills, Occupation, and Industries Rob Seamans and Edward W. Felten
Human Judgement and A.I. Pricing Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb, and Ajay AgrawalDiscussants: Benjamin Jones, Shane Greenstein, Susan Helper, and J. Miguel Villa-Boas
View Webcast

AEA Awards Ceremony
Presiding: Olivier Blanchard
View Webcast

Milgrom Marshall Lectures at University of Cambridge

Paul Milgrom will be giving the 2019-2020 Marshall Lectures at Cambridge today and tomorrow.  Here's a video abstract by Paul:

2019-20 Marshall Lecture by Professor Paul Milgrom

Paul Milgrom is best known for his contributions to the microeconomic theory, his pioneering innovations in the practical design of multi-item auctions, and the extraordinary successes of his students and academic advisees. According to his BBVA Award citation: “Paul Milgrom has made seminal contributions to an unusually wide range of fields of economics including auctions, market design, contracts and incentives, industrial economics, economics of organizations, finance, and game theory.” According to a count by Google Scholar, Milgrom’s books and articles have received more than 90,000 citations. - Professor Milgrom's Personal Site >>

 Professor Paul Milgrom
(Stanford Department of Economics)
will give two lectures on,
"Market Design When Resource Allocation is NP-Hard"

Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall

Tuesday 19th November 2019
5.00pm to 6.00pm
and
Wednesday 20th November 2019
5.00pm to 6.30pm
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I'll update when Paul's lectures are available.
(In the meantime, here are my 2013-2014 Marshall Lectures on "Matching Markets and Market Design"  )
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Update: Both lectures are now available at the Marshall Lectures site.

My Lucia Lecture at Villanova (video)

Kidney exchange at Northwestern

Tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon I'll be giving the Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture at Northwestern, and I'll talk a lot about kidney exchange.

So it's a good time to mention a big exchange chain that was completed last month entirely at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which has one of the biggest living donor transplant programs in the country: Sixteen Patients, Eight Kidney Transplants, Three Days... One Life Changing Event .

This was an innovative non-simultaneous altruistic donor chain, conducted over three days (with 3 transplants done the first day, 3 the second, and 2 the third.)

Here's a page containing (scroll down) a May 19 video interview with the non-directed donor, and two of the transplant docs, John Friedewald and Joseph Leventhal.

Some of my earlier posts on the revolution caused by non-simultaneous chains are below:

Advances in kidney exchange, in the New England Journal of Medicine

Kidney Exchange in People Magazine

Non-simultaneous kidney exchange chains

More non-simultaneous kidney chains

Progress towards a sensibly organized national kidney exchange.

(John Friedewald, the Northwestern transplant nephrologist interviewed about the story at the top of this post, is the chair of the UNOS Kidney Paired Donation Work Group charged with organizing a pilot national program...)