The market for hitmen

If two men who have just met discuss a contract killing in a bar, there's an excellent chance that at least one of them is employed in some branch of law enforcement. So you would think that a website offering to match buyers and sellers in this market wouldn't have a lot of customers, but it appears from some recent court cases that you are overestimating the sophistication of internet shoppers. Here's a recent story from the LA Times. Apparently the proprietor of the site wasn't content to act as a matchmaker, he tried to play both sides of the market by selling hits and then contacting the intended victims and offering to be bought off. But it appears that the demand side was real, and some of them are serving time too...

Website matches targets and hit man
"The case began with a website called HitmanForHire.net. The designer thought it was a joke, but the FBI and Irish police soon learned that Essam Ahmed Eid, a Las Vegas poker dealer, was in business."
************

In another twist, the domain name http://hitmanforhire.net/ has been acquired by someone who apparently hopes to make a movie about the case, and from the look of it thinks it might be a comedy:.

HT: Scott Cunningham, who keeps an economist's eye on the dark side

Arguments in the press against deceased organ donation

Dick Teresi, the author of  a new book called The Undead, has been in the recent press. His argument is related to how we determine if a patient is dead enough to be a deceased organ donor,while still having organs that are alive enough to be donated.

In the WSJ: What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card: Giving away your organs sounds noble, but have doctors blurred the line between life and death?

And in McCleans: Dick Teresi: On the debate over when life really ends, and the possibility cadavers can feel pain 
***********

Even if you think this author is alarmist, if we want to make transplantation more available, we have to understand and address the barriers--informational, psychological, esthetic--to becoming a donor.  That being said, the comments I've heard on this subject from people at organ procurement organizations suggests that Teresi is indeed alarmist, and that people declared brain dead are adequately tested to make sure they are very dead indeed.

Here are my previous posts on deceased donation.

Update: today's WSJ published a letter in reply, which I reproduce in full below (Thanks for the pointer to Zeeshan Butt at Northwestern):


Dick Teresi's "What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card" (Review, March 10) grossly misinforms the public about both the medical determination of brain death and the organ donation process in the U.S.
First, there has never been a documented case of patient recovery after a properly performed determination of death by neurological criteria. Ever.
Second, the diagnosis of brain death requires extensive neurological examination, irrespective of a patient's organ donor status or the family's support for donation. Electroencephalography is generally no longer used because it's outmoded, not because physicians have something to hide. When donation is an option, the organ recovery agency must verify that all clinical testing has been done and all legal documentation is in the patient's chart.
Organ donation saves lives. Eighteen Americans will die today waiting for a life-saving organ. We hope that Mr. Teresi's misinformed comments do not add to that number.
Tia Powell, M.D.
Director, Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics
Bronx, N.Y
James Zisfein, M.D.
Chief, Division of Neurology
Lincoln Medical Center
Bronx, N.Y.
Helen Irving
President and CEO
New York Organ Donor Network

SF parking meters

 SFPark.org in the NY Times: A Meter So Expensive, It Creates Parking Spots.

Previous posts on congestion pricing and parking generally.

Doubt on college admissions reform in Britain

In an earlier post I wrote about plans for change in Britain's college admissions system.
Apparently that is far from a sure thing: Admissions Debate in Britain

"Several universities have threatened to withdraw from Britain's centralized admissions system if "post-qualifications applications" are introduced, casting doubt on the future of the proposed reforms.

"The threat to “opt out” of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service was made by members of the 1994 Group, which represents 19 smaller research-intensive institutions, in its response to plans for students to apply to higher education after receiving their A-level results. Other groups have also voiced their opposition to the radical shake-up of admissions put forward for consultation by UCAS in October, placing the overall project in jeopardy.

"Under the proposals – earmarked for introduction in 2016 – students would sit their A-level exams six weeks or a month earlier and receive their results in July rather than August. They would then apply to just two universities and start the academic term in early October.

...

"Without support from universities, which fund UCAS through subscriptions, the plans are “highly unlikely to be picked up,” said Matthew Andrews, chair of the Admissions Practitioners’ Group of the Academic Registrars Council." 

Assisted suicide in the U.S.

Assisted suicide is a prototypically repugnant transaction, in the sense that there are people who want to engage in it, and others who object. Here's an article from yesterday's WSJ, about a doctor who benefited from his own efforts to legalize assisted suicide in Oregon: Right-to-Die Advocate Ends His Life

"Peter Goodwin, a family physician who wrote and campaigned for Oregon's right-to-die law in the 1990s, died Sunday after taking a cocktail of lethal drugs prescribed by his doctor, as allowed under the legislation he championed.

"Dr. Goodwin, 83 years old, had been diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder similar to Parkinson's disease and had been given less than six months to live.

"The Oregon law was the first in the nation to authorize patients to end their lives with the assistance of physicians. It doesn't allow for doctors to administer euthanasia by injection, though it authorizes them to prescribe lethal drugs that the patient can choose to take.

 "The law has withstood legal challenges including a case brought by the Bush administration. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Oregon, saying that the federal government couldn't forbid doctors from prescribing drugs to help a patient die.
...
"Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act at the polls in 1994, and voted down legislation that would have repealed it in 1997. A total of 597 people have died under its provisions, including 71 in 2011, according to Oregon state statistics.
...
"The act has had an impact beyond Oregon, serving as a model for a Washington State law that took effect in 2009. Massachusetts is scheduled to vote on a similar law in November, while Montana allows physician-assisted suicide as a result of a court case.

"John Kelly, director of Second Thoughts, a Massachusetts-based organization of disability activists who oppose the assisted-suicide ballot petition, said assisted suicide brings up big problems. "Dr. Goodwin "created a monster," Mr. Kelly said. "Assisted suicide is a deadly mix with the profit-driven health-care system. There are so many problems with assisted suicide. These bills sound good in some kind of a perfect-knowledge fantasy universe, but when we get down to real life they become a disaster."
...
"The Death With Dignity Act had a wide effect on end-of-life decisions, said Barbara Coombs Lee, executive director of Compassion & Choices, a national right-to-die organization that is a successor to the Hemlock Society. "Palliative care and hospice care got a big boost in Oregon," Ms. Lee said. "It levels the playing field between patients and physicians who are invested in giving more treatment."

Brides "for sale:" marriage patterns in East Asia

Soohyung Lee and Daiji Kawaguchi have a paper on marriage and matching that looks at who marries whom in East Asia.  As I understand it, they argue that there's a powerful norm there for men to "marry down," (related to having "traditional" expectations of marriage) with the result that highly educated women and poorly educated men have difficulty finding suitable local spouses, and that the lower educated men marry foreign brides from poorer countries.

Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration

Abstract: Every year, a large number of women migrate as brides from developing countries to developed countries in East Asia. This phenomenon virtually did not exist in the early 1990s, but foreign brides currently comprise 4 to 35 percent of newlyweds in these developed Asian countries. This paper argues that two factors account for this rapid increase in “bride importation”: the rapid growth of women's educational attainment and a cultural norm that leads to low net surplus of marriage for educated women. We provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical model and its implications, using datasets from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
***************

And here's a NY Times story from the point of view of Vietnamese brides married to Korean men: For Some in Vietnam, Prosperity Is a South Korean Son-in-Law

Same sex marriage: the debate in Britain

Old repugnancies die hard...
Gay marriage is like slavery, Catholic leader says 

 "Britain’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has condemned gay marriage as an “aberration”, likening it to slavery and abortion."

"Cardinal Keith O'Brien said countries which legalise gay marriage are “shaming themselves” by going against the “natural law,” and should not consider their actions “progress”. :

"He claimed same sex unions were the “thin end of the wedge” and would lead to the “further degeneration of society into immorality.”
************

And, in a related story


The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is intensifying its campaign against the government's plan to legalise same-sex marriage.
"In a letter being read in 2,500 parish churches, the Church's two most senior archbishops say the change would reduce the significance of marriage.

 "The letter says Roman Catholics have a duty to make sure it does not happen.

John Campbell on Mortgage Market Design

John Campbell writes about Mortgage Market Design

"Although the US has roughly average levels of homeownership (67%) and mortgage debt
(72% of GDP), it is unusual in two other respects. Figure 3 plots the average number of
years that a mortgage carries a fixed rate. The lowest values (around 1 year) are in southern European countries such as Portugal, Spain, and Italy, where adjustable-rate mortgages predominate. The UK and Ireland similarly rely heavily on adjustable-rate mortgages.The average fixed-rate period is 5 years in Canada, 7-10 years in Belgium, France, and Germany, almost 20 years in Denmark, and 27 years in the US reflecting a roughly 90% market share for 30-year nominal fixed-rate mortgages. These instruments, which are taken for granted in the US, are anomalous within the global mortgage system.

"Figure 4 plots an index of government participation in housing finance, constructed by
the IMF (2011), against the homeownership rate. The IMF index combines information on subsidies to home purchases, government funding or guarantees for mortgage loans, preferential tax treatment for mortgage interest or capital gains on housing, and the existence of a dominant state-owned mortgage lender. The figure shows that US housing policy is highly interventionist, more so than any other country illustrated except Singapore. The high value of the government participation index for the US results from subsidies to low and middle income homebuyers, subsidized mortgage guarantees by the government sponsored entities (GSEs), and favorable tax treatment of mortgage borrowing and housing capital gains. The main stated goal of much US housing policy is to increase the homeownership rate, but as previously noted the US has only average homeownership, and more generally there is only a very weak positive cross-country correlation between housing market intervention and
homeownership."
...
"I argue that there is a legitimate public interest in a stable, efficient mortgage system and call for deliberate experimentation with mortgage market design. Although our theoretical understanding of mortgage markets is still quite weak relative to the theory that underpins classic applications of market design (to auctions and matching problems, for example), financial theory and theoretically grounded empirical research will be important for this enterprise. Thus mortgage research offers financial economists an exciting opportunity to contribute to the well-being of society.

Summer school in algorithmic economics at CMU in August

The announcement is here.
Important dates

• April 15, 2012: Application deadline
• May 6, 2012: Notification of selection
• August 6-10, 2012: Summer school 

Confirmed speakers:

• Itai Ashlagi, MIT (Sloan)
• Avrim Blum, Carnegie Mellon (CS)
• Vincent Conitzer, Duke (CS & economics)
• Constantinos Daskalakis, MIT (EECS)
• Jason Hartline, Northwestern (EECS)
• Herve Moulin, Rice (economics)
• Eva Tardos, Cornell (CS)
• Rakesh Vohra, Northwestern (Kellogg)
• Leeat Yariv, Caltech (economics) 

Market design in Trento

13^th Trento Summer School

Intensive course in Market Design: Theory and Pragmatics

 

Co-Directors:

Dan Friedman, Economics Department, Santa Cruz University CA

David Parkes, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Download poster

Download brochure

 
Guest lecturers: Tuomas Sandholm, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Peter Cramton, Economics Department, University of Maryland, Paul J. Healy, Economics Department, Ohio State University, S. N. Muthu Muthukrishnan, Computer Science Department, Rutgers University, Estelle Cantillon, ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles

For the last several centuries, markets have spread spontaneously and have organized an increasing share of human activity. Globalization and information technologies accelerated the process in the early 21st century and, at the same time, opened unprecedented new opportunities for deliberate design.
Market design has much to learn from success stories like Amazon and eBay, online advertising, labour markets for medical interns and residents, wireless spectrum auction design, expressive auctions for sourcing, and mobile phone banking in the developing world. Market designers can also learn from disasters such as the California energy market of May 2000 through September 2001 and the credit-default swap market freeze in September 2008.
Market design is a multi-disciplinary problem with relevant expertise coming from economic theory, computer science, and operations research. Advances are made with the right combination of theory and pragmatics, with theoretical ideals balanced against requirements for computational and informational efficiency, as well as simplicity and robustness.

The 2012 Trento Summer School faculty will bring together experts from many fields:

• artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems
• experimental economics
• mechanism design theory
• prediction markets
• theoretical computer science

They will provide an integrated series of lectures on topics such as

• two-sided platforms
• matching markets
• double auction markets
• virtual economies
• combinatorial auctions

Students participating in this Summer School will gain an up-to-date overview of the relevant theory, current evidence on what sorts of market formats work well under various conditions, and pragmatic issues that arise when theoretical paradigms meet real-world challenges.
In addition to overview lectures in the mornings, the school will feature intensive seminar-style discussions in the afternoons of participants’ research.
The Trento Summer Schools are intended for advanced graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in economics, computer science and operations research. People interested in participating in the Summer School are encouraged to apply by submitting a curriculum vitae, a two-page essay describing their interest in Market Design, a course transcript from their PhD program, including advanced examinations passed, two letters of recommendation, and statements about their current or projected research, along with relevant research papers, if any.

Applications are due by Saturday, 17 march 2012. Persons interested in participating in the Summer School should follow the application procedure.

Admissions decisions will be announced by 10 April 2012. All applicants will be informed by e-mail about the results.

The sessions will be held at Hotel Villa Madruzzo, Trento, Italy. All participants are required to stay for the entire duration of the event. Food and accommodation will be covered by the School (except for meals during the weekend) and participants will have to cover travel expenses.

Please direct logistical questions to the Summer School secretary (ccschool@economia.unitn.it).

This is the 13^th of a series of intensive courses to be offered by the Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory (CEEL) with the financial support of John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, an Athens-based Foundation supporting public benefit activities in Greece and abroad: www.latsis-foundation.org.

Previous courses were offered in Computable Economics (2000, Director K. Vela Velupillai), Experimental Economics (2001, Director Daniel Friedman), Adaptive Economic Processes (2002, Director Peter Howitt), Behavioral Economics (2003, Directors Daniel Friedman and David Laibson), Institutional Economics (2004, Director Richard N. Langlois), Evolutionary Economic Dynamics (2005,Directors Ken Binmore and Larry Samuelson), Agent-Based Computational Economics (2006, Directors Leigh Tesfatsion and Robert Axtell), Agent-Based Finance (2007, Directors Cars Hommes and Thomas Lux), Financial Instability and Crises (2008, Directors Domenico Delli Gatti and Mauro Gallegati), Networks and Innovation (2009, Directors John Padgett, Lee Fleming and Massimo Riccaboni), Macroeconomics and Financial Crises (2010, Directors Peter Howitt, Daniel Heymann and Axel Leijonhufvud) and Evolution of Social Preferences (2011, Directors Dan Friedman and Luigi Mittone)

 

 

Program Directors: Axel Leijonhufvud, UCLA and University of Trento and Enrico Zaninotto, University of Trento Co-Directors of the School: Dan Friedman, Economics Department, Santa Cruz University CA David Parkes, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University Guest Lecturers: Tuomas Sandholm, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Peter Cramton, Economics Department, University of Maryland, Paul J. Healy, Economics Department, Ohio State University, S. N. Muthu Muthukrishnan, Computer Science Department, Rutgers University, Estelle Cantillon, ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles Laboratory Director: Luigi Mittone, University of Trento Lab Technical Assistant: Marco Tecilla, University of Trento Summer School Secretary: ccschool@economia.unitn.it The course is offered by the Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory CEEL of the University of Trento with the financial support of John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, an Athens-based Foundation supporting public benefit activities in Greece and abroad: www.latsis-foundation.org.

More on Rosemarie Nagel's famous experiment in game theory

In an earlier post, I wrote about Nagel's guessing/beauty contest game: a famous experiment in game theory.  Now Christoph Büren, Björn Frank and Rosemarie Nagel have written a brief note called A Historical Note on the Beauty Contest.

And here's the comic version of the game (from another earlier post which highlighted the connection to unraveling):

The path to becoming a live kidney donor

Here's the story of an nondirected live kidney donor at the Cleveland Clinic: Sagamore Hills man finds that donating a kidney is no simple thing

From decision to donation took about six months, with a variety of physical and psychological screens to pass through.

A different shade of red

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1465

cardinal: Pantone 201

 
rgb(164, 16, 52) crimson

Who eats what

The Economist reports on The moral and culinary merits of exotic flesh

"Andrew Thornton, manager of the Budgens supermarket in the north London suburb of Crouch End, says sales of squirrel meat have soared since he started selling it in 2010.

"The bushy-tailed tree-dwellers are just one category in a burgeoning market. Osgrow, a British-based firm, exports bison, crocodile (“ideal for barbecues”) and kudu meat (“juicy and low-fat”) to customers in countries where controls on wild meat are tighter. One such market is Germany, where hygiene laws forbid the eating of “cat and doglike flesh”. The German environment ministry confirms that this includes squirrel; the country’s media mock English rat-eaters. Australia sent quantities of kangaroo meat to Russia until an import ban in 2009, ostensibly on hygiene grounds (it is now being reconsidered).
...
"No legal obstacle exists to eating the king of beasts, but roars of opposition prevented a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, from selling lion flesh in tacos."

HT: NicolaLacetera

A language is a marketplace: Defending local languages versus teaching in English

A headline in Haaretz takes a strident tone on a sensitive issue, but the story presents both sides of a complicated argument, that revolves around the fact that not only are universities marketplaces, but so are languages: Israel's Academy of the Hebrew Language declares war – on English

"Tali Ben Yehuda, the academy's director-general, said "demands that students study in English represent the gravest expression of the trend" of minimizing Hebrew's role in academia. Demands that students speak or study in English constitute a phenomenon "that is expanding considerably."

"Unless steps are taken, she warned, "academic departments will instruct solely in English, and this will spread to the high schools, because a conscientious parent will not send his or her child to a high school that doesn't prepare the youngster for university study.

...

"Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's chemistry department has sent a letter in English to students saying that research papers written in Hebrew will no longer be accepted. It said advanced research seminars would be conducted in English. This is because "the language of science is English."

Yehuda Band, the head of the university's chemistry department, said last night that this English-use requirement did not apply to undergraduates. He said that "if someone tries to record research results in Hebrew, that consigns his or her work to oblivion - nobody will read the research summary. Every person who deals in science today in Israel reads English."

...

"According to Band, another argument in favor of English is Ben-Gurion University's desire to recruit foreign students. The moment there's a student in a class who doesn't speak Hebrew, the lesson has to be conducted in English.

"Of course, these circumstances make things harder for people whose native tongue is Hebrew, and yet the use of English is something that any scientist has to master to advance in his or her work," Band said. "If a researcher doesn't know English, he's finished. If he doesn't know how to write in English, he won't be able to publish on his own and will depend on the largesse of others."

Podcast on kidney exchange, and ethical issues in organ transplantation

The March 2012 issue of the AMA journal Virtual Mentor is a special issue on Organ Transplantation.

It contains a two part podcast of an interview with me about kidney exchange:

http://www.soundprescribing.org/podcast/ethics-talk-kidney-patient-donor-exchanges-part-one.mp3

http://www.soundprescribing.org/podcast/ethics-talk-kidney-patient-donor-exchanges-part-two.mp3

Organ Transplantation

Ethics Poll

Should there be a commercial market in organs?
Yes. Individuals sell sperm and ova, and corporate sales of human tissue, tendons, bones, and heart valves reap enormous profits. Organs should be no different.
No. People with health but not wealth would be coerced by dire short-term needs to put their health at risk by selling organs.
Not for dollars, but living donors should be promised a free organ transplant if they ever need one.
I don't know.

Which of the following do you think should be the most important criterion for determining who will receive an organ?
Sickest person first.
Person who has been on the organ recipient wait list the longest.
Person with the best prognosis.
Youngest person.
Person with the best support (family, social, economic) for meeting the demands of posttransplant life.
Equal chance for all to "win" the organ, i.e., a lottery.
None of the above.

Have you formally declared (e.g., on driver's licence or advance directive) that you wish to donate your organs after death?
Yes.
No.

 

FROM THE EDITOR

The Frontiers of Organ Transplantation: “Oh, The Places We’ll Go”
Alon B. Neidich
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:184-185.

EDUCATING FOR PROFESSIONALISM

Ethics Cases

Assessing the Motives of Living, Non-Related Donors
Commentary by Katrina A. Bramstedt, and Francis L. Delmonico
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:186-189.

Should a Nonadherent Adolescent Receive a Second Kidney?
Commentary by John D. Lantos and Bradley A. Warady
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:190-193.

Family Physicians’ Role in Discussing Organ Donation with Patients and the Public
Commentary by Keren Ladin and Douglas W. Hanto
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:194-200.

Medical Education

Online Ethics-Education Modules and Ethics Forums of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons
John M. Ham
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:201-203.

The Code Says

AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ Opinions on Organ Transplantation
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:204-214.

Journal Discussion

Living-Donor Grafts for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Mohamed Elhassan Akoad
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:215-220.

State of the Art and Science

Severe Brain Injury and Organ Solicitation: A Call for Temperance
Joseph J. Fins
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:221-226.

Sham Surgery
Richard J. Rohrer
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:227-231.

LAW, POLICY, AND SOCIETY

Health Law

Reproductive Tissue Transplants Defy Legal and Ethical Categorization
Valarie Blake and Kavita Shah
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:232-236.

Policy Forum

Contemporary Debates over the Acceptability of Kidneys for Donation
Benjamin Hippen
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:237-244.

Rationing Livers: The Persistence of Geographic Inequity in Organ Allocation
Bruce C. Vladeck, Sander Florman, and Jonathan Cooper
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:245-249.

Implications of the Affordable Care Act for Kidney Transplantation
Christine S. Rizk and Sanjiv N. Singh
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:250-255.

Medicine and Society

The Veneer of Altruism
Michele Goodwin
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:256-263.

HISTORY, ART, AND NARRATIVE

History of Medicine

The Ethics of Organ Transplantation: A Brief History
Albert R. Jonsen
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:264-268.

Medical Narrative

Liver Transplantation: The Illusion of Choice
Carol Panetta Zazula
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:269-271.

OP-ED AND CORRESPONDENCE

Op-Ed

The Limits of Altruism: Selecting Living Donors
Richard B. Freeman Jr.
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:272-277.

RESOURCES

Suggested Readings and Resources
PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:278-291.

About the Contributors
Full Text | PDF
Virtual Mentor. 2012; 14:292-295.

Organ donation in Britain

The BBC reports on a new report by the British Medical Association: BMA calls for fresh debate on rate of organ donation. It focuses on some of the same issues that have been discussed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

You can find the report here: Building on Progress: Where next for organ donation policy in the UK? (direct link to pdf here).

"This report documents the changes that have taken place since the Organ Donation Taskforce published its report in January 2008. It records the significant improvements that have been made to the infrastructure and the projected 34% increase in donation rates over the four years to April 2012. The report notes, however, that even if the Taskforce’s target of a 50% increase in donation rates by 2013 is achieved, people will still be dying unnecessarily while waiting for an organ.

 "We believe that, as a society, we now need to decide whether we should be satisfied that we have done all we can or whether we should seek to build on what has already been achieved by shifting out attention to additional ways of increasing the number of organ donors.

 "The report examines a range of options that have been suggested for increasing the number of donors including a system of mandated choice, reciprocity, a regulated market or paying the funeral expenses of those who sign up to the Organ Donor Register and subsequently donate organs. The report also explains why we remain convinced that an opt-out system with safeguards is the best option for the UK."

Organ donation and kidney exchange in Canada

Canada maintains a number of registries for organ donors and patients, including one for kidney exchange (on which see also Q & A: How does the Canadian kidney exchange work?).

However, there's still a big shortage of organs from either deceased or living donors: Thousands still wait for transplants: Organ donor rates stagnate; kidneys most needed 

See the report: Canadian Organ Replacement Register Annual Report: Treatment of End-Stage Organ Failure in Canada, 2001 to 2010

Fifth Barcelona LeeX Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics

Applications are now being accepted for the

Fifth Barcelona LeeX Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics, BLESS-M-2012,

to be held: June 11-15 2012 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

The deadline for applications is 1 April 2012.

The aim of the summer school is to introduce macroeconomists to experimental methods and to further promote the use of experiments in the evaluation of macroeconomic models. While macroeconomic theories have traditionally been tested using non-experimental “field” data, many modern, micro-founded macroeconomic models can also be tested in the laboratory and researchers have begun to pursue such experimental tests. Graduate students specializing in macroeconomics or experimental economics, as well as junior faculty members and other macroeconomic researchers who have an interest in experimental or behavioral approaches are encouraged to apply.

During the intensive 5-day summer school students will be taught experimental methods and exposed to a number of macroeconomic applications that have been tested experimentally. Students will be asked to participate in experiments and to develop their own experimental macroeconomic projects. Faculty will assist with and critique these projects.  Past summer schools have resulted in the production of a number of high quality collaborative experimental projects.

For a detailed outline of the program, lectures and application procedures, please visit the summer school website at: http://www.upf.edu/leex/events/bleess_2012/index.html

As last year the summer school will be followed by the 3rd Leex International Conference on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics, June 18-19, 2012. Registered summer school students will be invited to attend that workshop as well. Details on this conference are available at: http://www.upf.edu/leex/

The summer school instructors are:

Guest lecturers

Charles Noussair, Tilburg University

Shyam Sunder, Yale University

Lecturers and Organizers

John Duffy, University of Pittsburgh

Frank Heinemann, Technische Universität Berlin Rosemarie Nagel, ICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra 

Should unpaid internships be repugnant? (Many are already illegal...)

The NY Times hosts a debate: most of the debaters think the answer is "yes": Do Unpaid Internships Exploit College Students?

Alex Peysakhovich writes

"I talked to a friend of mine who is in the music recording business about this. He started work in a studio as an unpaid intern (for about 6 months) then got hired onto the staff. For reference: they usually have about 3-4 interns and 1-2 staff in the studio during business hours, so most of their labor hours come in from free sources (but it counts as training since interns do most of the tech work).

"He gave me the "well, that's how the business works... if they want to enter the business they need to put in the time." He didn't really buy the "lots of unpaid internships are exploitative" arguments making the, very economist point, that they're giving a chance to let the interns signal their actual interest and ability.

"How much of this is selection (he thought it was ok so he did it) vs how much is "it's hard to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it," I'm not sure."