Design of electronic stock exchanges (after the Facebook IPO)

The technical (as opposed to financial and disclosure) difficulties in the recent Facebook IPO have led to renewed discussion in the press about market design in a world of high velocity trading. Here's one of the more thoughtful stories: Could Computers Protect the Market From Computers?

"The Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the capital markets, has proposed a "consolidated audit trail" requiring exchanges to report every trade to a central repository, where they could later be analyzed.

"The project is a "very high priority" for the SEC, says an official, but the agency doesn't know when the rules for it will be completed. The main obstacle: agreeing on how to standardize the various formats that brokers and exchanges use to gather trading data.

"It will cost money to improve and modernize market structure," says Bryan Harkins, chief operating officer at Direct Edge, the fourth-largest stock exchange. "But the short-term money pales in comparison to boosting investor confidence in the long term."

"The SEC has estimated that a centralized order-tracking system would cost approximately $4 billion to set up and $2.1 billion a year to maintain.

"Mr. Leinweber of Berkeley has a simpler, and probably cheaper, solution in mind. He proposes that supercomputers—like those at national laboratories such as Berkeley's—should track every trade in real time. If volume began surging dangerously, the system would flash a "yellow light." Regulators or stock exchanges could then slow trading down, giving the market time to clear and potentially averting a crisis."

Economics faculty and market design at Stanford

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story about how Stanford Lures 3 Top Economists from Harvard that focuses on market design.

""The chance to be a colleague with my former students seemed like a lot of fun," says Mr. Roth, a professor of economics and business administration at Harvard."

Should radio spectrum be rented instead of sold?

Some thoughts on the market for radio spectrum (i.e. for how it should be licensed and sold): Presidential Panel Urges More Flexible Use of Spectrum.

"A just-completed report from a presidential advisory committee urges President Obama to adopt new computer technologies to make better use of a huge swath of the radio spectrum now controlled by federal agencies.

"The shift, which could be accomplished by presidential signature — and without Congressional involvement — would relieve spectrum congestion caused by the popularity of smartphones, and generate far more revenue for the federal government than auctioning spectrum to wireless carriers, according to the authors of the report.

"The new plan, which calls on the government to electronically rent or lease spectrum for periods of time as short as seconds using newly available computerized radio technologies, was presented publicly Friday to a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST.

"The authors of the report included Eric E. Schmidt, the chairman of Google, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer and Silicon Valley venture capitalists Mark P. Gorenberg and David E. Liddle, among others. The report is scheduled to be presented to the president in June after final editing."

B-school applications

You can tell you're in a matching market if there's an application and admission process. Selective Business schools are deeply into their admissions processes. The WSJ has a short description of the newly released Harvard Business School application for the class of 2015. HBS asks for two short essays this year:
Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)
Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

Applicants who get through the initial screening process are invited for in person interviews, at which point around one in two get accepted.

Misc. further notes on transplantation and deceased donation in Israel

The new Israeli transplant law which gives priority for transplants to people who have signed donor cards has gone into effect, and the first transplants were received by people who received priority in this way in April. YNET has the story here, in Hebrew (but try Google translate...).

The phenomenon I wrote about yesterday, about gaming the system, will take a while to evaluate, since only in time will people who signed donor cards under the new law become potential donors.

Here's an experimental paper forthcoming in the August AER, reporting a lab experiment with such a prioritiy scheme in an abstract setting (but without a strategy set large enough to explore the kind of gaming described yesterday):
Kessler, Judd B. and Alvin E. Roth, '' Organ Allocation Policy and the Decision to Donate,'' American Economic Review, forthcoming.

HT: Ran Shorrer

Israeli organ donation card--gaming the new priority system

Here's the new Israeli organ donation card:

The details they ask for are:

first name, last name, id number, street, city, zip code, year of birth, phone number, alt. phone number.

Then in red:

With the hope that I may be of help to another, I hereby order and donate after my death:

() Any organ of my body that another my find of use to save his/her life.

Or:

() Kidney () Liver () Cornea () Heart () Skin () Lungs () Bones () Pancreas

[] As long as a clergyman chosen by my family will approve the donation after my death.

* My donation is for transplant only

* Only above age 18

Date ________________      Signature _________________

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

Notice the last choice, specifying that the donation may be contingent on the decision of a "clergyman chosen by my family."

To be understood this choice has to be viewed in connection with the new Israeli legislation that gives priority for allocating organs to those who are registered donors. There was a fight about whether to include the "clergyman clause" on the donor card. I blogged about that fight here, the idea being that it might give priority to get an organ if they needed one to some people who had signed the donor card without intending to actually become donors even if they died in a way that otherwise made them eligible:

""Health officials suspect that the [stipulation about a clergyman] is part of an effort by religious groups to bypass the system. In effect, people who do not genuinely intend to donate organs would receive preferential treatment while on the waiting list for a transplant. Their religious patron would then veto the organ donation if the person dies."




HT: Rann Smorodinsky and Assaf Romm

Conservative rabbinate recognizes same sex marriages

Conservative Movement sanctions same-sex marriage

"The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards issued the ruling Thursday on a 13-0 vote with one abstention, said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, the committee chairman. The panel of scholars approved two model wedding ceremonies and guidelines for a same-sex divorce. Rabbis can adapt the marriage ceremonies for the couples.

"We acknowledge that these partnerships are distinct from those discussed in the Talmud as `according to the law of Moses and Israel,' but we celebrate them with the same sense of holiness and joy as that expressed in heterosexual marriages," the legal opinion states.

"Conservative Judaism is the second-largest Jewish movement in North America and holds a middle ground between liberal and traditional groups. The Reform and Reconstructionist branches accept gay relationships, while the stricter Orthodox Jewish movement does not. The Conservative law committee lifted the ban on gay ordination in December 2006.

Elinor Ostrom 1933-2012

Lin Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel prize in economics for her work on the design of common pool resource systems. She studied how communities provided things for themselves, like irrigation in mountain valleys in Nepal...

Her work included lab experiments.

Here's today's announcement of her passing: IU community mourns passing of Distinguished Professor and Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom

Jerry Green conference in Tel Aviv

Conference in Economic Theoryin Honor of Jerry Green 
Tel Aviv, Israel 13-15 June, 2012


It starts tomorrow, organized by Eddie Dekel, in honor of Jerry Green's 65th birthday. There's a long list of participants.

 Here's the conference program:

Wednesday, June 13th

8:50-9:00 - Opening Remarks

9:00-10:00 - Elections and Strategic Voting: Condorcet and Borda
Eric Maskin (Harvard)

10:00-11:00 - Optimal Contracts and Money BurningAttila Ambrus (Duke University)

11:00-11:20 - Coffee Break

11:20-12:20 - Behavioral Competitive Equlibrium and Extreme PricesTomasz Strzalecki (Harvard)

12:20-13:50 - Lunch  

13:50-14:50 - TBA
Hugo Hopenhayn (UCLA) 

14:50-15:50 - A Search Story of the Peacock's TailBalazs Szentes (Chicago)

15:50-16:10 - Coffee Break 

16:10-17:10 - Impartial Decision MakingHerve Moulin (Rice)

17:20 - Bus departs from the university to the hotel

18:40 - Bus departs from the hotel to "Shalvata" for an informal buffet-style dinner at the port overlooking the sea. Dinner at 19:00.
 
Thursday, June 14th
9:00-10:00 - Concurrent Discovery 
Joel Sobel (UCSD)

10:00-11:00 - Multidimensional Product DesignGlen Weyl (Chicago)

11:00-11:20 - Coffee Break 

11:20-12:20 - Two(!) Good To Be TrueSergiu Hart (Hebrew University)

12:20-13:50 - Lunch

13:50-14:50 - Decision-Theoretic Underpinnings of Informativeness OrderingsRoberto Serrano (Brown)

14:50-15:50 -  Communication and Money in Repeated Games on Networks  
Alex Wolitzky (Stanford) 

15:50-16:10 - Coffee Break  

16:10-17:10 - TBADrew Fudenberg (Harvard)

17:20 - Bus departs from the university to the hotel

19:10 - Bus departs from the hotel to "Liliot" for the main conference dinner. 
Dinner at 19:30.

Friday, June 15th
9:00-10:00 - Robustness
Stephen Morris (Princeton)

10:00-11:00 - Strategic TournamentsAriel Rubinstein (Tel Aviv University and New York University)

11:00-11:20 - Coffee Break

11:20-12:20 - TBA
John Geanakoplos (Yale)

12:20-13:50 - Lunch

14:00 - Bus departs from the university to the hotel.

16:40 - Bus departs from the hotel for a tour of Tel Aviv's White City (a World Cultural Heritage site) and Jaffa (see local information for more information). The tour is about 3-4 hours.

Ariel Rubinstein on why game theory is no good

Ariel Rubinstein is the famous game theorist who thinks that game theory isn't useful. It's a position he's put forward in many venues (e.g. here), most recently in this interview (and see his new book--new in English that is).

I once gave a talk at the Hebrew University that was followed immediately with a talk by Ariel, to the same audience. My talk was called something like "The Economist as Engineer," and focused on the kinds of market design applications of game theory covered in this blog: labor market clearinghouses for doctors and others, school choice mechanisms in various American cities, kidney exchange...

Ariel's talk was called something like "Why game theory isn't useful." 

So, I gave my talk, we broke for a fifteen minute coffee break, then we all came back and Ariel stood up and I sat where he had been sitting and everyone else returned to their seats. Naturally the first question he got, just about when he had finished saying the title of his talk, was "how about all that stuff that Al just talked about?  Isn't it useful?"

He answered (I paraphrase from memory): "Oh, Al's stuff is useful alright. But it's not game theory."

Eating dogs

A NY Times op-ed considers the repugnance of eating the dog...

"Although dog-eating is taboo in the United States, personal consumption of dog meat is legal in most states. Likewise, Americans find horse-eating offensive; a five-year federal ban on slaughtering horses for human consumption was lifted last year. (Chicken-fried horse steak with onion gravy was on the menu at the Harvard Faculty Club until 1985.) Horse meat is consumed in France, just as dog meat is eaten in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Tonga, parts of Asia and even Switzerland. In Poland, some ingest dog fat as a curative. The status of dog meat as a hard-luck food is also well documented — Germans during the two world wars referred to it as “blockade mutton.”

 "Yet in the United States, dog-eating has been a longstanding flashpoint for anxieties about race and citizenship. In 1904, a group of scantily clad Philippine Igorots from the Luzon highlands reenacted a daily “Bow Wow Feast” at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Loosely based on the custom of sumang, in which a dog was sacrificed and eaten after military victory, the dog-eating spectacle was a sensation. Touring Los Angeles in 1906, the Igorots, now suspiciously “fat and glossy,” were blamed for an “epidemic of thefts” of over 200 “high-class dogs,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

 "No dog theft was ever substantiated, but American politicians readily declared that the Igorots were “unfit” for American citizenship, a pressing matter in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, when the United States defeated Spain, claimed its empire and annexed the Philippines. Moreover, the arrival of millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South fueled white nativist fears of racial mongrelization. Between 1901 and 1904, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution need not “follow the Flag”; the country could legally annex an overseas territory and deny its people citizenship. New American humane education programs in Philippine public schools stressed the importance of animal kindness, including the proper care of pet dogs, as a keystone of civilization, moral agency and, perhaps, future independence. "

Economic Fables by Ariel Rubinstein

Recently translated from the Hebrew

The Amazon web page I accessed also offers 9 new from $14.98 1 used from $47.89. (Those used books are still rare...)

Here is the book description (I haven't seen it yet, but hope to read it on the long plane-ride home from Israel later this week):

"I had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful area of Jerusalem, surrounded by a diverse range of people: Rabbi Meizel, the communist Sala Marcel, my widowed Aunt Hannah, and the intellectual Yaacovson. As far as I'm concerned, the opinion of such people is just as authoritative for making social and economic decisions as the opinion of an expert using a model." Part memoir, part crash-course in economic theory, this deeply engaging book by one of the world's foremost economists looks at economic ideas through a personal lens. Together with an introduction to some of the central concepts in modern economic thought, Ariel Rubinstein offers some powerful and entertaining reflections on his childhood, family and career. In doing so, he challenges many of the central tenets of game theory, and sheds light on the role economics can play in society at large. Economic Fables is as thought-provoking for seasoned economists as it is enlightening for newcomers to the field.

Medical school admissions statistics

From the NY Times, accompanying this story: Pre-Med’s New Priorities: Heart and Soul and Social Science

Dead eagles: a different sort of cadaver shortage

A different sort of deceased donor waiting list: A Repository for Eagles Finds Itself In Demand

"the National Eagle Repository [is] the only place where American Indians can legally obtain bald and golden eagles from the federal government for traditional ceremonies.

"Through a series of federal acts dating to the 1940s, bald and golden eagles have been fiercely protected. It is illegal to hunt the birds and also to collect feathers or eagle parts without the proper permit.

"And so, for more than 30 years, this United States Fish and Wildlife Service program has been shipping thousands of eagle carcasses and parts to American Indians, who view the animals as sacred.

"But a growing backlog of applications, and a slew of recent court battles over when American Indians can lawfully obtain eagles on their own, has raised questions about whether the repository is sufficient.

"Currently, tribal members seeking an immature golden eagle, the most coveted bird, must wait about four and a half years. Wait times for a bald eagle are two years. Despite the efforts by the Wildlife Service to ship animals as swiftly as possible, the waiting list has swelled to more than 6,000 applications.
**********


National Eagle Repository

Same sex marriage: some history til now

The Washington Post gives some background to recent events.

"In 1970, in a case that made national news, Baker and McConnell applied for a marriage license in Minnesota.
...
"Baker and McConnell were denied when they applied to marry in Minnesota in 1970. They challenged that decision in court. They lost.

“The institution of marriage as a union [of] man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis,” wrote the Minnesota Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in.
...
"But after the AIDS epidemic, there was a shift: Instead of keeping the law away, gay couples wanted the law on their side. “This request for marriage is, in effect, sort of asking the government to regulate our relationships, or at least give gay people the opportunity to be regulated by the government,” Ball said.

"Then, in Hawaii, a lesbian named Ninia Baehr had an ear infection. She lacked health insurance and — as medical bills piled up — she called a local gay rights group to see if she could obtain insurance through her partner.

"They asked if she’d like to get married, instead. When the state of Hawaii refused her request for a marriage license, Baehr and others filed suit. Their case brought a landmark victory in 1993: State courts declared that Hawaii had no constitutional basis for denying marriage licenses to gay couples.

"Then the case led to one loss after another. Hawaii amended its constitution and defined marriage as only between a man and a woman. And, around the country, some religious and conservative groups began to mobilize against a threat they hadn’t taken seriously before.
...
"The result was the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Bill Clinton. It defines marriage, for federal purposes, as a legal union between one man and one woman. The Obama administration has now stopped defending that law in court.

"For those advocating same-sex marriage, the next big win came in Massachusetts in 2003, when the state Supreme Court legalized marriages between gay couples.

"Now, six states and the District of Columbia allow gay couples to marry. Two states, Washington and Maryland, have gay marriage laws that have not taken effect. And five others give gay couples the rights of marriage without the name, allowing “civil unions” instead.

"But, in 39 states, gay marriage has been specifically prohibited through laws or constitutional amendments.

"Baker and McConnell, the men who made the promise in Oklahoma, still live in Minnesota, well past retirement age. They now avoid the media: When a Washington Post reporter called McConnell this week, he declined to comment.

"They have seen up-close that making same-sex marriage thinkable is not the same as making it real. Gay marriage is still illegal in Minnesota. And this November, voters will consider writing that ban into their state constitution."

Terasaki Medical Innovation award

Itai Ashlagi and I received the NKR Terasaki Medical Innovation award Monday evening at the American Transplant Congress meeting in Boston, for our work on kidney exchange algorithms for patient pools with highly sensitized patients.

"The Terasaki Medical Innovation Award will be presented annually to a medical professional who, through their pioneering work, has had a significant impact in advancing paired exchange transplantation and saving the lives of those facing kidney failure. "

Awards are nice for the recipients, but one can't help but be mpressed by the career of the scientist after whom the award is named, UCLA's Dr. Paul Ichiro Terasaki. Dr. Terasaki pioneered the tests used today to determine immunocompatibility, and built a business to make tools to implement those tests widely available.

Born in California in 1929, he and his family were interned with other Japanese-Americans during WWII. Later in life he donated $50 Million to UCLA, which named their Life Sciences building after him.

In short, he has had a storied scientific and American career.

Also receiving an award Monday evening was the non-directed altruistic donor Alexander Berger, about whom I blogged earlier: A kidney donor argues that selling kidneys should be legal, after he published a NY Times op-ed to that effect. (He's a 2011 Stanford philosophy grad, and he apparently worked with Debra Satz, although they disagree about whether kidney sales should be allowed.) Appropriately enough, he's currently working for an organization called Give Well, which works to identify charities that are "cost-effective, underfunded, and outstanding." He gave well himself, and started a nonsimultaneous extended altruistic donor (NEAD) chain of the kind NKR is famous for.

(I discussed the first NEAD chain here, and have posted about them frequently.)

The food was pretty good too.

What has G-d been doing since the Creation? (Matchmaking, of course...))

My recently graduated student Jacob Leshno left me with a wonderful parting gift: he (and his dad) arranged to have a sofer, a Hebrew scribe, write out one of my favourite passages from the Talmud, which suggests that matching is a very big deal indeed...

A Roman lady asked R. Jose b. Halafta: ‘In how many days did the Holy One, blessed be He, create His world”’  He answered: ‘In six days, as it is written, For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, etc.(Ex. XXXI, 17).  She asked further: ‘And what has He been doing since that time?’  He answered: ‘He is joining couples [proclaiming]: “A’s wife [to be] is allotted to A; A’s daughter is allotted to B; (So-and-so’s wealth is for So-and-so).”’  Said she: ‘This is a thing which I, too, am able to do.  See how many male slaves and how many female slaves I have; I can make them consort together all at the same time.’  Said he: ‘If in your eyes it is an easy task, it is in His eyes as hard a task as the dividing of the Red Sea.’ He then went away and left her.  What did she do?  She sent for a thousand male slaves and a thousand female slaves, placed them in rows, and said to them: ‘Male A shall take to wife female B; C shall take D and so on.’  She let them consort together one night.  In the morning they came to her; one had a head wounded, another had an eye taken out, another an elbow crushed, another a leg broken; one said ‘I do not want this one [as my husband],’ another said: ‘I do not want this one [as my wife].’

Midrash Rabbah (VaYikra Rabbah)

Translated into English under the editorship of Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman, and Maurice Simon,

Leviticus, Chapters I-XIX translated by Rev. J. Israelstam, Soncino Press, London, 1939

Chapter VIII (TZAV)

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

And if empirical evidence is needed that some marriages are arranged in heaven, consider the wedding this evening of Dvorah Marciano and Assaf Romm in Jerusalem, and the upcoming weddings of Ilana Turko and Judd Kessler on Shelter Island, and Theresa Morin and Brian Hall on Little Cranberry Island, and a little further ahead of Coren Apicella and Eduardo Azevedo, and Katie Baldiga and Luke Coffman. (Not to mention lots of anniversaries that come to mind, including Emilie's and my recent 35th:). It appears that economists are also into matching...)
***************

Update (from Jacob Leshno): here is the line by line translation...

מטרוניתא שאלה את ר' יוסי בר חלפתא, אמרה לו:	A Roman lady asked R. Jose b. Halafta:
בכמה ימים ברא הקב"ה את עולמו?	‘In how many days did the Holy One, blessed be He, create His World?”
אמר לה: לששת ימים, דכתיב (שמות לא): כי ששת ימים עשה ה' את השמים וגו'.	He answered: ‘In six days, as it is written, For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, etc.’
אמרה לו: ומאותה שעה עד עכשיו מהו יושב ועושה?	She asked further: ‘And what has He been doing since that time?’
אמר לה: מזווג זווגים. אשתו של פלוני לפלוני,	He answered: ‘He is joining couples: “A’s wife [to be allotted] to A;
בתו של פלוני לפלוני, ממונו של פלוני לפלוני.	A’s daughter is allotted to B; (so-and-so’s wealth is for so-and-so).”
אמרה לו: הדא הוא?! אף אני יכולה לעשות כן. כמה עבדים יש לי וכמה שפחות יש לי ואני יכולה לזווגם בשעה אחת!	Said she:  ‘This is a thing which I, too, am able to do. See how many male slaves and how many female slaves I have; I can make them consort together all at the same time.’
אמר לה: אם קלה היא בעיניך, קשה היא לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא, כקריעת ים סוף!	Said he: ‘If in your eyes it is an easy task, it is in His eyes as hard a task as the dividing of the Red Sea.’
הניחה והלך לו.	He then went away and left her.
מה עשתה?	What did she do?
שלחה והביאה אלף עבדים ואלף שפחות והעמידה אותן שורות שורות.	She sent for a thousand male slaves and a thousand female slaves, placed them in rows
אמרה להם: פלוני ישא לפלונית, פלוני לפלונית, זווגן בלילה אחת.	, and said to them: ‘Male A shall take to wife female B; C shall take D and so on She let them consort together one night.
לצפרא אתין לגבה, דין מוחו פציעה ודין עינו שמוטה ודין אציליה פריך ודין ארכובה חבירה.	In the morning they came to her; one had a head wounded, another had an eye taken out, another an elbow crushed, another a leg broken;
דין אמר: לינא בעיא לדין, ודין אמר: לינא בעיא לדין.	one said: ‘I do not want this one,’ another said: ‘I do not want this one
מיד שלחה והביאה את ר' יוסי בר חלפתא אמרה לו: רבי! אמת היא תורתכם, נאה משובחת היא!	Immediately she sent for Rabi Jose b. Halafta, told him: Rabi! True is your wisdom and fair it is
יפה אמרת כל מה שאמרת.	Well said all that you have spoken

First year of the new medical residency scramble, SOAP

I've written before about the new Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP), and the National Resident Matching Program has now released a report on its first year of operation.

There were 1,100 unfilled first year positions at the end of the main match, and 815 unmatched seniors graduating from U.S. medical schools (and many more unmatched applicants when foreign medical schools are included). Most of the unmatched positions were in family medicine and in "preliminary" rotations in surgery and internal medicine.

After the first day of the SOAP exploding offer process (i.e. after two rounds of exploding offers), only 267 positions remained, and 98 of these remained unfilled. So, most of the action happened the first day.

Medical schools complained that students were asked to "commit" to programs prior to receiving an offer, and thought that rounds should be longer. Residency programs thought rounds should be shorter.

In line with the criticisms of the design offered earlier (see here), I anticipate that next year more students will be asked to "commit" before receiving an offer (even though it's against the rules), and that even more of the action will be concentrated in the first day and the first round, with more of the market shifting out of the formal scramble, either officially or de facto, through the offline "commitment" process....

As I was quoted saying last year (see here), "If it's really, really tempting for people on both sides to break the rules," says Roth, "often the rules get broken."


HT: Nikhil Agarwal

David Warsh on Stanford Econ

David Warsh, in his role as economist-watcher, in The Providence Journal today (along with some observations about the market for newspapers):


"The Stanford University buildup in economics, financed by the riches of Silicon Valley, continues apace. Susan Athey and Guido Imbens, of Harvard, a married couple, last week accepted an offer. Previously announced was the decision of Alvin Roth, of Harvard Business School, to relocate to Palo Alto. Other offers are said to be in the works.


"Athey and Roth are market designers, at the forefront of especially exciting developments in present-day economics, in which the nexus with technology is especially germain. (Imbens is a highly rated econometrician.) Athey started a research laboratory for Microsoft in Cambridge that has since grown to considerable size. I don't suppose that the leadership of economics itself is in any danger of tipping out of Massachusetts. But it's clearly easier to make things happen on the Left Coast."

N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

"The board of the N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage on Saturday, putting the weight of the country’s most prominent civil rights group behind a cause that has long divided some quarters of the black community.
...
"Borrowing a term used by gay right’s advocates, the resolution stated: “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
...
"The strongest opposition to gay weddings within the black community has come from church leaders, whose opinions may not be swayed by the N.A.A.C.P. In its resolution, the board appeared to be sensitive to those objections, reaffirming its support for religious freedom.
...
"Black and white Americans are divided on same-sex marriage in similar numbers, according to the results of four aggregated polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News over the past year.

 "Yet there is greater opposition among black Democrats than white Democrats. Sixty-one percent of white Democrats supported legalizing marriage for gay couples, compared with 36 percent of black Democrats, while 35 percent of black Democrats opposed any legal recognition, compared with 18 percent of white Democrats."