Deceased donor organs in the United States are allocated through regional (not national) waiting lists, which leads to some dramatic differences in e.g. waiting times in different parts of the country. Individual candidates for transplantation can register as patients in different regions, if they are healthy and wealthy enough to move around. (e.g. Steve Jobs received a liver in Memphis, although I recall he worked at a company located in California...) He had access to good transportation opportunities.
CMU professor Srihar Tayur, who will be speaking at Stanford GSB at noon today, has an entrepreneurial project, OrganJet, intended to give that kind of access to transportation to people for whom it has previously been an insuperable obstacle. Here's an article about his operation: Can Private Jets for the Poor Save Health Care Dollars?
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Art vs. porn: do you know it when you see it?
An art museum in Vienna has had to censor the ads for its exhibits of male nudes: here's the story (in German, but with before and after pictures). Penis-Plakat nach Protesten zensiert
HT: Muriel Niederle
HT: Muriel Niederle
Monday, October 22, 2012
Ads for kidneys in Iran
An article in Haaretz describes the market for kidneys ("kidney bazaar" בזאר הכליות) in Iran, and includes this picture of ads written on a wall in Tehran.
"Qasemi Mustafa, head of Kidney Patients Support Association in Iran, said the average sum received by the donors ranged around $ 6,000 [paid by the recipient]. The Government adds that another thousand dollars."
HT: Ran Shorrer
Here's a closely related story in the Guardian: In the only country where the organ trade is legal, the streets near hospitals have been turned into a 'kidney eBay'
"Iran is the only country where the selling and buying of kidneys is legal. As a result, there is no shortage of the organs – but for those trying to sell a kidney, there is a lot of competition.
... "Competition means that some ads have been torn down. Some have added their information to ads by other donors. Others have placed their ads on people's doors or simply written them in marker pen on trees where they think they will catch people's attention.
"At the heart of the capital, near the Charity Association for the Support of Kidney Patients (CASKP), the number of ads has made the streets of Tehran into a sort of kidney eBay.
...
"Iran's controversial kidney procurement system, which has been praised by many experts and criticised by others, allows people to sell and buy kidneys under the state-regulated surveillance of two non-profit organisations, the CASKP and the Charity Foundation for Special Diseases. These charities facilitate the process by finding potential vendors and introducing them to the recipients, and are charged with checking the compatibility of a possible donation and ensuring a fair trade.
"After the transplant, the vendor is compensated by both the government and the recipient. In an interview with the semi-official Mehr news agency, the CASKP's director, Mostafa Ghassemi, estimated the total official price list to be around 7m rials, of which 1m is paid by the government. Iranians are not allowed to donate kidneys to non-citizens.
"In 2010, a total of 2,285 kidney transplants took place in the country, of which 1,690 kidneys were supplied from volunteers and 595 from those clinically brain-dead," he said. According to Mehr, the majority of people selling kidneys are aged 20-30. Despite the state control, bureaucracy and time-consuming procedures have left the door open for non-official direct negotiations, making the Iranian system more like a kidney market.
"Dr Benjamin Hippen, a transplant nephrologist with the Carolinas medical centre in North Carolina, US, has studied successes, deficiencies and the ambiguities of the Iranian system.
"Making a judgment about whether the 20-year-old system as a whole has been successful was complicated, he said. "The majority of those selling kidneys in Iran are disproportionately poor, and information about the long-term outcomes for sellers is quite limited. Too, it is increasingly clear that there are many different systems, rather than a single unified system in Iran.
"That said, Iran appears to have successfully addressed the shortage of organs, incentives for organs have not substantially attenuated the growth and development of organ procurement from deceased donors, and reported outcomes for recipients have been favourable."
"Comparing Iran with Pakistan, where organ trafficking is nominally illegal but still occurs, Hippen, who is an associate editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, said: "It seems to me that if Iran had not developed a system of incentives, the situation there today would look very much like the state of affairs in countries such as Pakistan."
"In the US, more than 100,000 people were estimated to be on the waiting list for kidney transplants in 2010 – waiting lists were eliminated in Iran in 1999.
"Hippen has pointed out that "since 1999, more than 30,000 US patients with kidney failure have died waiting for an organ that never arrived".
"Arguing in favour of allowing people to sell their kidneys, Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at the University of Dundee, said last year that it was time to "pilot paid provision of live kidneys in the UK under strict rules of access and equity".
HT: Ran Shorrer
Here's a closely related story in the Guardian: In the only country where the organ trade is legal, the streets near hospitals have been turned into a 'kidney eBay'
"Iran is the only country where the selling and buying of kidneys is legal. As a result, there is no shortage of the organs – but for those trying to sell a kidney, there is a lot of competition.
... "Competition means that some ads have been torn down. Some have added their information to ads by other donors. Others have placed their ads on people's doors or simply written them in marker pen on trees where they think they will catch people's attention.
"At the heart of the capital, near the Charity Association for the Support of Kidney Patients (CASKP), the number of ads has made the streets of Tehran into a sort of kidney eBay.
...
"Iran's controversial kidney procurement system, which has been praised by many experts and criticised by others, allows people to sell and buy kidneys under the state-regulated surveillance of two non-profit organisations, the CASKP and the Charity Foundation for Special Diseases. These charities facilitate the process by finding potential vendors and introducing them to the recipients, and are charged with checking the compatibility of a possible donation and ensuring a fair trade.
"After the transplant, the vendor is compensated by both the government and the recipient. In an interview with the semi-official Mehr news agency, the CASKP's director, Mostafa Ghassemi, estimated the total official price list to be around 7m rials, of which 1m is paid by the government. Iranians are not allowed to donate kidneys to non-citizens.
"In 2010, a total of 2,285 kidney transplants took place in the country, of which 1,690 kidneys were supplied from volunteers and 595 from those clinically brain-dead," he said. According to Mehr, the majority of people selling kidneys are aged 20-30. Despite the state control, bureaucracy and time-consuming procedures have left the door open for non-official direct negotiations, making the Iranian system more like a kidney market.
"Dr Benjamin Hippen, a transplant nephrologist with the Carolinas medical centre in North Carolina, US, has studied successes, deficiencies and the ambiguities of the Iranian system.
"Making a judgment about whether the 20-year-old system as a whole has been successful was complicated, he said. "The majority of those selling kidneys in Iran are disproportionately poor, and information about the long-term outcomes for sellers is quite limited. Too, it is increasingly clear that there are many different systems, rather than a single unified system in Iran.
"That said, Iran appears to have successfully addressed the shortage of organs, incentives for organs have not substantially attenuated the growth and development of organ procurement from deceased donors, and reported outcomes for recipients have been favourable."
"Comparing Iran with Pakistan, where organ trafficking is nominally illegal but still occurs, Hippen, who is an associate editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, said: "It seems to me that if Iran had not developed a system of incentives, the situation there today would look very much like the state of affairs in countries such as Pakistan."
"In the US, more than 100,000 people were estimated to be on the waiting list for kidney transplants in 2010 – waiting lists were eliminated in Iran in 1999.
"Hippen has pointed out that "since 1999, more than 30,000 US patients with kidney failure have died waiting for an organ that never arrived".
"Arguing in favour of allowing people to sell their kidneys, Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at the University of Dundee, said last year that it was time to "pilot paid provision of live kidneys in the UK under strict rules of access and equity".
Sunday, October 21, 2012
NBER market design meeting photo
At the NBER meetings in Cambridge on Friday and Saturday, someone called for "Al's students and postdocs" to gather for a photo:
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Ed Glaeser on Boston school choice
Ed Glaeser writes in the Boston Globe: Boston school-assignments: Listen to the Nobel committee
One sentence struck me as a little odd:
"The current system owes much to Roth, a professor at UCLA, and Shapley, a Harvard colleague of mine (who, sadly, is leaving for Stanford)."
One sentence struck me as a little odd:
"The current system owes much to Roth, a professor at UCLA, and Shapley, a Harvard colleague of mine (who, sadly, is leaving for Stanford)."
Friday, October 19, 2012
Back in my old haunts
I'll be guest lecturing today in my old market design class at Harvard, as now taught by Peter Coles and Ben Edelman. I'll speak about kidney exchange.
Then I'll go to the NBER workshop on market design:
Kenneth Hendricks, University of Wisconsin and NBER
Daniel Quint, University of WisconsinSelecting Bidders Via Non-Binding Bids When Entry Is Costly
Sergiu Hart, Hebrew University
Noam Nisan, Hebrew UniversityThe Menu-Size Complexity of Auctions
Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College
Aditya Bhave, University of Chicago
Eric Budish, University of ChicagoPrimary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of "Bob the Broker"
Elisa Celis, University of Washington
Gregory Lewis, Harvard University and NBER
Markus Mobius, Iowa State University and NBER
Hamid Nazerzadeh, University of Southern California
Buy-it-Now or Take-a-Chance: Price Discrimination through Randomized Auctions
Then I'll go to the NBER workshop on market design:
9:00 amWilliam Fuchs, University of California at Berkeley
Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University
Costs and Benefits of Dynamic Trading in a Lemons Market
Costs and Benefits of Dynamic Trading in a Lemons Market
10:35 am
Kenneth Hendricks, University of Wisconsin and NBER
Daniel Quint, University of WisconsinSelecting Bidders Via Non-Binding Bids When Entry Is Costly
Sergiu Hart, Hebrew University
Noam Nisan, Hebrew UniversityThe Menu-Size Complexity of Auctions
Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University
Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei University
Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University
Efficient Assignment with Interdependent Values
Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei University
Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University
Efficient Assignment with Interdependent Values
1:30 pm
Itai Ashlagi, MIT
Alvin Roth, Stanford University and NBER
Kidney Exchange in Time and Space
Alvin Roth, Stanford University and NBER
Kidney Exchange in Time and Space
Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College
M. Utku Unver, Boston College
Welfare Consequences of Transplant Organ Allocation Policies
Welfare Consequences of Transplant Organ Allocation Policies
3:20 pm
Peter Cramton, University of Maryland
Pacharasut Sujarittanonta, Cramton Associates LLC
Robert Wilson, Stanford University
Using an Auction to Dissolve a Partnership Efficiently
Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland
Jonathan Levin, Stanford University and NBER
Paul Milgrom, Stanford University
Ilya Segal, Stanford UniversityIncentive Auction Rules Option and Discussion
Pacharasut Sujarittanonta, Cramton Associates LLC
Robert Wilson, Stanford University
Using an Auction to Dissolve a Partnership Efficiently
Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland
Jonathan Levin, Stanford University and NBER
Paul Milgrom, Stanford University
Ilya Segal, Stanford UniversityIncentive Auction Rules Option and Discussion
Saturday, October 20:
9:00 am
Aditya Bhave, University of Chicago
Eric Budish, University of ChicagoPrimary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of "Bob the Broker"
Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke University
Nikhil Agarwal, Harvard University
Parag Pathak, MIT and NBER
Centralized vs. Decentralized School Assignment: Evidence from NYC
10:40 am
Qingmin Liu, Columbia University
Marek Pycia, University of California at Los Angeles
Ordinal Efficiency, Fairness, and Incentives in Large Markets
Marek Pycia, University of California at Los Angeles
Ordinal Efficiency, Fairness, and Incentives in Large Markets
Scott Duke Kominers, University of Chicago
Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College
Designing for Diversity in Matching
Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College
Designing for Diversity in Matching
1:00 pm
Elisa Celis, University of Washington
Gregory Lewis, Harvard University and NBER
Markus Mobius, Iowa State University and NBER
Hamid Nazerzadeh, University of Southern California
Buy-it-Now or Take-a-Chance: Price Discrimination through Randomized Auctions
Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania
Mallesh Pai, University of Pennsylvania
Aaron Roth, University of Pennsylvania
Jonathan Ullman, Harvard University
Mechanism Design in Large Games: Incentives and Privacy
Mallesh Pai, University of Pennsylvania
Aaron Roth, University of Pennsylvania
Jonathan Ullman, Harvard University
Mechanism Design in Large Games: Incentives and Privacy
David Rothschild, Microsoft Research
David Pennock, Microsoft Research
The Extent of Price Misalignment in Prediction Markets
David Pennock, Microsoft Research
The Extent of Price Misalignment in Prediction Markets
3:00 pm
Adjourn
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Kidney exchange in India
This story of kidney exchange in India reminds me of the early days in the U.S., before there was a thick marketplace. (In addition it sounds as if Indian laws make exchange difficult, no doubt with the intention of making difficult the cash-for-kidneys black market...)
""Both the patients had approached us separately. They had come along with came individually with their respective wives as probable donors. But the transplants could not take place at that time as the blood groups of the patients and that of their respective wives did not match," said Dr Deepak Shankar Ray, the head of nephrology at RTIICS.
"Later, while scanning through the list of renal failure patients with renal failures and their prospective donors (related) who had come to the hospital, Ray happened to stumbled upon the fact that Manoj Kumar's blood group which is A +matched that of Umesh Prasad.
"Gupta's wife's, while Gupta's blood group was the same as which is B + matched that of Kumar's wife. While Nandarani and Gupta are B+, Kumar and Reena are both A+. The doctor then acted as a link between the two parties informing them that the transplants could happen if their wives were ready to donate their kidneys to someone else.
...
"Armed with no-objection certificates from the health department of their respective states (mandatory under the Organ Transplant Act), the patients came back returned to Kolkata a few weeks back.
"In Kolkata, advocate Subhomoy Samajddar filed affidavits at Alipore court that is required for unrelated donor transplant. The court has granted permission and we will forward all documents to the state health department next week that will complete all the legal formalities," said Sumato Ghosh, the legal manager at RTIICS."
""Both the patients had approached us separately. They had come along with came individually with their respective wives as probable donors. But the transplants could not take place at that time as the blood groups of the patients and that of their respective wives did not match," said Dr Deepak Shankar Ray, the head of nephrology at RTIICS.
"Later, while scanning through the list of renal failure patients with renal failures and their prospective donors (related) who had come to the hospital, Ray happened to stumbled upon the fact that Manoj Kumar's blood group which is A +matched that of Umesh Prasad.
"Gupta's wife's, while Gupta's blood group was the same as which is B + matched that of Kumar's wife. While Nandarani and Gupta are B+, Kumar and Reena are both A+. The doctor then acted as a link between the two parties informing them that the transplants could happen if their wives were ready to donate their kidneys to someone else.
...
"Armed with no-objection certificates from the health department of their respective states (mandatory under the Organ Transplant Act), the patients came back returned to Kolkata a few weeks back.
"In Kolkata, advocate Subhomoy Samajddar filed affidavits at Alipore court that is required for unrelated donor transplant. The court has granted permission and we will forward all documents to the state health department next week that will complete all the legal formalities," said Sumato Ghosh, the legal manager at RTIICS."
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Kidney exchange: stories of donors and recipients
Kidney exchange isn't just about the technology of matching and the logistics of arranging many surgeries, or difficult ones, it is also about the intensely personal stories of donors and recipients. The news stories below open a window on some of those, from Vancouver British Columbia. to San Antonio Texas
Backing out was never an option for B.C. donor
"I was the last in the chain to do the donation," said Campbell, 48, of Qualicum Beach, B.C., who was scheduled to give one of her kidneys to a Montreal man days after her husband Steve got a kidney from an Ottawa donor. Organizers asked her repeatedly whether she would honour her commitment no matter what happened on the operating table to her husband, she recalled.
"'And what happens if Steve doesn't do well, will you still be able to get on a plane and go?' They put a lot of faith in me not backing out."
*********
Backing out was never an option for B.C. donor
"I was the last in the chain to do the donation," said Campbell, 48, of Qualicum Beach, B.C., who was scheduled to give one of her kidneys to a Montreal man days after her husband Steve got a kidney from an Ottawa donor. Organizers asked her repeatedly whether she would honour her commitment no matter what happened on the operating table to her husband, she recalled.
"'And what happens if Steve doesn't do well, will you still be able to get on a plane and go?' They put a lot of faith in me not backing out."
*********
FAITH, FREEDOM AND A KIDNEY: Healers in it for the long haul
""You have way too many antibodies. You're too big. You're too small. You're too tall. You're too short. There's always a reason to say, 'no.' A lot of times it's easier for hospitals to say, 'no,' Bingaman said. "It's much harder for them to say, 'yes.' "
""You have way too many antibodies. You're too big. You're too small. You're too tall. You're too short. There's always a reason to say, 'no.' A lot of times it's easier for hospitals to say, 'no,' Bingaman said. "It's much harder for them to say, 'yes.' "
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
An inadvertent ad for Starbucks
more photos here (by Linda Cicero for Stanford).
Unusual day yesterday...
Well, I had an unusual day yesterday. But I'm not much further along digesting it. So I think I'll go back to usual (non Nobel) blogging about market design. I'm still working on answering emails, 'tho I'm sure to miss some, or give up before I get to the earliest ones. But I appreciate all the well wishes...
Monday, October 15, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The market for chocolate (hint: rich people eat it...)
The venerable Onion has a competitor in the sometimes pretty funny New England Journal of Medicine, which notes the correlation between national chocolate consumption and per-capita Nobel prizes.And the Swiss eat a lot of chocolate. Slate has the story:
Why Do the Swiss Eat So Much Chocolate?: And does it help them win Nobel Prizes?
"A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that a country's chocolate consumption correlates strongly with the number of Nobel Prizes its citizens win. According to the author’s calculations, Switzerland consumes the most chocolate and ranks second behind Sweden in laureates per capita. ...Switzerland doesn’t have the climate to grow cocoa. How did it become known for chocolate?
"Because the great chocolate innovators were Swiss. ... In 1819, Francois-Louis Cailler developed a recipe to turn gritty cocoa beans into a solid, smooth chocolate bar. Rudolph Lindt eventually perfected the smoothing process by adding cocoa butter with a machine he called the conche. In 1830, his countryman Charles-Amédée Kohler added hazelnuts to chocolate. Jean Tobler formulated the Toblerone bar in the late 1860s. Perhaps the greatest innovation came in 1875, when Daniel Peter figured out how to combine cocoa powder with local milk to create milk chocolate, which became an instant sensation. (The Swiss can’t take credit for cocoa powder, which was developed by Dutch chemist Coenraad J. van Houten in 1828.) Eventually, Kohler, Peter, and food magnate Henri Nestlé joined forces to create the Swiss Chocolate Society, which eventually became the Nestlé company. Today, Swiss consumers eat more than 23 pounds of the country’s most famous product per year.
"There’s another factor to Switzerland’s high chocolate consumption: wealth. (Which may also explain the correlation with Nobel prizes.) Few cocoa-producing countries are big chocolate consumers, because chocolate is a luxury. Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Ghana, and Nigeria, all of which have per capita GDPs well below the global average, lead the world in cocoa production. By contrast, wealthy Western Europe constitutes 6 percent of the world’s population, but eats 45 percent of its chocolate."
Why Do the Swiss Eat So Much Chocolate?: And does it help them win Nobel Prizes?
"A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that a country's chocolate consumption correlates strongly with the number of Nobel Prizes its citizens win. According to the author’s calculations, Switzerland consumes the most chocolate and ranks second behind Sweden in laureates per capita. ...Switzerland doesn’t have the climate to grow cocoa. How did it become known for chocolate?
"Because the great chocolate innovators were Swiss. ... In 1819, Francois-Louis Cailler developed a recipe to turn gritty cocoa beans into a solid, smooth chocolate bar. Rudolph Lindt eventually perfected the smoothing process by adding cocoa butter with a machine he called the conche. In 1830, his countryman Charles-Amédée Kohler added hazelnuts to chocolate. Jean Tobler formulated the Toblerone bar in the late 1860s. Perhaps the greatest innovation came in 1875, when Daniel Peter figured out how to combine cocoa powder with local milk to create milk chocolate, which became an instant sensation. (The Swiss can’t take credit for cocoa powder, which was developed by Dutch chemist Coenraad J. van Houten in 1828.) Eventually, Kohler, Peter, and food magnate Henri Nestlé joined forces to create the Swiss Chocolate Society, which eventually became the Nestlé company. Today, Swiss consumers eat more than 23 pounds of the country’s most famous product per year.
"There’s another factor to Switzerland’s high chocolate consumption: wealth. (Which may also explain the correlation with Nobel prizes.) Few cocoa-producing countries are big chocolate consumers, because chocolate is a luxury. Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Ghana, and Nigeria, all of which have per capita GDPs well below the global average, lead the world in cocoa production. By contrast, wealthy Western Europe constitutes 6 percent of the world’s population, but eats 45 percent of its chocolate."
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Matching students to professors and research projects
ResearchMat.chAlpha http://researchmat.ch/
Check it out! »
Winner: Best Business Model at Columbia Devfest
2012!
by a former spelling bee champ: http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/03/23/a-spelling-champ-whose-e-u-o-n-y-m-should-have-been-joy/
HT: Mary O'Keeffe
Friday, October 12, 2012
Repugnance watch: Texas is different
Time Magazine has the story:
"Two Texas mothers set off a firestorm recently when they complained that a male assistant principal had severely paddled their daughters. One of the mothers pointed out that school policy required that officials of the same sex as the student do the paddling. Now the school board has responded — by dropping the rule requiring paddlers and students to be of the same sex.
"Two Texas mothers set off a firestorm recently when they complained that a male assistant principal had severely paddled their daughters. One of the mothers pointed out that school policy required that officials of the same sex as the student do the paddling. Now the school board has responded — by dropping the rule requiring paddlers and students to be of the same sex.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
A wife-carrying championship dynasty
We have a new championship pair in the World Wife Carrying Championships in Finland, and they are the old champions. (I like wife carrying because it's similar enough to dwarf tossing to raise the question about why one is widely repugnant and the other is not...).
Wife carrying championships in Finland won for fourth time by couple
There's a video at the link...
Wife carrying championships in Finland won for fourth time by couple
There's a video at the link...
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Privacy of auction bids
Steve Leider writes:
I came on an interesting market design anecdote in a larger
article about cryptography (http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/09/quantum-cryptography-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow/5/),
and I found out more details here (http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/trading-sugar-beet-quotas-secure-multiparty-computation-in-practice)
The basic story is that all the production of sugar beets in Denmark get sold to a monopsonist firm Danisco, and at the start of the year each farmer buys rights to sell a certain quantity of beets to Danisco at harvest, based on their production estimates. Often when harvest comes farmers end up wanting to buy or sell rights, however in the past this has been difficult to do in a centralized fashion because a double auction for rights would reveal too much information to Danisco and enhance its bargaining power versus the farmer's association. Recently they instituted a system where they could essentially submit their bids in encrypted form to an algorithm that can compute the market clearing price and exchanges without needing to decrypt individual bids.
Steve
The basic story is that all the production of sugar beets in Denmark get sold to a monopsonist firm Danisco, and at the start of the year each farmer buys rights to sell a certain quantity of beets to Danisco at harvest, based on their production estimates. Often when harvest comes farmers end up wanting to buy or sell rights, however in the past this has been difficult to do in a centralized fashion because a double auction for rights would reveal too much information to Danisco and enhance its bargaining power versus the farmer's association. Recently they instituted a system where they could essentially submit their bids in encrypted form to an algorithm that can compute the market clearing price and exchanges without needing to decrypt individual bids.
Steve
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
School choice in the news again in Boston
There are two things underlying school choice debates around the country:
1. In most big cities there aren't enough good schools for all children
2. People who live near good schools support a policy of sending children to local schools, and people who don't live near good schools support policies that allow children and their families to choose to go to more distant schools.
Here's the NY Times on the current debate in Boston, which mostly seems to involve limiting the scope of school choice to geographically smaller districts: 4 Decades After Clashes, Boston Again Debates School Busing
and here's the Harvard Gazette: Joel Klein speaks at Harvard Graduate School of Education
“The facts are pretty gruesome,” said Klein..."
**********
Links to the proposals are contained in this earlier post.
1. In most big cities there aren't enough good schools for all children
2. People who live near good schools support a policy of sending children to local schools, and people who don't live near good schools support policies that allow children and their families to choose to go to more distant schools.
Here's the NY Times on the current debate in Boston, which mostly seems to involve limiting the scope of school choice to geographically smaller districts: 4 Decades After Clashes, Boston Again Debates School Busing
and here's the Harvard Gazette: Joel Klein speaks at Harvard Graduate School of Education
“The facts are pretty gruesome,” said Klein..."
**********
Links to the proposals are contained in this earlier post.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Incentives for blood donation (and seminar by Bob Slonim today at Stanford)
Bob Slonim is visiting at Stanford this quarter, and will be giving a seminar today: here's the announcement.
There's no paper to link to yet...
****************
Over at MR, Alex Tabarrok wrote a little while ago about the earlier work of Bob and his colleagues on blood donation:
| Mon, Oct 8, 3:30PM - 5:00PM | Bob Slonim
Sydney (visiting Stanford) |
Blood Donation Registry: A lab and natural field experiment | GSB E-103 |
****************
Over at MR, Alex Tabarrok wrote a little while ago about the earlier work of Bob and his colleagues on blood donation:
"Mario Macis, Nicola Lacetera, and Bob Slonim, the authors of the most important work on this subject (references below), write to me with the details:
...The decision to donate blood involves complex motivations including altruism, civic duty and moral responsibility. As a result, we agree with Buttonwood that in theory incentives could reduce the supply of blood. In fact, this claim is often advanced in the popular press as well as in academic publications, and as a consequence, more and more often it is taken for granted.But what is the effect of incentives when studied in the real world with real donors andactual blood donations?We are unaware of a single study of real blood donations that shows that offering an incentive reduces the overall quantity or quality of blood donations. From our two studies, both in the United States covering several hundred thousand people, and studies by Goette and Stutzer (Switzerland) and Lacetera and Macis (Italy), a total of 17 distinct incentive items have been studied for the effects on actual blood donations. Incentives have included both small items and gift cards as well as larger items such as jackets and a paid-day off of work. In 16 of the 17 items examined, blood donations significantly increased (and there was no effect for the one other item), and in 16 of the 17 items studied no significant increase in deferrals or disqualifications were found. No study has ever looked at paying cash for actual blood donations, but several of the 17 items in the above studies involve gift cards with clear monetary value.
Goette, L., and Stutzer, A., 2011: “Blood Donation and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Working Paper.Lacetera, N., and Macis, M. 2012. Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, forthcoming.Lacetera N, Macis M, Slonim R 2012 Will there be Blood? Incentives and Displacement Effects in Pro-Social Behavior. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4: 186-223.Lacetera N, Macis M, Slonim R.: Rewarding Altruism: A natural Field Experiment, NBER working paper.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Dual career academic couples--some thoughts on negotiations
A dean shares some thoughts on the negotiations and some of the obstacles that face dual career couples, and particularly the second member of the couple to be hired:
"A typical hire is something that a department has prepared for at length and according to a familiar rhythm: asking to search, reading folders and conducting multiple campus interviews. By the time an offer is tendered, department members have had numerous opportunities to review the new hire’s credentials, hear the person give a talk, and even speak one-on-one. In contrast, a partner’s hire is often conducted more rapidly and with fewer opportunities for interaction with department members.
Dual-Career Academics: The Right Start
July 27, 2012 - 3:00am
"In consequence, when the second partner starts his or her job, there may be fewer members of the department than usual who are aware that the hire has happened, let alone who are aware of academic interests they may have in common."
Saturday, October 6, 2012
The online market for tailors
One of the markets that the internet seems likely to change profoundly is the market for custom clothing. Bloomberg news had a recent report on what looks like it could be a small beginning of a big thing:
"Custom clothing startups J. Hilburn Inc., American Giant andBonobos Inc. are racing to gain share in a U.S. e-commerce market that Forrester Research Inc. estimates will reach $327 billion in 2016, up from $202 billion last year. They’ve won customers and venture backers by cutting stores from the supply chain to ship straight to consumers from the factory, charging lower prices than department stores and eking out higher margins than Amazon.com Inc. , the biggest Web retailer.
"Custom clothing startups J. Hilburn Inc., American Giant andBonobos Inc. are racing to gain share in a U.S. e-commerce market that Forrester Research Inc. estimates will reach $327 billion in 2016, up from $202 billion last year. They’ve won customers and venture backers by cutting stores from the supply chain to ship straight to consumers from the factory, charging lower prices than department stores and eking out higher margins than Amazon.com Inc. , the biggest Web retailer.
“J. Hilburn will sell shirts that are made out of the same fabric mill in Italy that a Zegna would sell at Neiman Marcus for $300,” said Brian O’Malley, a partner at Battery Ventures, an investor in the startup, which has raised a total of about $12 million. “They can sell that same shirt totally custom-made for the customer for less, and do that still with healthy margins because there are a lot less middlemen along the way who need to get paid.”
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