Sunday, September 16, 2012

Miscellaneous School choice in the news

Here are some stories that I marked but never got around to blogging about...

Denver:DPS busts parents lying for seats

"DPS officials confirmed this week they’re analyzing address anomalies to root out people misleading the district about their home addresses as a way to ensure placement of their children in coveted schools, such as East High School, the Denver Schools of Science and Technology, and Bromwell, Steck, Stapleton and Cory elementary schools."
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New Orleans:
Recovery School District school assignments appealed by about 5 percent of students

"About 5 percent of the 32,000 students assigned to public schools this year through the Recovery School District's new central enrollment system appealed their assignment, district officials said Tuesday. Of those, about 69 percent got into one of their top three choices of school after the district reconsidered their case.

"On the other hand, about 31 percent of the roughly 1,400 students who appealed got matched to a school that they hadn't ranked on their application at all, meaning about 430 families are likely still feeling frustrated.

"We need more good and great schools to give parents more options," Recovery District Superintendent Patrick Dobard said. "That's what we look at these numbers as speaking to."

"This spring marked the first time that the Recovery District has offered one application, known as the OneApp, for a slot at any district school. In the past, each of the city's independent charter schools, which make up most of the district, handled enrollment on their own, presenting parents with a sometimes frustrating search for an open seat. None of the district's schools have traditional neighborhood attendance zones.

"With the OneApp in place this year, the district took in about 25,000 applications. Technically, everyone is required to turn one in, whether they plan on staying at the school they already attend or not. Overall, the district assigned 32,000 students to schools, keeping those who didn't turn one in at their current schools and manually assigning those who didn't turn in an application but were scheduled to finish their school's last available grade -- eighth graders slated to move on to high school, for instance."
**************


Orleans Parish School Board approves resolution moving toward common enrollment

"The city's local school board made a formal commitment Tuesday to work with state officials on a common enrollment process for all of the city's public schools. It's a step that could simplify life for families in a city where parents have both the burden and opportunity of choosing a school on their own, rather than letting geography decide.

"But negotiations between local and state education officials, as well as the independent charter schools that now predominate in New Orleans, may still have far to go before a common enrollment system is in place.

"In a unanimous vote, the Orleans Parish School Board approved a resolution promising to work toward joining the so called OneApp, a central enrollment system deployed for the first time this year by officials at the Recovery School District, the state agency that has governed most of the city's public schools since shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

"Bringing all, or at least the vast majority, of the city's public schools into one enrollment system would mark a significant reversal. In Katrina's wake, the state swept most schools into the Recovery School District and began handing over the reins of individual schools to independent charter operators that handle their own process for enrolling students, drawing applicants from across the city rather than a single neighborhood. The School Board, left with about 17 campuses, is now a majority charter district as well, leaving parents with a patchwork of varying applications and deadlines.

"Responding after years of complaints about the complexities of the new system, the Recovery District put all of its traditional and charter schools into the same enrollment system this year. Experts from Duke, Harvard and MIT, helped engineer a computer-driven matching scheme that assigns students based on their top choices, the school their siblings attend, their proximity to the campus and a randomly assigned lottery number.
The School Board, which governs a district encompassing about a quarter of the city's public school students and all of the city's magnet schools, sat the OneApp's first round out, concerned about ceding further authority to the state without being assured of a fair process.

"Quiet negotiations between the two districts have yielded an apparent compromise. As it's spelled out in the School Board's resolution, the board will be taking over management of the OneApp itself, although when and on what terms isn't clear, leaving room for any potential agreement to fall apart.

"Officials from either district tell slightly different versions of how they see a merger of enrollment systems playing out. In an interview on Tuesday, Recovery District Superintendent Patrick Dobard said he's hoping to incorporate School Board campuses into the OneApp as early as next year -- before the Recovery District would be ready to hand over the keys of that system for the School Board to run. Dobard said any transition toward School Board control of the OneApp would likely be settled with some type of written contract, likely years down the road and as a part of a broader discussion of bringing all of the city's schools back under some type of unified governing body.
"We don't have to be the long-term manager," Dobard said. "But we would likely have to some kind of memorandum of understanding."

"Thomas Robichaux, the School Board's president, however, said Tuesday, "It's our intention to manage it right away, or at the very least to be the joint manager."

"The School Board's 11 independent charter schools -- publicly funded but operating autonomously in a contract with the district -- may present another hurdle. Robichaux has said that the district cannot force those schools into a common enrollment process, so officials will have to negotiate with each of them.

"One other caveat, even if the Recovery District and the School Board succeed in unifying their enrollment, will be the city's so-called Type 2 charters, authorized by the state and operating outside the jurisdiction of either district. Recovery District officials have said they would like to include Type 2s in the OneApp as well, but there has been no public move in that direction.

"Still, Dobard said he's optimistic about getting a deal done, with the School Board at least. Recovery District officials say there are technically problems to overcome. They will need a new computer algorithm to incorporate the selective admissions requirements at some School Board campuses. But none of it is beyond working out. "
*************

Washington D.C.


Create one single lottery for charter and non-charter schools

"The current application process for DC's charter and non-charter public schools is a chaotic mess that confuses parents and hurts education for students. DC could fix many problems by creating a centralized lottery process for all public schools, charter and non-charter.
"Steve Glazerman called for a centralized application for charter schools in 2010. Since then, DC Public Schools (DCPS) instituted a common application for the District's specialized high schools.
This is a great step, but it could go a lot further to include charter schools and traditional neighborhood schools at all grades. It wouldn't be hard; the company that operates whose software enables the centralized application for DCPS application-only high schools is currently implementing a centralized application for charters and non-charters in Denver.
District officials generally agree. Scheherazade Salimi, Senior Advisor to the Deputy Mayor for Education, says that "a common application is something the Deputy Mayor would like to explore in partnership with DCPS and [the Public Charter School Board]."
In a centralized application, parents would select several schools, rank-ordered by preference. They would select charters and non-charters, and could conceivably select up to 12, 15 or 20 schools.
A single lottery would select applicants one by one, and assign each to the first school on his or her list with an open slot. This is similar to how many colleges assign dorm rooms, for instance.
This type of centralized application would have many benefits over the current system.
Parents are more likely to get into their top choice schools.
When parents apply to schools now, they apply for DCPS schools using a centralized application, and apply to each charter school separately. Pre-K programs have lotteries for all children, while students in 1st grade and older enter lotteries only for out-of-boundary DCPS schools.
As a result, one applicant in Capitol Hill could be waitlisted at a nearby charter that was their top choice and accepted into a Columbia Heights charter that was their 2nd choice, while a Columbia Heights family that preferred the nearby charter could be waitlisted there but accepted to the Capitol Hill charter school.
The result is that neither child can go to his or her top choice charter, and both families are making unnecessary drives to get the kids to school.
Spots at competitive schools won't be locked up by parents who don't plan to send kids there.
Schools hold their lotteries in the spring for spots in the fall. In the current system, if a child gets accepted to multiple charter schools and/or an out-of-boundary DCPS school, parents might tell each school that the child will attend in the fall.
When they decide which school to attend, they inform the schools at some point in the summer or they just don't show up for the schools they didn't select. There's no deposit or penalty, so they don't pay a cost for this, but other families lose out who might have taken the slot but had to make a decision earlier to go elsehwere.
Some parents do this to give themselves more time to research the schools; some want to wait until school starts to assess the facilities of charter schools that were still preparing their facilities in the spring.
When a student attending an out-of-boundary DCPS school gets into a different out-of-boundary DCPS school, the principal of the first school "releases" the student before they can secure their spot into the new school. Charter schools have no such process.
Squatting on multiple school slots is unfair to everybody. When children accepted through the lottery don't show up in the fall, principals have to scramble to contact any remaining applicants on their wait list. Squatting also leads to the next problem.
Principals could provide better estimates of enrollment for funding purposes.
One of the most common grievances from charter advocates is that DCPS principals overestimate their enrollment to receive extra funding.
DCPS schools project fall enrollment in the spring and these projections determine funding for the following year. If the actual enrollment is lower, DCPS' budget doesn't shrink. But charter schools receive funding quarterly based on their actual enrollment. If a charter school's enrollment declines, it loses money.
Some principals might be doing this on purpose, but it's also difficult for DCPS principals to accurately estimate enrollment for the following fall when applicants hold a spot at their school while they spend the summer deciding whether to attend charter schools.
A centralized application would eliminate much of this problem. Each school, DCPS and charter, would know that every child on its list isn't going to suddenly go elsewhere in the DC system. They could go to private school or move to another jurisdiction, but that applies to a smaller number of children.
Charter principals wouldn't be able to "skim the cream."
Charter school critics often complain that charter school principals find ways to weed out students during enrollment who may be harder to educate. The lottery initially fills all charter school slots randomly, but as parents of children who got in on the lottery tell the school that they won't be taking the slot, the charter itself contacts applicants off of their wait list.
There are opportunities for principals to intentially or unintentionally abuse this system. For example, principals can give an applicant more or less time to respond and claim the slot before they move on to the next child. They might give more "desirable" children more time than others.
A charter school in New York was put on probation last year for weeding out applicants in the enrollment process. While there hasn't been a specific accusation like this against any DC charter school, a centralized application system could remove this because students would be assigned to a single school.
We would have data on capacity needs at all grades, especially pre-K.
District officials say that DC has achieved universal pre-K, but the city's auditor of pre-K capacity disagrees. Who is right? We won't know until we have data on the actual demand for pre-K.
A centralized application for pre-K, including all of the pre-K programs, would generate this data. It would then be easy to compare the number of total children applying against the number of public pre-K slots.
The data wouldn't be perfect, as some parents apply to DCPS pre-K programs as a backup to their private pre-K applications, while other parents miss the pre-K lottery (in February) but still want to send their children to pre-K. But it would be far better than the current audit, which effectively measures nothing.
All students would start school on time together.
One of the unintended consequences of the plethora of charter school choices is that schools don't really know who will show up for school in September. This is largely due to parents holding spots through the summer for multiple schools but only sending their kids to one school.
The result is that classroom compositions are in flux throughout September and October as principals contact students off the wait list to fill suddenly vacated spots. This is challenging for teachers and ultimately hurts students' education.
District education officials and the State Board of Education can start pushing toward a single lottery right away. An education committee in the Council, as many have suggested, could also help move this forward.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Auction design within online games

This looks worth following up on...Michael Giberson reports Poor market design causing high prices in Diablo III auction house?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/real-money-auctions-launch-in-diablo-iii/


Why Diablo 3's Real Money Auction House Should Not Be Your Summer Job
"For years, illegal black market sellers have been hawking virtual gear for real life money to great success. There was little point attempting to combat such practices, as little or nothing could be done to stop them, so Blizzard had an alternative idea they wanted to try with Diablo 3. A legal auction house using real world cash, where they got a piece of the action.
"There’s been an in-game gold Auction House in operation since the launch of Diablo 3, but yesterday marked the first time the Real Money Auction House went live, after a few weeks of delays."

Further discussion of markets for organs: some new books

Some books that address markets for organs, including an ethnography of transplants in Israel...

A Market in Organs Pp.128-143
Miran Epstein
[View Abstract] 
This chapter presents a critical overview of the relationship which transplant medicine has had with the market as a source of organs for transplantation. It has three parts. The first two parts discuss the increasing appeal of the market option in practice and theory against the backdrop of the worsening organ crisis and the intensification of pro-transplant interests. The emerging trend suggests that the recent achievements in the struggle against international organ trafficking do not herald the abolition of the organ market but rather presage its reconfiguration in deglobalized, more or less regulated, forms. The third part rephrases the market question. It concludes that the struggle against a market in organs could make sense, let alone stand a chance, only as part of a general struggle against the conditions that have made it so appealing in the first place.

From the eBook Kidney Transplantation: Challenging the Future

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Matching Organs with Donors: Legality and Kinship in Transplants (Contemporary Ethnography)By Marie-Andree Jacob

The blurb: "While the traffic in human organs stirs outrage and condemnation, donations of such material are perceived as highly ethical. In reality, the line between illicit trafficking and admirable donation is not so sharply drawn. Those entangled in the legal, social, and commercial dimensions of transplanting organs must reconcile motives, bureaucracy, and medical desperation. Matching Organs with Donors: Legality and Kinship in Transplants examines the tensions between law and practice in the world of organ transplants—and the inventive routes patients may take around the law while going through legal processes.

"In this sensitive ethnography, Marie-AndrĂ©e Jacob reveals the methods and mindsets of doctors, administrators, gray-sector workers, patients, donors, and sellers in Israel's living kidney transplant bureaus. Matching Organs with Donors describes how suitable matches are identified between donor and recipient using terms borrowed from definitions of kinship. Jacob presents a subtle portrait of the shifting relationships between organ donors/sellers, patients, their brokers, and hospital officials who often accept questionably obtained organs.

"Jacob's incisive look at the cultural landscapes of transplantation in Israel has wider implications. Matching Organs with Donors deepens our understanding of the law and management of informed consent, decision-making among hospital professionals, and the shadowy borders between altruism and commerce.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Paying for human waste tissue used in research: Should it be repugnant? forbidden? allowed? mandated?

Scott Kominers alerts me to the recent debate taking place in the pages of Science.

He writes
"Gary Becker and I have a brief letter in Science supporting the possibility of compensation for donors of waste tissue: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6100/1292.2.full. [Paying for Tissue: Net Benefits}

It is in response to a policy piece by Truog et al. that appeared a few weeks ago, and claims that such compensation is repugnant: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6090/37[Paying Patients for Their Tissue: The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks]

The authors have published a response to our note: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6100/1293.1.full. [Paying for Tissue: Net Benefits—Response]

There is also a letter from Leonard Hayflick which clears up some of the history: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6100/1292.1.short [Paying for Tissue: The Case of WI-38].

Science's editors ... have made all the letters [but not the original Policy Forum article on Research Ethics] open access, and also set up a poll: at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6100/1293.2.full.  (Although the poll topic is not quite parallel to Gary's and my argument – they ask whether researchers should be required to pay patients for waste tissue use, rather than whether they should be allowed to do so.)

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Experimental economics at Stanford SITE, Sept 14 and 15



Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics
Summer 2012 Workshop

Segment 5: Experimental Economics
September 14 and 15, 2012
Organized by Judd Kesler, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh; and Muriel Niederle and Charles Sprenger, both Stanford University.

The session will meet in Conference Room A in Landau Economics Building.


Friday, September 14
9.00 - 9.30 Breakfast
9.30 - 9.45 Welcome and Opening Remarks
9.45 - 10.45 Laboratory Results and Field Inference
  • External Validity and Partner Selection Bias presented by Hunt Alcott, New York University and co-authored with Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University
  • Free Riding in the Lab and in the Field presented by Florian Englmaier, University of Wurzburg and co-authored with Georg Gebhardt, Ulm University 
10.45 - 11.00 Coffee
11.00 - 12.00 Experimental Methods
  • Incentives in Experiments: A Theoretical Analysis presented by Paul J. Healy, The Ohio State University and co-authored with Yaron Azrieli, The Ohio State University and Christopher P. Chambers, University of California, San Diego
  • Mistakes and Game Form Recognition: Challenges to Theories of Revealed. Preference and Framing presented by Charles R. Plott, California Institute of Technology and co-authored with Timothy N. Cason, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
12.00 - 1.45 Lunchtime discussion
1.45 - 2.45 Risk and Ambiguity
  • Learning to be Probabilistically Sophisticated presented by Yoram Halevy,University of British Columbia
  • Estimating the Relationship Between Economic Preferences: A Testing Ground for Unifed Theories of Behavior presented by Pietro Ortoleva, California Institute of Technology and co-authored with Mark Dean, Brown University
2.45 - 3.00 Coffee
3.00 - 4.00 Dynamic Inconsistency?
  • Hypobolic Discounting and Willingness to Wait presented by David Eil,  George Mason University
  • Working Over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks presented by Ned Augenblick, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley and co-authored with Muriel Niederle and Charles Sprenger, both Stanford University
4.00 - 4.15 Coffee
4.15 - 5.15 Shorter Presentation Session
  • Competitive Pricing and the Search for Quality, presented by Daniel Martin, New York University
  • Probability List Elicitation for Lotteries, presented by David Freeman, University of British Columbia
  • Unintended Media E ects in a Conflict Environment: Serbian Radio and Croatian Nationalism, presented by Vera Mironova, Department of Political Science, University of Maryland and co-authored with Stefano DellaVigna, University of California, Berkeley; Ruben Enikolopov and Maria Petrova, New Economic School, Moscow and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Paris School of Economics
  • Local Leadership and the Provision of Public Goods: A Field-Lab Experiment in Bolivia, presented by Maria P. Recalde, University of Pittsburgh and co-authored with B. Kelsey Jack, Tufts University
5.30 Continued discussion and dissemination of technical knowledge during dinner

Saturday, September 15
9.00 - 9.30 Breakfast
9.30 - 10.30 Bargaining and Voting Behavior
  • The Effect of Negotiations on Bargaining in Legislatures presented by Marina Agranov, California Institute of Technology and co-authored with Chloe Terigman,University of British Columbia
  • Hypothetical Thinking and Information Extraction: Strategic Voting in the Laboratory presented by Emanuel Vespa, Stern School of Business, New York University and co-authred with Ignacio Esponda, New York University
10.30 - 10.45 Coffee
11.00 - 12.30 Game Theory in the Lab
  • Emergent Star Networks with Ex Ante Homogeneous Agents presented by Daniel Houser, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science Contact Information, George Mason University and co-authored with Rong Rong, also Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science Contact Information, George Mason University
  • Infinitely Repeated Games with Private Monitoring: An Experimental Analysispresented by Guillaume Frechette, New York University and co-authored withMasaki Aoyagi, Osaka University and V. Bhaskar, University College London
  • Finding the Hidden Cost of Control presented by Judd Kessler, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and co-authored with Stephen G Leider,Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
12.30 - 2.15 Lunchtime discussion
2.15 - 3.15 Field Experiments
  • Do People Choose What They Think Will Make Them Happiest? Evidence from the National Resident Matching Program. presented by Ori Heffetz, Cornell University and co-authored with Daniel J. Benjamin and Alex Rees-Jones, Cornell University and Miles Kimball, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Death Probability Shocks and Consumption: Evidence from Denmark presented by Kasper Meisner Nielsen, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and co-authored with Steffen Andersen, Copenhagen Business School  and Charles Sprenger, Stanford University
3.15 - 3.30 Coffee
3.30 - 4.30 Gender and Economic Behavior
  • Gender, Competition and Career Choices presented by Thomas Buser, University of Amsterdam and co-authored with Muriel Niederle, Stanford University andHessel Oosterbeek also University of Amsterdam
  • Breaking the Glass Ceiling with `No': Gender Differences in Doing Favors. Presented by Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh and co-authored with Linda Babcock, Amanda Weirup, and Laurie Weingart all Carnegie Mellon University.
4.30 - 4.45 Coffee
4.45 - 5.45 Shorter Presentation Session
  • One in a Million: A Field Experiment on Belief Formation and Pivotal Votingpresented by Mitchell Hoffman, University of California, Berkeley and co-authored with John Morgan, University of California, Berkeley
  • An Experiment on Reference Points and Expectations presented by Changcheng Song, University of California, Berkeley
  • Wallflowers Doing Good: Field and Lab Evidence of Heterogeneity in Reputation Concerns presented by Daniel Jones, University of Pittsburgh and co-authored with Sera Linardi, also University of Pittsburgh
  • Costly Information Acquisition in a Speculative Attack: Theory and Experimentspresented by Isabel Trevino, New York University and co-authored with Michal Szkup, also New York University

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

NBER market design conference Oct 19-20, 2012: preliminary program


NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.

Market Design Working Group Meeting

Susan Athey and Parag Pathak, Organizers

October 19-20, 2012

NBER
2nd Floor Conference Room
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM

Friday, October 19:

8:30 am
Continental Breakfast

9:00 am


Mechanism Design and Congestion

William Fuchs, University of California at Berkeley
Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University
Costs and Benefits of Dynamic Trading in a Lemons Market

Jacob Leshno, Columbia University
Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Systems

10:20 am
Break

10:35 am

Auctions

Kenneth Hendricks, University of Wisconsin and NBER
Daniel Quint, University of Wisconsin
Indicative Bids as Cheap Talk

Sergiu Hart, Hebrew University
Noam Nisan, Hebrew University
The Menu-Size Complexity of Auctions


Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University
Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei University
Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University
Efficient Assignment with Interdependent Values

12:35 pm

Lunch

1:15 pm
Organ Exchange

Itai Ashlagi, MIT
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

2:40 pm
Break

3:00 pm
FCC Incentive AuctionLawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland
Paul Milgrom, Stanford University
Ilya Segal, Stanford University
The 'Incentive Auctions' and Mechanism Design

Peter Cramton, University of Maryland
Title to be announced

5:15 pm
Adjourn


Saturday, October 20:

8:30 am
Continental Breakfast

9:00 am

Empirical Market Design

Aditya Bhave, University of Chicago
Eric Budish, University of Chicago
Primary-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 NY

10:20 am
Break

10:40 am

Matching Markets

Qingmin Liu, Columbia University
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

12:00 pm
Lunch

1:00 pm

New Frontiers

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

David Rothschild, Microsoft Research
David Pennock, Microsoft Research
The Extent of Price Misalignment in Prediction Markets

3:00 pm
Adjourn


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Charter schools and waiting lists in D.C. schools

When school choice procedures result in some children having multiple offers, others must wait for an assignment, which can be taxing. Even in cities that have begun to use single-best-offer school choice systems for the public schools, there can be a lot of congestion if the charter schools aren't integrated into the process. The Washington Post has the story:  Parents struggle with ‘wait-list shuffle’ in D.C. schools


"Thousands of seats change hands in the first weeks of class as students leave one school for another, a quiet migration triggered by the intense competition for a good public education in the nation’s capital.

"This is the wait-list shuffle. Parents say it’s a downside of the city’s school-choice movement — a nationally watched experiment that has given Washington families more options than ever but also has injected a new level of agony and instability into the start of the academic year.

"The change has been spurred by the rapid expansion of public charter schools, which operate outside the traditional school system and under different enrollment rules. As parents try to get their children into the best schools, they can apply to an unlimited number of them. Once admitted, students can hold seats in more than one school.

"Those parents seeking to preserve their options often relinquish the extras only when forced to on the first day of class. Principals then scramble to fill their rolls from long wait lists, recruiting students who are enrolled elsewhere. The cascading effect lasts into October.
...
"There has long been a scrum to win seats in the city’s best traditional public schools, but the rise of charter schools — which now enroll more than 40 percent of Washington’s 77,000 students, a larger proportion than any other city except New Orleans — has helped turn that scrum into a frenzy.

"A growing number of parents are entering lotteries for D.C. public schools, especially for pre-
kindergarten — but they are limited to six applications each year and can’t enroll in more than one at a time.

"The charter school process is a free-for-all: There are 57 different charter schools, and parents can enter as many lotteries as they like. Many track their options with elaborate spreadsheets, relying on word of mouth, test scores and gut feelings to identify favorites.
...
"Each year, lucky students win seats in more than one charter school, or one traditional school and several charters. Other families spend the summer months eagerly refreshing school Web sites, watching their children move slowly up long lists.

"This spring, the waiting lists for charter and D.C. public schools topped out at more than 35,000 names, many of them duplicates. 


"The lists begin to move during the summer, as families settle on choices or move away. Then they accelerate after the first day of school, when principals see who doesn’t show up and turn to their wait lists.

"According to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, 1,141 students withdrew from a charter school within the first month of classes in fall 2011. Another 2,671 entered a charter school within that same time frame.
...
"Parents who take multiple seats say they’re playing by the rules of the game and doing what’s necessary to get what’s best for their children.

"One mother of a kindergartner — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering school officials and other parents — spent the first week of classes this fall holding slots at two of the city’s most coveted charter schools, weighing whether she could afford after-school care at the one she preferred."

Monday, September 10, 2012

30 years of the ultimatum game

Come celebrate in Cologne at the 2012 ESA European Conference, Sept. 12-15.

"In 1982 GĂ¼th, Schmittberger, and Schwarze published their seminal paper on the ultimatum game. The experiments were conducted at the University of Cologne. We will celebrate this 30th anniversary and invite submissions of papers that review insights from the ultimatum game and/or deal with new results. "

They also encourage submissions concerning "Bounded Ethicality."

The Keynote speakers are
• Max Bazerman (Harvard Business School)
• Urs Fischbacher (University of Konstanz)
• Werner GĂ¼th (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Gastroeconomics

There has been a lot of interest in neuroeconomics lately, focusing on decision-making and the brain. But there are also a lot of neurons in the gut, which raises the possibility of a part of neuroeconomics that might be called gastroeconomics.

This Scientific American article brought all this to mind:
Microbes Manipulate Your Mind: Bacteria in your gut may be influencing your thoughts and moods

(This shouldn't be confused with the gastroeconomics associated with the market for gastroenterologists:)

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The supply of American doctors

American medicine is a market with tightly restricted entry, at all levels. Proposed legislation offers a glimpse: Bill Would Create More Medical-Residency Slots, Potentially Easing Physician Shortage

"Legislation introduced in Congress on Monday would expand the number of Medicare-sponsored training slots for new doctors by 15,000, a step that two medical-education groups said would go a long way toward easing a projected shortage of physicians.

"The bill, the Physician Shortage Reduction and Graduate Medical Education Accountability and Transparency Act (HR 6352), is sponsored by Rep. Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican, and Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat.

"Medical schools have been expanding their enrollments and new schools have been opening up as concerns have grown about a shortage that could reach more than 90,000 physicians by 2020, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"Those worries have intensified with passage of the Affordable Care Act, which will greatly increase the number of people seeking medical care by providing insurance coverage to 32 million more people.

"But while more students are making their way through the medical-school pipeline, they're likely to run into bottlenecks because of a cap on the number of Medicare-supported residency training slots that Congress imposed in 1997."

Friday, September 7, 2012

Medical internships in Australia are in short supply


Medical students languish in a critical condition

"The Australian Medical Students' Association estimates almost 500 students will miss out on an internship next year because of insufficient places. Under the internship system students must work for a year under supervision in a hospital before they can work as doctors.

"Recent changes to the application process have further complicated the situation in Victoria. International students will now have priority for internships over Victorian students who have studied interstate but want to return for hospital placements.
 ...
"Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton points to the curious situation where the nation has a shortage of doctors, yet there are too few internships. A report by Health Workforce Australia has forecast a shortfall of 2701 doctors by 2025.

"The placement system has fallen apart, he says, because the federal government regulates the number of students universities can enrol while its state counterparts oversee the provision of internships. ''Nobody's got the control levers for the pipeline,'' he says.

"A complicating factor has been the ability of universities to enrol an unlimited number of full-fee-paying international medical students without guaranteeing a hospital placement at the end of the course."

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Fishery management in ancient Hawaii

Ancient Civilizations Reveal Ways to Manage Fisheries for Sustainability

"The authors of the study, titled "Multicentury trends and the sustainability of coral reef fisheries in Hawai‘i and Florida", point to the U.S. National Ocean Policy as an example of emerging attempts to manage ocean ecosystems more holistically, and local fisheries co-management as a modern way of including community members in designing effective fishing regulations. However, the authors caution that effective enforcement needs to go hand in hand with the development of local governance. “The ancient Hawaiians punished transgressors with corporal punishment,” observed Kittinger. “Clearly, we don’t recommend this, but it’s easy to see there’s room to tighten up today’s enforcement efforts.”

HT: Ben Greiner

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Bill of Health: new blog on health law policy

Here's the announcement of a new blog (in which I hope to find a way to cross-link some posts related to health related market design issues):



The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our latest venture – the launch of a new blog, titled Bill of Health, edited by Petrie-Flom faculty co-director, I. Glenn Cohen, and Petrie-Flom executive director, Holly Fernandez Lynch.  The blog will go live Wednesday, September 5, 2012, and can be accessed at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/.  

Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for readers interested in news, commentary, and scholarship in the fields of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.  You can expect to find regularly updated posts reacting to current events, testing out new scholarly ideas, reviewing the latest books, and announcing conferences, events, and job openings.  We also hope to cultivate a strong community of commenters, so that the blog becomes an interactive discussion forum.

A widely collaborative effort, Bill of Health features content from Petrie-Flom affiliates, as well as leading experts from Harvard and beyond.  Institutional collaborators include HealthLawProfs Blog, the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Law Research program at Temple.  We’ve also lined up a stellar cast of bloggers so far, including:  


Tom Baker
Cansu Canca
Arthur Caplan
Daniel Carpenter
Amitabh Chandra
Greg Curfman
Einer Elhauge
Richard Epstein
Nir Eyal
Michele Goodwin
Rebecca Haffajee
Russell Korobkin
Greg Koski
Katie Kraschel
Stephen Latham
Ted Marmor
Max Mehlman
Michelle Meyer
Abby Moncrieff
Efthimios Parasidis
Wendy Parmet
Frank Pasquale
Suzanne Rivera
Al Roth
Ted Ruger
Bill Sage
Laura Stark
Erin Talati
Nicolas Terry
Katharine Van Tassel
Daniel Vorhaus


In addition, we’ll be joined by some great guest bloggers, including Mark Hall, Allison Hoffman, Adam Kolber, Jon Kolstad, Kristin Madison, Anup Malani, Arti Rai, Annette Rid, Chris Robertson, Nadia Sawicki, Seema Shah, Talha Syed, Dan Wikler, and Susan Wolf, as well as a several Petrie-Flom graduate student affiliates.   Read more about our team here.

Please take a moment to stop by and check out Bill of Health!


For more information, contact:
Holly Fernandez Lynch, hlynch@law.harvard.edu, 617.384.5475

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Unravelling of product announcements--ahead of the new iPhone

Lucas Coffman points me to the following unravelling story (which I figured I had better post without further delay :)  Rivals Jostle Before Apple Announces New iPhone

"...technology companies are watching every one of Apple’s moves — and scrambling to get out in front of them.

"Several major tech companies are cramming product announcements into this holiday-shortened workweek.

"Nokia and Motorola Mobility, former leaders in the mobile race who are now also-rans, have scheduled events for Wednesday at which they are likely to announce new smartphones. And the next day, Amazon is expected to introduce new Kindle devices.

"Sony and Samsung, among others, got a jump on things last week with announcements of new tablets and phones at a consumer electronics conference in Berlin.

"But next week, the tech event calendar is largely blank — with the exception of an Apple news conference that is said to be scheduled for Sept. 12, where the company will reveal its latest iPhone, according to a person briefed on the company’s plans, who declined to be named because those plans had not yet been made public.

It seems that the rumor of an Apple announcement is having an effect on competitors’ announcements, unless it’s an amazing coincidence” that several events are scheduled this week and none the next, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Gartner. "

Cass Sunstein on the regulator as market designer

Here's his essay: Empirically Informed Regulation
It was written while Sunstein was Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. It focuses on what he sees as the lessons from behavioral economics.

"In recent years, a number of social scientists have been incorporating empirical findings about human behavior into economic models. These findings offer useful insights for thinking about regulation and its likely consequences. They also offer some suggestions about the appropriate design of effective, low-cost, choice-preserving approaches to regulatory problems, including disclosure requirements, default rules, and simplification.

"A general lesson is that small, inexpensive policy initiatives can have large and highly beneficial effects.  The purpose of this Essay is to explore relevant evidence, to catalogue recent practices and reforms, and to discuss some implications for regulatory policy. And while the primary focus is on small, inexpensive regulatory initiatives, there is a still more general theme, which involves the importance of ensuring that regulations have strong empirical foundations, both through careful analysis in advance and through retrospective review of what works and what does not."

Monday, September 3, 2012

School choice in Harlem

The Times reports on school choice in Harlem: School Choice Is No Cure-All, Harlem Finds

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made school choice a foundation of his education agenda, and since he took office in 2002, the city opened more than 500 new schools; closed, or is in the process of closing, more than 100 ailing ones; and created an environment in which more than 130 charter schools could flourish. No neighborhood has been as transformed by that agenda as Harlem.

 "When classes resume on Thursday, many of its students will be showing up in schools that did not exist a decade ago. The idea, one that became a model for school reform nationwide, was to let parents shop for schools the same way they would for housing or a cellphone plan, and that eventually, the competition would lift all boats.

"But in interviews in recent weeks, Harlem parents described two drastically different public school experiences, expressing frustration that, among other things, there were still a limited number of high-quality choices and that many schools continued to underperform."

Gender-pricing discrimination

The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs is on the case, the WSJ reports: City Nails Sex-Based Pricing.

Among the targets are salons that charge men and women differently for manicures and haircuts. But are those really the same products?

""It's ridiculous. I have some guys who need to come in every two weeks," said Ania Siemieniaka, the owner of Freckle Skin and Hair, which had to pay $175 for a violation. "If I raise my prices, I'll lose all my male customers."

"The city's Department of Consumer Affairs began stepping up enforcement of the law last year, when it issued 580 gender-pricing violations to businesses, more than double the 212 doled out the year before.

"We wanted to really send a strong message to businesses about this kind of illegal pricing, so we did a very focused sweep over the course of the year," said the department's commissioner, Jonathan Mintz. "That sweep was largely targeted at salons and barbershops and laundry and dry cleaning."

"Nearly all of the violations were the result of sweeps rather than complaints, said Mr. Mintz, because businesses and industry groups weren't correcting the practice on their own."
********

Here are earlier posts on a related topic: "Girl taxi" and "Ladies Nights", and The wheels of justice and Ladies' Nights

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Uri Rothblum's intellectual legacies

The journal Linear Algebra and its Applications has published an article in memoriam of Uri Rothblum, who passed away in March of this year:   Uriel G. Rothblum (1947–2012) by Raphael Loewy.

The article has discussions of aspects of Uri's work by a number of his collaborators, one of whom is Hans Schneider, a longtime editor of LAA. I recently corresponded with Professor Schneider about the beginning of his long and productive collaboration with Uri, and (with his permission) here is some of that correspondence.

 Dear Professor Schneider: Eric Denardo shared with me the memoir of Uri Rothblum, and encouraged me to write a note to you about his very first interaction with you. My memory of it isn't all that clear.

It must have been in 1974 (the year that he and I graduated from Stanford) that you contacted him about his paper on nonnegative matrices. As I recall, your letter suggested that perhaps his results and some of yours should appear in collaboration. He wasn't sure that his English was up to the task of saying "no" in a diplomatic way, and so he asked me to help draft the letter, which explained that he had a special emotional attachment to that paper since it was a central part of his dissertation.

He valued enormously his subsequent collaboration with you, and never tired of telling me that the letter I had drafted for him might be the most productive piece I have written.

The world is certainly less complete without Uri in it.

All the best,

Al Roth
http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html
http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/

 From: Hans Schneider [hans@math.wisc.edu]
 Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2012 1:15 PM
 To: Roth, Alvin
 Cc: Eric Denardo
 Subject: Re: Uri's write-up in Linear Algebra and its Applications
 Dear AL,
 Thank you for your very interesting letter and  apologies for my slow reply. 
 ...

 But now to your remarks. You are right, I proposed that Uri and I combine our papers and he turned this  down. I did not know that you were involved until Eric told me this year.

 It was a good decision on his part and I need to thank you for your help to Uri.  The sequence of letters (mine, his) spectacularly achieved what I desired, viz. cooperation with a young mathematician who was interested in the same area as I. I think it is impossible for me to explain how mathematically isolated I felt at the time without sounding like a petulant child.

 BTW, I first saw Uri's paper #3 in early 1975. The correction is worth making for I spent calendar 1974 at  TU Munich and before I left my student Richman had essentially completed results for his Ph.D. which  were  waiting to be writtten up when I saw Uri's paper. That's the paper I offered to combine with Uri's. I recall that Uri said there was room for both papers; I wish I still had his letter. Richman-S finally appeared in LAMA in 1978.

 I have never again offered to make a joint paper of a submission to LAA, even when I felt I could improve it significantly. I got increasingly worried that this is crossing a line for an EIC.  (Full disclosure, there is another paper joint with me that was originally submitted by my co-authors, but it became joint at the suggestion of an editor when he saw my referee's report.)

 Finally , I am very glad to hear from you, AL, that Uri saw the events that brought us together so positively. To my recollection, we never discussed them in any meaningful way.

 best wishes

 hans

 ps The obit is now on line on the LAA site under 'articles in press'. 

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

Some quick recollections of my own, of an intellectual history sort.

Uri and I were office mates in grad school, and I often benefited from his advice. I recall one time in particular, when I needed to prove that a certain interval was compact, and he showed me a proof that allowed me to complete the theorem that formed the basis for my dissertation. I later realized that a corollary of his proof was that _every_ interval was compact, so unfortunately I had to use another proof (and I recall a tense week between weekly visits to my advisor, at the end of which I was able to say "there was a problem with the proof I outlined last week" instead of "...with the theorem...").

Uri and I didn't collaborate as grad students, but we eventually wrote four papers together:

Roth, A.E. and Rothblum, U. "Risk Aversion and Nash's Solution for Bargaining Games With Risky Outcomes," Econometrica, Vol. 50, 1982, 639‑647.

Roth, A.E., Rothblum, U.G., and Vande Vate, J.H. "Stable Matchings, Optimal Assignments, and Linear Programming," Mathematics of Operations Research, 18, 1993, 803-828. 

 Blum, Y., A.E. Roth, and U.G. Rothblum "Vacancy Chains and Equilibration in Senior-Level Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, 76, 2, October 1997, 362-411.

Roth, A.E. and U.G. Rothblum "Truncation Strategies in Matching Markets--In Search of Advice for Participants," Econometrica, 67, January, 1999, 21-43.
  

The two two-author papers each began when, in the course of a long walk somewhere, I indicated that I was working on a problem that was too hard for me to solve.  The paper with John Vande Vate came about by combining two different such conversations. But the most unusual of the collaborations was initiated by Uri in connection with work he had started with his student Yossi Blum. I believe they figured out that a paper by Blum and Rothblum would look better if they had a third author named Roth.

Readers of this blog may already be familiar with his other papers on matching and market design:

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Stable matchings and linear inequalities,” Discrete Applied Mathematics 54 (1994), pp. 1-27.

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Courtship and linear programming,” Linear Algebra and Its Applications 216 (1995), pp. 111-124.

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Paths to marriage stability,” Discrete Applied Mathematics 63 (1995),  pp. 1-12

H. Abeledo, Y. Blum and U.G. Rothblum, “Canonical monotone decompositions of fractional stable matchings,” The International Journal of Game Theory 25 (1996), pp. 161-176.

Y. Blum and U.G. Rothblum, “ ‘Timing is everything’ and marital bliss,” Journal of Economic Theory 103 (2002), pp. 429-443.

N. Perach, J. Polak and U.G. Rothblum, “Stable matching model with an entrance criterion applied to the assignment of students to dormitories at the Technion,” The International Journal of Game Theory 36 (2008),
pp. 519-535.

N. Perach and U.G. Rothblum, “Incentive Compatibility for the Stable Matching Model with an Entrance Criterion,” accepted for publication in The International Journal of Game Theory, 17 pages.

Book review: U.G. Rothblum, Two Sided Matchings: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis (by A.E. Roth and M.A. Oliviera Sotomayor), Games and Economic Behavior 4 (1992), pp.161-165

Here is Uri's listing on Google Scholar.
Here is his list of publications in chronological order.
Here is the obituary by Boaz Golany in INFORMS online.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Internet dating survey

Quantifying the Online-Dating Revolution

"The internet is especially important in “thin” dating markets, those in which people encounter a dearth of potential partners in their daily lives. That helps to explain the same-sex numbers and also why it’s not tech-savvy twentysomethings who make the most use of the internet, for romantic connections, but people in their 30s and 40s—another finding."

Friday, August 31, 2012

Bad market design by design at U of Central Florida...and Craigslist?

Course registration can be a pain, but at the University of Central Florida they apparently don't want anyone trying to make it easier: Student Is Punished for Creating Class-Registration Web

"A student at the University of Central Florida has been placed on academic probation for creating a Web site that tells students when a seat becomes available in a given class.

"Tim Arnold, a senior at Central Florida, built the U Could Finish site this year. The site became available in June, but, within days, was blocked from accessing the university site without notice. The Office of Student Conduct then told Mr. Arnold that he had violated university policy regarding technology use..."
*********

It's easier to see how Craigslist might have a legitimate interest in preventing entrepreneurs from developing superior front ends (recall eBay vs. Bidder's Edge): The SF Chronicle has the story.
3taps, PadMapper face Craigslist challenge

"Kidd's 3taps and a website that uses the data it collects, PadMapper, are the latest in a long line of Web developers to face legal action from Craigslist, the San Francisco company that has dominated the online classified advertising market for 17 years. Since 2008, at least three dozen similar services such as MapsKreig, Craiglook and CraigsFish have received cease-and-desist letters from Craigslist, most for building websites that presented Craigslist listings in ways they considered to be more dynamic, visually appealing and helpful.
...
"Craigslist has never added features such as mapping, videos and mobile apps, or any other tools that would improve user experiences. It still sorts items in chronological order, and doesn't allow nationwide searches of all its local websites at once. Its reluctance to update its Web services has opened the door for Kidd and other developers like him.

"Some of the developers shut down by Craigslist pulled data directly from its website, but 3taps uses a novel approach - searching Craigslist through Google, copying the data off Google, reordering it and then formatting it in a way other websites can easily display. PadMapper uses content generated by 3taps for its mapping services.

"Kidd noted that Craigslist chooses to allow price, location and description information from listings to appear on Google. As a result, he said, it shouldn't be allowed to stop other websites from displaying the same information in unique maps and tables. And the online classifieds leader certainly can't claim that data points as crucial to commerce as prices, locations and basic descriptions can be copyrighted.

"Legal experts say presenting the entirety of listings in the same format as Craigslist would be troublesome, but that's not what PadMapper is doing. And a 1991 case dealing with phone books suggests that the bare-bones data in listings is not subject to copyright law, these experts say.
...
"Craigslist and its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. In the lawsuit, Craigslist says that "the originality, simplicity, and clarity" of its website "are fundamental to Craigslist's reputation and garner substantial and valuable goodwill with users." 

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Kidney donation and (loss of) medical insurance

Some things are so far off the equilibrium path that they drive me crazy: The Reward for Donating a Kidney: No Insurance

"Like most other kidney donors, Mr. Royer, a retired teacher in Eveleth, Minn., was carefully screened and is in good health. But Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota rejected his application for coverage last year, as well as his appeals, on the grounds that he has chronic kidney disease, even though many people live with one kidney and his nephrologist testified that his kidney is healthy. Mr. Royer was also unable to purchase life insurance."

File this under "negative compensation for donors."

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Collusion, for fun and profit: Marshall and Marx



I was delighted to receive in the mail the new book The Economics of Collusion: Cartels and Bidding Rings, by Robert C. Marshall and Leslie M. Marx.

The book is devoted to the description and analysis of explicit collusion (their emphasis). I haven't read it yet, but one of the things that makes explicit collusion so entertaining to study and read about is that there are often detailed accounts (typically from court cases) about just how the collusion was accomplished.

Examples:
Marshall:  "Collusive Bidder Behavior at Single Object Second price and English Auctions," with D. Graham, Journal of Political Economy, 1987, 95, 1217-1239.

American Economic Review, v100(3), 724-762, 2010. 

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Circumcision: maybe not so repugnant after all

While a German court's ban on circumcision earlier this summer continues to be debated in Germany (where criminal charges have now been filed against a mohel--a religious circumciser), the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a report saying that the health benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, and that it should be covered by medical insurance.

Here's the NY Times story: Benefits of Circumcision Are Said to Outweigh Risks

"The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its stance on infant male circumcision, announcing on Monday that new research, including studies in Africa suggesting that the procedure may protect heterosexual men against H.I.V., indicated that the health benefits outweighed the risks.

"But the academy stopped short of recommending routine circumcision for all baby boys, saying the decision remains a family matter. The academy had previously taken a neutral position on circumcision.

"The new policy statement, the first update of the academy’s circumcision policy in over a decade, appears in the Aug. 27 issue of the journal Pediatrics. The group’s guidelines greatly influence pediatric care and decisions about coverage by insurers; in the new statement, the academy also said that circumcision should be covered by insurance.

"The long-delayed policy update comes as sentiment against circumcision is gaining strength in the United States and parts of Europe. Circumcision rates in the United States declined to 54.5 percent in 2009 from 62.7 percent in 1999, according to one federal estimate. Critics succeeded last year in placing a circumcision ban on the ballot in San Francisco, but a judge ruled against including the measure.

"In Europe, a government ethics committee in Germany last week overruled a court decision that removing a child’s foreskin was “grievous bodily harm” and therefore illegal. The country’s Professional Association of Pediatricians called the ethics committee ruling “a scandal.”

"A provincial official in Austria has told state-run hospitals in the region to stop performing circumcisions, and the Danish authorities have commissioned a report to investigate whether medical doctors are present during religious circumcision rituals as required.

"Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which for several years have been pondering circumcision recommendations of their own, have yet to weigh in and declined to comment on the academy’s new stance. Medicaid programs in several states have stopped paying for the routine circumcision of infants."
*********************

The American pediatricians are unlikely to have much impact on the debate in Europe, but their opinion might make it even harder for attempts to ban circumcision in the U.S., like the failed attempt in California.