5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, August 19-23

I'll be travelling to Germany to meet with students from many universities around the world at the

5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences

19-23 August 2014

Lindau Meeting of the Laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

The 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will provide an open exchange of economic expertise and inspire cross-cultural and inter-generational encounters among economists from all over the world. The diverse methodological approaches to economics will be widely discussed between the Laureates and the young participants.

There will be approximately 450 young economists from more than 80 countries participating in the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences.

Programme

The scientific programme of the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will comprise lectures and panel discussions (accessible for all registered meeting participants and guests), as well as discussion sessions and master classes (both accessible only for participating Nobel Laureates and young scientists).

A detailed version of the programme including all lecture titles of the participating laureates with links to their abstracts is available in the Lindau Mediatheque. To get an overview of the meeting schedule you can also download the programme structure.

Here's the formal part of the program:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20TH

08:30 - 09:00	Lecture	Lars Peter Hansen Uncertainty and Valuation
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Alvin E. Roth Repugnant Markets and Prohibited Transactions
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Edmund S. Phelps Bringing Dynamism, Homegrown Innovation and Human Flourishing into Economics
10:00 - 10:30	Coffee Break
10:30 - 11:00	Lecture	Christopher A. Sims Inflation, Fear of Inflation, and Public Debt
11:00 - 11:30	Lecture	Vernon L. Smith Rethinking Market Experiments in the Shadow of Recessions: The Good and the Sometimes Ugly; Propositions on Recessions
11:30 - 14:00	Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:00	Opening Ceremony
15:00 - 15:30	Break
16:00 - 17:30	Discussion	Discussions  Discussions with Laureates Hansen, Phelps, Roth, Sims, Smith
17:00 - 20:00	Break
20:00 - 23:00	International Get-Together

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21ST

07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Paths to Innovation: Restoring Grassroots Dynamism to Address Global Challenges; Hosted by Mars, Incorporated - Upon invitation only
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Joseph E. Stiglitz Inequality, Wealth, and Growth: Why Capitalism is Failing
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Eric S. Maskin Why Haven’t Global Markets Reduced Inequality in Developing Economies?
10:00 - 10:30	Lecture	Finn E. Kydland Economic Policy and the Growth of Nations
10:30 - 11:30	Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:00	Lecture	Robert J. Aumann Collectives as Individuals
12:00 - 12:30	Lecture	Reinhard Selten From Learning Direction Theory to Generalized Impulse Balance
12:30 - 13:00	Lecture	William F. Sharpe Economic Analysis of Retirement Income Strategies
13:00 - 15:00	Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:30	Discussion	Panel Discussion The Future of Econometrics: Structural Restrictions, Parametric Methods and Big Data; Panelists Hansen, McFadden, Sims
16:30 - 17:00	Break
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Master Classes Master Classes with Myerson and Hansen
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Discussions  Discussions with Laureates Aumann, Kydland, Maskin, Selten, Sharpe, Stiglitz
18:30 - 19:00	Break
19:00 - 20:00	Lecture	Mario Vargas Llosa A Panoramic View on the Situation and Perspectives in Latin America
20:00 - 23:00	Dinner and Free Evening

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22ND

07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Innovation from the Edge - How could we possibly solve the “Innovator’s Dilemma” through the Power of Diversity?; Hosted by SAP SE - Upon invitation only
07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Banking and Banking Regulation after the Financial Crisis; Hosted by UBS AG - Upon invitation only
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Robert C. Merton Measuring the Connectedness of the Financial System: Implications for Systemic Risk Measurement and Management
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Daniel L. McFadden The New Science of Pleasure
10:00 - 10:30	Lecture	Sir James A. Mirrlees Some Interesting Taxes and Subsidies
10:30 - 11:30	Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:00	Lecture	Roger B. Myerson Moral-Hazard Credit Cycles with Risk-Averse Agents
12:00 - 12:30	Lecture	Edward C. Prescott The Revolution in Aggregate Economics
12:30 - 13:00	Lecture	Peter A. Diamond Unemployment
13:00 - 15:00	Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:30	Discussion	Panel Discussion Strategic Behavior, Incentives, and Mechanism Design; Panelists Maskin, Mirrlees, Myerson
16:30 - 17:00	Break
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Discussions Discussions with Laureates Diamond, McFadden, Merton, Mirrlees, Myerson, Prescott
18:30 - 20:00	Break
20:00 - 23:00	Bavarian Evening supported by the Free State of Bavaria

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23RD

07:15 - 10:20	Boat Trip to Mainau Island supported by SAP SE
11:00 - 13:00	Discussion	Panel Discussion How Useful is Economics - How is Economics Useful? Panelists Diamond, Merton, Roth
13:00 - 15:15	Lunch Break
15:15 - 15:45	Farewell Ceremony
16:15 - 18:30	Boat Trip to Lindau supported by SAP SE

ASSOCIATED DATA

Meeting Programme (2014 Economic Sciences) Meeting Programme of the 5th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

PDF

4.51 MB

Here's a link to the 'Nobel Labs 360' set of photographic, clickable interviews (including mine) in which you can direct some of the action and fly around the room using your mouse...

Immigration of scientists

In http://nypost.com/2014/06/08/the-science-of-immigration/, the NY Post notes that, since 2000, "immigrants have been awarded 24 of the 68 Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics."

My colleague Petra Moser looks particularly at the wave of immigration of German Jews after the Nazis took power: German Jewish Émigrés and U.S. Invention

"Our research provides new evidence on this question by examining the impact on innovation of German Jewish scientists who fled from Nazi Germany to the United States after 1932. Historical accounts suggest that these émigrés revolutionized U.S. innovation. In physics, for example, émigrés such as Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Hans Bethe formed the core of the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb. In chemistry, émigrés such as Otto Meyerhof (Nobel Prize 1922), Otto Stern (Nobel Prize 1943), Otto Loewi (Nobel Prize 1936), Max Bergmann, Carl Neuberg, and Kasimir Fajans “soon effected hardly less than a revolution. … Their work … almost immediately propelled the United States to world leadership in the chemistry of life” (Sachar 1992, p. 749).

Alternative accounts, however, suggest that émigrés’ contributions may have been limited due to administrative hurdles and antisemitism. Jewish scientists met with a “Kafkaesque gridlock of seeking affidavits from relatives in America [and] visas from less-than-friendly United States consuls” (Sachar 1992, p. 495). Once they were in the United States, a rising wave of antisemitism made it difficult for these scientists to find employment; in “the hungry 1930s, antisemitism was a fact of life among American universities as in other sectors of the U.S. economy” (Sachar 1992, p. 498).

Our paper presents a systematic empirical analysis of how German Jewish émigrés affected U.S. innovation. Taking advantage of the fact that patents are a good measure of innovation in chemistry, because chemical innovations are exceptionally suitable to patent protection (e.g., Cohen, Nelson, and Walsh 2002; Moser 2012), we focus on changes in chemical inventions. By comparison, the contributions of émigré physicists (including those who worked on the Manhattan Project) are difficult to capture empirically because they produced knowledge that was often classified and rarely patented.
...
"In sum, our research shows that high-skilled German Jewish immigrants created large and persistent benefits for innovators in the United States. In interpreting these results it is important to keep in mind that the émigrés in our data were exceptionally qualified scientists comparable to present-day academic superstars. Our analysis indicates that policies, which encourage the immigration of such scientists, can be an effective mechanism to encourage innovation.

This Research Brief is based on Moser, Voena, and Waldinger (2013), available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w19962. All works cited are provided there."

Competition, Market Design, and Medicare Part D

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has a new report about Competition and the Cost of Medicare's Prescription Drug Program:

 "Medicare Part D was designed to foster competition between plan sponsors to constrain drug spending. In assessing the impact of competition, CBO found that a larger number of plan sponsors in a region was associated with lower bids, on average, for the group of plans analyzed. … However, between 2007 and 2010, the average total number of plan sponsors per region fell by 4 (from 22 to 18), because more sponsors exited the market or merged with other sponsors than entered the market; that decrease in competition is associated with higher bids and higher government spending. … As Part D is currently structured, two features of the program could be changed to encourage plan sponsors to submit lower bids for their plans. First, in the component of Part D that serves low-income beneficiaries, the government usually pays the full amount of a plan's bid up to a threshold, regardless of whether other plans bid lower. Second, low-income beneficiaries enrolled in plans whose bid rises above the threshold are automatically reassigned in equal proportions to plans with bids below the threshold (unless a beneficiary has actively signed up for a particular plan). Both of those features encourage plans to set their bids close to (though below) the threshold. … The rules of the program could be altered, however, in ways that would continue to protect low-income beneficiaries but would also lower bids and government spending. For example, the government could adopt a reassignment mechanism that preferentially assigned low-income beneficiaries to the plans with premiums furthest below the benchmark; that approach would provide a stronger incentive to plans to submit low bids and would reduce the government’s spending even if plans did not alter their bids."

The full report is here:
Competition and the Cost of Medicare’s Prescription Drug Program
http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45552-PartD.pdf 

and an accompanying technical working paper on competition here:

Examining the Number of Competitors and the Cost of Medicare Part D
by Andrew Stocking, James Baumgardner, Melinda Buntin, and Anna Cook

New York Prosecutors Charge Payday Lenders With Usury

The New York Times has the story: New York Prosecutors Charge Payday Lenders With Usury

"A trail of money that began with triple-digit loans to troubled New Yorkers and wound through companies owned by a former used-car salesman in Tennessee led New York prosecutors on a yearlong hunt through the shadowy world of payday lending.

On Monday, that investigation culminated with state prosecutors in Manhattan bringing criminal charges against a dozen companies and their owner, Carey Vaughn Brown, accusing them of enabling payday loans that flouted the state’s limits on interest rates in loans to New Yorkers.

Such charges are rare. The case is a harbinger of others that may be brought to rein in payday lenders that offer quick cash, backed by borrowers’ paychecks, to people desperate for money, according to several people with knowledge of the investigations.

“The exploitative practices — including exorbitant interest rates and automatic payments from borrowers’ bank accounts, as charged in the indictment — are sadly typical of this industry as a whole,” Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said on Monday.

...

"The indictment offers a detailed look at the mechanics of the multibillion-dollar payday loan industry, which offers short-term loans with interest rates that can soar beyond 500 percent. ...

The payday lending operation began when borrowers applied for loans on websites like MyCashNow.com. From there, borrowers’ information was passed to another company, owned by Mr. Brown, that originated the loans. The information then wound up with another company, owned by Mr. Brown, that collected payments from borrowers."

*****************************************
Here are some previous posts on payday loans.

Good news about a dangerous disease (hepatitis), at a high price

The good news is that there's a cure. The bad news is that it isn't cheap. Here's the NY Times headline on what is proving to be a blockbuster drug:
$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So Hard--Critics Raise Concerns About Sovaldi

"A new drug for the liver disease hepatitis C is scaring people. Not because the drug is dangerous — it’s generally heralded as a genuine medical breakthrough — but because it costs $1,000 a pill and about $84,000 for a typical person’s total treatment."

The story raises a number of interesting points.  Here's one:

"Until now, doctors would mostly treat hepatitis C patients’ symptoms. Some drugs attacked the virus itself, but they did not work very well. And most had side effects, including fever, depression and anemia, that about half the patients were not healthy enough to tolerate.

Those drugs were also expensive — the most effective drug cocktail before Sovaldi cost about $70,000 — but because few patients chose them, the price tag did not cause a big reaction. Sovaldi is different. Patients want this drug, with its high success rate and smaller list of side effects. That means a big financial shock to the health care system all at once."

Surrogacy and surrogacy law in the Hague

The Hague Conference on Private International Law has produced a document on surrogacy:
PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW ISSUES SURROUNDING THE STATUS OF CHILDREN, INCLUDING ISSUES ARISING FROM INTERNATIONAL SURROGACY ARRANGEMENTS

There's a meeting on the subject this week:

International Forum on Intercountry Adoption & Global Surrogacy

11-13 August 2014

About the ForumAccommodation
Participants
Keynote Speakers
Registration
Contact

Livestream

The plenary sessions will be broadcast live via the ISS livestream facility

Twitter

Follow the discussions on Twitter using #icaforum2014

About

The International Forum on Intercountry Adoption & Global Surrogacy  intends to provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to come together to provide an evidence base for international adoption and surrogacy problems and/or best practices that might inform Hague Convention policymakers and HCIA Central Authorities. Crosscutting themes will thus reflect topics pertinent to the special commission.

More background information on the Forum

Participants

Forum participants will include scholars and activists working in the field of international adoption and surrogacy.

List of confirmed participants

Keynote Speakers

	Norma Cruz Human rights defender for mothers and their children abducted into international adoption Founder of the Survivors Foundation, Guatemala 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Winner of US State Department's 2009 International Woman of Courage Award
	Hans van Loon Former Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (1996-2013) who initiated and laid the groundwork for the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption
	Deepa Venkatachalam Director of the Sama-Resource Group for Women and Health.  Specialist in the social, medical, ethical and economic implications of inter country adoption and surrogacy for women and for society as a whole.

Here's a skeptical article from Al Jazeera: Offshore babies: The murky world of transnational surrogacy

Stanley Reiter 1925-2014

Ricky Vohra brings the news: Stanley Reiter (1925-2014)

He was a pioneer of mechanism design, and an academic institution builder, at Northwestern, and at Purdue before that.

Transplanting teeth in the 1700's

Michael Sobolev at the Technion drew my attention to two copies of a 1787 engraving depicting tooth transplantation.



One copy of the picture is on this site of the British Dentistry Association, which offers the following commentary:

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)
Engraving hand coloured on paper
1787 

This is one of Rowlandson’s best-known works with a dental subject. The transplanting of teeth was particularly popular at the end of the eighteenth century. Poor people were paid to have their healthy teeth removed for immediate placement into the waiting mouths of wealthy, older patients whose own teeth had decayed and been extracted. The treatment went out of fashion as it had several disadvantages. Long term success was extremely rare, and furthermore syphilis could be transmitted with the transplanted tooth.

The central scene shows a fashionably attired dentist removing a tooth from a poor chimney-sweep with a tooth key (note the forceps on the floor, used to shake the tooth lose prior to extraction). An aristocratic lady, who is to receive the tooth, watches with apprehension. She has to resort to her smelling salts to overcome the smell of the poor person, seated next to her. On the right, one of the dentist’s assistants is examining the next patient, an elegantly dressed young lady with clenched hands, as she anticipates her forthcoming extraction. In the rear, between these two groups is a dandy examining his newly transplanted tooth in a mirror. On the extreme left, two poor sellers are leaving the room; one is holding his hand to his painful jaw while the other is disdainfully examining the miserly payment she has received for her tooth.

On the notice on the door is the statement: "Most money given for live teeth". Teeth from the dead were also transplanted. The social comment contained in this caricature is directed at the abuse of the poor, not at the transplanting procedure. To underline the satire the rich are in bright colours and the poor are drab and dull.

The museum has recently been involved in a film about transplanting of teeth in the 18th century; watch it here.

If you enjoyed this print why not visit the BDA shop on-line to buy a copy of 'Open Wide: A Series of Eighteenth and Ninetheenth Century Caricatures on Dentistry'? 

Another copy of the picture is on this site, with this commentary:
Annotation
This print is by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) and is dated 1787. It is a satirical comment upon the real practice of rich gentlemen and ladies of the 18th century paying for teeth to be pulled from poor children and transplanted in their gums. The dentist present is portrayed as a quack. There are even two quacking ducks on the placard advertising his fake credentials. He is busy pulling teeth from the mouth of a poor young chimney sweep. Covered in soot and exhausted, he slumps in a chair. Meanwhile the dentist's assistant transplants a tooth into a fashionably dressed young lady's mouth. Two children can be seen leaving the room clutching their faces and obviously in pain from having their teeth extracted. As people lost most of their teeth by age 21 due to gum disease, teeth transplants were popular for some time in England although they rarely worked.

Source
Thomas Rowlandson, "Transplanting Teeth," The Wellcome Library, Annotated by Lynda Payne.

How to Cite This Source
Thomas Rowlandson, "Transplanting Teeth (c.1790) [Engraving]," in Children and Youth in History, Item #164, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/164 (accessed July 10, 2014). Annotated by Lynda Payne


(And here's an earlier post on transplantation of teeth: http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2011/04/live-donor-teeth-and-george-washington.html )

A call for more productive dialog between proponents and opponents of payments to kidney donors

In the American Journal of Transplantation, a letter to the editor containing a modest proposal:

A Regulated System of Incentives for Living Kidney Donation: It Is Time for Opposing Groups to Have a Meaningful Dialogue!
by A. J. Matas, and R. E. Hays

"The shortage of organs is a crisis in clinical transplantation. In spite of numerous attempts to increase both living and deceased kidney donation rates in the United States, there has not been a change in the last 10 years. The combination of an increasing number of transplant candidates and no change in donation rates has resulted in increased waiting times and significant morbidity and mortality for those waiting. In the last 10 years, over sixty thousand candidates have been removed from the waiting list because of death or becoming too sick for undergoing transplantion [1]. A regulated system of incentives has the potential to increase living donation rates and thereby reduce transplant candidate morbidity and mortality.

Despite the potential benefits to recipients, the concept of a trial of incentives remains controversial, with strong proponents and opponents [2-7]. Both groups have the same facts. Both agree that there is a shortage of organs; both favor removal of disincentives to donation; both likely agree that incentives may increase donation (only a trial will determine this) and that increased donation rates benefit patients and society. In addition, both are committed to the safety and well being of donors; both are opposed to unregulated underground markets and agree that such systems have done a disservice to donors and recipients.
...
proponents emphasize the potential benefit of a regulated system (for recipients), and use key words such as organ crisis, transplant candidate mortality and societal benefit. Opponents emphasize the potential risk to donors, and the impact that approving a system might have on society's moral perspective, and, citing the harms of unregulated markets, use key words such as coercion, exploitation, undermining dignity, repugnance and commodification. Second, proponents emphasize local, structured trials in countries, such as the United States, capable of providing structure, regulation and transparency. Opponents emphasize developing a worldwide policy, and state that because many countries cannot provide regulation and transparency, incentives should be banned in all countries.

Is there a way to move forward? Based on their perspective of the data, proponents suggest that a well-designed trial—in a country with effective systems in place for regulation and monitoring, and with appropriate entry criteria and end points—would answer the critical questions that determine whether or not a regulated system of incentives is worth exploring further [2]. If a trial were to show increased donation rates but poor donor outcomes (health, psychosocial [social losses; regret]) compared to conventionally accepted donors, the system would be unacceptable, and scrapped. With their perspective, opponents identify—to date, theoretical—concerns about the impact on donors and aim for a global “one size fits all” policy.

Worldwide, transplanters could and should agree that lack of effective regulation regarding living donation is dangerous to donors and recipients alike. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that as people die on the transplant waitlist, discounting a possible way to increase access to transplant without first testing its impact, outcomes, and pros/cons on donors and recipients is premature. Opting not to conduct a trial of a regulated system of incentives has real consequences—morbidity and mortality in those with end-stage renal disease; and, it could be argued further, exploits current living donors who (in the United States) incur significant financial burdens by donating [9].

It is time for those with the full spectrum of opinions on the issue to have a meaningful dialogue. Given that the two groups share the same facts and the same concerns about donor safety, one possible way to initiate discussion is to narrow the field of focus. Perhaps, it should start with discussion as to whether or not, in a regulated system of incentives, both donor and recipient interests can be protected, and whether or not it is necessary to have a single global policy. If individual national policies are to be considered, the groups could discuss whether or not countries such as the United States, that can provide effective regulation and monitoring, and have maximized conventional donation, could consider trials of incentives in the context of the current impact of the organ shortage on their transplant candidates."

UNOS videos to explain kidney paired donation to potential participants

Here they are, at the top and along the right side of the UNOS KPD page.

KPD video series

Is KPD Right For Me?

• Is KPD Right For Me - Recipient
• Is KPD Right For Me - Donor

KPD Success Stories

• Success Story - Letty
• Success Story - Virginia
• Success Story - Ken & Val
• Success Story - Randy & Joan

The State of the OPTN/UNOS KPD Pilot Program

Here's the report: The State of the OPTN/UNOS KPD Pilot Program, on the kidney exchange program begun by UNOS in 2010.

The report is full of informative figures, but this one tells much of the story: in 2013 the program started to overcome some of  the many logistical difficulties that it faced, and the original market design legacy that had initially limited exchanges to two way exchanges and prohibited and then limiting chains. Here's hoping that the trend will continue: UNOS is a natural home for kidney exchange in that it already deals with all the transplant centers, and that it would be in a position to integrate living and deceased donation (if only it were more nimble in overcoming political and regulatory barriers and embracing best practices...).

The repugnance of marijuana seems to be going up in smoke

The New York Times has changed with the times...
Evolving on Marijuana
Highlights from the Editorial Board’s changing view of marijuana over six decades.

Their most recent positions are here:

INTRO

Our Position

 6830

PART 1

States’ Rights

 899

PART 2

Criminal Justice

 1686

PART 3

History

 1371

PART 4

Health

 2762

PART 5

Track Records

 914

PART 6

Regulation

 93