Family consent for (and sometimes veto of) organ donation in England, and presumed consent in Wales

Here's a BBC report:
Organ donations vetoed by hundreds of bereaved families, By Jane Dreaper, 15 January 2016

"Bereaved families have blocked the donation of organs from 547 UK registered donors since 2010 - about one in seven cases, figures show.

"NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) says it will no longer seek the consent of families formally, to make such "overrides" more exceptional.

"Instead, they will be given a leaflet explaining consent - or authorisation in Scotland - rests with the deceased.

"Families can still veto that consent but must provide reasons in writing.

"NHSBT expects the change to lead to a 9% rise in donors.
It said the 547 blocked donors would have provided organs for 1,200 patients."
...
"Last month, the system in Wales changed to "presumed consent", under which people are deemed to be potential donors unless they have specifically opted out."

Performance enhancing drugs on campus: Stanford Daily surveys undergraduates

Here's the article: A Look at Stimulants and Study Drugs on Campus

Challenges for the coming year?

 Four Nobel economists on the biggest challenges for 2016
I responded with refugee resettlement, but see also Bob Shiller, Ned Phelps, and Mike Spence.

This is in connection with the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, 20-23 January 2016 Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, which I'm attending this year (and to which I'm travelling today).

Equilibrium, mediation, and differential privacy

Here's a paper that caught my eye...

Robust Mediators in Large Games∗
Michael Kearns, Mallesh M. Pai, Ryan Rogers,  Aaron Roth, and Jonathan Ullman
December 14, 2015
Abstract
A mediator is a mechanism that can only suggest actions to players, as a function of all agents’ reported types, in a given game of incomplete information. We study what is achievable by two kinds of mediators, “strong” and “weak.” Players can choose to opt-out of using a strong mediator but cannot misrepresent their type if they opt-in. Such a mediator is “strong” because we can view it as having the ability to verify player types. Weak mediators lack this ability— players are free to misrepresent their type to a weak mediator. We show a striking result—in a prior-free setting, assuming only that the game is large and players have private types, strong mediators can implement approximate equilibria of the complete-information game. If the game is a congestion game, then the same result holds using only weak mediators. Our result follows from a novel application of  differential privacy, in particular, a variant we propose called joint differential privacy.

Reducing the cruelty in food--WSJ on trends in veal production

As we get more prosperous, we are becoming more concerned about what we eat. Here's a story from the WSJ about veal--meat from calves.

Why You Might Consider Ordering the Veal--More-palatable production methods are helping restore veal to restaurant menus  By MATTHEW KRONSBERG

"LIKE MANY WHO came of age in the 1980s, I spent years not ordering veal. News stories about the mistreatment of the calves made veal synonymous with cruelty. Images of young animals confined to constrictive crates to prevent muscle development and promote ultra-tender meat left me, and many others, with little appetite for it.

"So it has come as a surprise, recently, to see veal on the menu in restaurants known for the conscientious sourcing of their meat.
...
"Could veal be making a comeback? In mass-market terms, it’s unlikely. Annual U.S. consumption has fallen from 2.3 pounds per capita in 1986 to 0.3 pounds in 2014. Supply-side issues are a factor—gender-selection methods now used in dairy-cow breeding have reduced the number of superfluous male calves, the main source of the veal industry’s livestock, and a high demand for beef has also diverted more dairy calves to beef production. Yet it’s worth noting that in the U.K. and EU, where crating veal calves was banned in 1990 and 2007 respectively, consumption has increased. While there’s still no ban stateside, the American Veal Association has set a goal for members to voluntarily eliminate crates by 2017, said association president, Dale Bakke.

"Many small producers have already adopted more humane practices. The veal served at Upland and Cypress Tavern hews closely to the European style of husbandry, with calves raised in group pens or even open pasture. "

Learning opportunities at Canadian universities

Two universities I visited recently in Canada offered the following learning opportunities

The photo gallery of retired Harvard economics professors on the Littauer stairway

Among the many reasons that the Harvard Economics department needs a new or renovated building is that their photo gallery of retired faculty is nearing the top of the stairwell. I haven't seen my photo there in person yet, but several correspondents have sent me a picture of my picture, and this photo captures, in reflection, how little room is left on the stairs...

Top 25: What corporate America is reading, December 2015

Here's a best-seller list, published today, that surprised me:
Top 25: What corporate America is reading, December 2015

1. "Who Gets What -- And Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design" by Alvin E. Roth, Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

 ...

Who Gets What and Why: The Economics of Life Choices from School Admissions to Kidney Exchange: SFUEconomics (video)

A video of the Bank of Montreal Lecture I gave at Simon Fraser University in November is now available:

77 Kidney Exchange transplants in 2015 at one transplant center in India

I received the following cheerful news from Dr. Vivek Kute at the Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Center and Dr. H L Trivedi Institute of Transplantation Sciences ,
(IKDRC-ITS) Ahmedabad , India

 Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) Transplantation Activity At Single Center In Institute Of Kidney Diseases And Research Center And Dr. H L Trivedi Institute Of Transplantation Sciences , (IKDRC-ITS) Ahmedabad , India

Kute VB , Patel HV, Shah PR, Vanikar AV, Modi PR, Shah VR , Varyani UT, Wakhare PS ,  Shinde  SG,  Godhela VA, Shah PS , MK Shah , Gattani VS ,Shah JH, Wadhai KG , Trivedi VB, Patel MH, Trivedi HL.

1) We have performed the largest number of KPD Transplantations (77 patients from 1 Jan 2015 to 1 Jan 2016) in our single center and to the best of our knowledge this is largest number for KPD transplants in single center in one year in the World. KPD constitutes 25% of living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) in 2015.

2) We have performed 274 KPD Transplantations in Our Single Center from Year 2000- 2015 and total 231 KPD Transplantations from Year 2011-2015

3) We Have Performed First Non-Simultaneous Domino Chain Transplant of 6 ESRD Patients and 6 Donors in Single Center in August 2015.

4) We Have Performed First International KPD Transplant on 17 Feb 2015.

5) In The Year 2013, we have performed 56 Kidney Paired Donation Transplantations in our single center. KPD constitutes 15.8% of LDKT in 2013.

6) In The Year 2014, we have performed 56 Kidney Paired Donation Transplantations in our single center. KPD constitutes 18.1% of LDKT in 2014.

7) We Have Performed Ten KPD Transplantations on World Kidney Day 2013 in Single Day in Our Single Center on 14 March 2013.

8) We Have Performed Successful Three-Way KPD Transplantation: First Time in India on 13 February 2013.

9) We Have Performed Successful Three-Way KPD Transplantation in Combination with Desensitization Protocol: First Time in India on 6 May 2014.

Under Mentorship of Prof. HL Trivedi, Vivek Kute is mainly focused on expanding donor pool and kidney-paired donation (KPD) transplantation. 

Correspondence Address

Dr.Vivek Kute. 

MBBS, MD, FCPS, DM Nephrology (Gold Medalist), FASN

Associate Professor , Nephrology and Transplantation, Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Center and Dr. H L Trivedi Institute of Transplantation Sciences , (IKDRC-ITS) Ahmedabad , India

(M) : +919099927543  

Email: drvivekkute@rediffmail.com  

Website : www.ikdrc-its.org

Centennial lecture at U of Illinois College of Business (video of lecture and of an interview)

Here (and below) is the video of the public lecture I gave in October, and an accompanying interview, as part of the Centennial celebration at the University of Illinois College of Business, where I had my first academic job in 1974.

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Matching: Theory and Applications, special issue dedicated to Marilda Sotomayor in honor of her 70th birthday

Here's the set of papers in honor of Marilda Sotomayor in the Journal of Dynamics and Games (JDG)

Volume 2,Number 3/4,     July/October 2015 1 Special issues on Matching: Theory and Applications, dedicated to Marilda Sotomayor on the occasion of her 70th birthday    Pages : i - i Alberto Adrego Pinto and Michel Benaïm  Abstract       Full Text      Related Articles 2 On Marilda Sotomayor's extraordinary contribution to matching theory    Pages : 201 - 206 Danilo Coelho and David Pérez-Castrillo  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 3 Endogenous budget constraints in the assignment game    Pages : 207 - 225 David Cantala and Juan Sebastián Pereyra  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 4 A survey on assignment markets    Pages : 227 - 256 Marina Núñez and Carles Rafels  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 5 Paths to stability in the assignment problem    Pages : 257 - 287 Bettina Klaus and Frédéric Payot  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 6 A deferred acceptance algorithm with contracts    Pages : 289 - 302 Eliana Pepa Risma  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 7 Externality effects in the formation of societies    Pages : 303 - 320 Renato Soeiro,  Abdelrahim Mousa and Alberto A. Pinto  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 8 Finding all stable matchings with couples    Pages : 321 - 330 Fuhito Kojima  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 9 Why do stable clearinghouses work so well? - Small sets of stable matchings in typical environments, and the limits-on-manipulation theorem of Demange, Gale and Sotomayor    Pages : 331 - 340 Alvin E. Roth  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 10 Dynamic club formation with coordination    Pages : 341 - 361 Tone Arnold and Myrna Wooders  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles 11 For claims problems, another compromise between the proportional and constrained equal awards rules    Pages : 363 - 382 William Thomson  Abstract       References       Full Text      Related Articles

Who Gets What and Why? Roth at Rotman (video snippet)

Here's  4 minutes (edited and patched together) of snippets from an event at the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, where I spoke about my book Who Gets What and Why, and was interviewed by Joshua Gans, who suggests that market designers might be more arrogant even than other economists. (This snippet also captures me talking about my friend and collaborator Elliott Peranson, whose firm National Matching Services is headquartered in Toronto...and about the Iron Law of Marriage:)

Coming soon in German: Wer kriegt was - und warum? Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl: Wie Märkte funktionieren

The German translation of my book, Who Gets What -- and Why? is coming out in March.

 The subtitle of the book changes with each translation.  In the U.S. edition, the subtitle is The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design.

In the U.K. edition it is The Hidden World of Matchmaking and Market Design.
Google translate renders the German subtitle , Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl: Wie Märkte funktionieren, as "Education, Jobs and mate selection: Markets Work"

Baby booms and marriage squeezes

What is the consequence of a baby boom on marriage prospects, in societies in which husbands are customarily a few years older than their wives?  It's a 'marriage squeeze'. Here's a recent interesting article from Time, focusing on  marriages among observant Mormons and Jews (to others of the same religion, that is...), and, among Jews, the slightly different marriage patterns amongYeshivish Orthodox and Hasidic Jews (apparently Hasidic husbands and wives are often the same age).

What Two Religions Tell Us About the Modern Dating Crisis by Jon Birger
"The imbalance in the Orthodox marriage market boils down to a demographic quirk: The Orthodox community has an extremely high birth rate, and a high birth rate means there will be more 18-year-olds than 19-year-olds, more 19-year-olds than 20-year-olds, and so on and so on. Couple the increasing number of children born every year with the traditional age gap at marriage—the typical marriage age for Orthodox Jews is 19 for women and 22 for men, according to Michael Salamon, a psychologist who works with the Orthodox community and wrote a book on the Shidduch Crisis—and you wind up with a marriage market with more 19-year-old women than 22-year-old men.

"There is no U.S. Census data on religion. But Joshua Comenetz, chief of the Census Bureau’s Geographic Studies Branch, studied the demographics of Orthodox Jews back in his college professor days at University of Florida. Based on his academic research, Comenetz contended that each one-year age cohort in the Orthodox community has 4 percent more members than the one preceding it. What this means is that for every 100 22-year-old men in the Orthodox dating pool, there are 112 19-year-old women—12 percent more women than men."
...

"Both Yeshivish and Hasidic Jews are extremely pious and socially conservative. They live in tight-knit communities. They are known for having large families. And both groups use matchmakers to pair their young people for marriage.

"There is, however, one major cultural difference between the two groups: Hasidic men marry women their own age, whereas Yeshivish men typically marry women a three or four years their junior.

“In the Hasidic world, it would be very weird for a man to marry a woman two years younger than him,” said Alexander Rapaport, a Hasidic father of six and the executive director of Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen in Brooklyn. Both Rapaport and his wife were 36 when I interviewed him.

When I asked Rapaport about the Shidduch Crisis, he seemed perplexed. “I’ve heard of it,” he said, “but I’m not sure I understand what it’s all about.”

In fact, there is no Shidduch Crisis in the Hasidic community. “When I mention the term to Hasidim, they don’t know what I’m talking about,” said Samuel Heilman, a professor of sociology and Jewish studies at City University of New York and an expert on Hasidic Jews."
**************

Here's an earlier post on the shidduchim crisis:

When assortative matching on age can interfere with matching

and here's a link to an earlier article by Mr Birger:

Unequal Gender Ratios at Colleges Are Driving Hookup Culture

HT: Scott Kominers

School Vouchers and Student Achievement: some sobering news from Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, and Walters

School Vouchers and Student Achievement: First-Year Evidence from the Louisiana Scholarship Program

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag A. Pathak, Christopher R. Walters

NBER Working Paper No. 21839
Issued in December 2015
NBER Program(s):   ED   LS   PE 

We evaluate the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), a prominent school voucher plan. The LSP provides public funds for disadvantaged students at low-performing Louisiana public schools to attend private schools of their choice. LSP vouchers are allocated by random lottery at schools with more eligible applicants than available seats. We estimate causal effects of voucher receipt by comparing outcomes for lottery winners and losers in the first year after the program expanded statewide. This comparison reveals that LSP participation substantially reduces academic achievement. Attendance at an LSP-eligible private school lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and increases the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent. Voucher effects for reading, science and social studies are also negative and large. The negative impacts of vouchers are consistent across income groups, geographic areas, and private school characteristics, and are larger for younger children. These effects are not explained by the quality of fallback public schools for LSP applicants: students lotteried out of the program attend public schools with scores below the Louisiana average. Survey data show that LSP-eligible private schools experience rapid enrollment declines prior to entering the program, indicating that the LSP may attract private schools struggling to maintain enrollment. These results suggest caution in the design of voucher systems aimed at expanding school choice for disadvantaged students.

Microeconomic Insights: a new website for economists

I've just added this new website to my newsfeed:
Microeconomic Insights: distilling research for public debate

Ariel Pakes writes:
"We are starting a new website entitled Microeconomic Insights.  We intend it to be a home for accessible summaries of high quality microeconomic research which informs the public about microeconomic issues relevant to the public debate.  Its goal is to bridge the gap between academic research and the public’s knowledge, thereby informing the public’s conversation on microeconomic issues. Microeconomic Insights’ intellectual content will be determined by an editorial board whose sole goal is to disseminate the insights from the very best research in microeconomics, irrespective of its political or ideological viewpoint.  ... The editors will work with the authors of the selected papers – forthcoming or recently published peer-reviewed journal articles – to write short 1,500-2,000 non-technical summaries of the key insights for a public policy audience.  The preparation of the final text of these articles will be done by a team of independent editors with extensive experience of writing for the public."

Compensation for kidney donors? The comments on the Washington Post discussion are now complete...

I've updated my earlier post

The Washington Post discusses compensation for organ donors 

to reflect the subsequent discussions, below. (See the original post for whole discussion, which now seems to be complete)

Sally Satel is first:  Generosity won’t fix our shortage of organs for transplants

Taking the opposite point of view (but arguing that we should do more to reduce financial disincentives to donating, by paying for donor expenses): Francis Delmonico and Alexander Capron December 29, Our body parts shouldn’t be for sale

Scott Sumner's headline and sub-headline also speaks for itself:  The moral case for paying kidney donors:  We can save lives and cut costs with one change in policy. 

Will lab-grown kidneys fix our transplant waiting lists?: Benjamin Humphreys is optimistic that they will, eventually.
It’s time to treat organ donors with the respect they deserve: Josh Morrison is a kidney donor and the executive director of WaitList Zero, a nonprofit devoted to representing living donors and supporting living donation.

Scott Carney disagrees, on practical grounds (he thinks that a legal US market would foster badly regulated overseas markets): If you’re willing to buy a kidney, you’re willing to exploit the poor: Legalizing the sale of kidneys in America would lead to a booming black market everywhere else.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who has spoken to many black market kidney sellers, thinks that legal markets couldn't funcion much differently: The market for human organs is destroying lives We don't have "spare" kidneys. They shouldn't be up for sale.

Some snapshots of the ASSA meetings

Some snapshots from the ASSA meetings