Matching and more: Continuing Education at the AEA meetings in Philadelphia

2018 Continuing Education, January 7-9, 2018, Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown

The AEA's 2018 Continuing Education Program will be held at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown on January 7-9, 2018, immediately following the close of ASSA. Participants can choose from three concurrent programs. Registration now open. (Alternatively, download PDF Registration form.)

Matching Market Design

Atila Abdulkadiroglu (Duke University)

Atila Abdulkadiroglu joined the Department of Economics at Duke University in the Fall of 2006. He taught at Northwestern University and Columbia University before coming to Duke. He received his PhD in Economics at the University of Rochester. His research has led to the design and implementation of better admissions policies in school choice programs in the US, He has consulted several school districts in redesigning student assignment systems, including Boston (MA), Chicago (Il), Denver (CO), New Orleans (LA), New York City (NY). His current research also focuses on economics of education. He is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Abdulkadiroglu serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Review of Economic Design. He serves on the board of The Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice.

Nikhil Agarwal (MIT)

Nikhil Agarwal is the Castle Krob Career Development Assistant Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been teaching since 2014. He completed his PhD in Economics at Harvard University in 2013, and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University. Agarwal specializes in the empirical study of matching markets. He has developed tools that have been applied to labor markets, education markets and organ allocation systems.

Parag Pathak (MIT)

Parag A. Pathak is the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics at MIT, found­ing co-director of the NBER Working Group on Market Design, and founder of MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII), a laboratory focused on education, human capital, and the income distribution.  Pathak has helped to design the Boston, Chicago, Denver, Newark, New Orleans, New York, and Washington DC school choice systems.   His work on mar­ket design and edu­ca­tion was garnered numerous recognitions including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the 2016 Social Choice and Welfare prize.  He has also authored leading studies on charter schools, high school reform, selective education, and school vouchers.  Pathak is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and has served on the editorial boards of Econometrica, American Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy.

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Machine Learning and Econometrics

Susan Athey (Stanford University)

Susan Athey is the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business.  She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford and Harvard. Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning.  She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and virtual currency. As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and now serves on the boards of Expedia, Rover, and Ripple.  She also serves as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system.

Guido Imbens (Stanford University)

Guido Imbens is Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. After graduating from Brown University Guido taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. He joined the GSB in 2012. Imbens specializes in econometrics, and in particular methods for drawing causal inferences. Guido Imbens is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Guido Imbens has taught in the continuing education program previously in 2009 and 2012.

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DSGE Models and the Role of Finance

Lawrence Christiano (Northwestern University)

Larry Christiano's research has been focused primarily on the problem of determining how the government's monetary and fiscal instruments ought to respond to shocks over the business cycle. This research has two parts: one involves formulating and estimating an empirically plausible model of the macroeconomy, and the second involves developing economic concepts and computational methods for determining optimal policy in an equilibrium model. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Thomas Philippon (New York University)

Thomas Philippon is Professor of Finance at New York University - Stern School of Business. Philippon was named one of the “top 25 economists under 45” by the IMF in 2014, he won the 2013 Bernácer Prize for Best European Economist under 40, the 2010 Michael Brennan & BlackRock Award, the 2009 Prize for Best Young French Economist, and the 2008 Brattle Prize for the best paper in Corporate Finance. He was elected Global Economic Fellow in 2009 by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He has studied various topics in finance and macroeconomics: financial distress, systemic risk, government interventions during financial crises, asset markets and corporate investment. Recently his work has focused on the evolution of the financial system and on the Eurozone crisis. He currently serves on the Monetary Policy Advisory Panel of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and as a board member and director of the scientific committee of the French prudential regulator (ACPR). He was the senior economic advisor to the French finance minister in 2012-2013. Philippon graduated from Ecole Polytechnique, received a PhD in Economics from MIT, and joined New York University in 2003.

Information, school quality and school choice

Here's a recent article by Gail Cornwall in The Atlantic, summarizing some of the work on school choice which points out that it is easier for parents to judge the test scores of graduates than the value-added by the school.

Why Parents Make Flawed Choices About Their Kids' Schooling
A new study shows that families act on insufficient information when it comes to figuring out where to enroll their children.

It covers (among other things) work by Atila Abdulkadiroglu and Parag Pathak and various colleagues, including the recent NBER working paper

Do Parents Value School Effectiveness?

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

NBER Working Paper No. 23912
Issued in October 2017
NBER Program(s):   ED   LS 

School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents' choices reward effective schools and punish ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics. We study relationships among parent preferences, peer quality, and causal effects on outcomes for applicants to New York City's centralized high school assignment mechanism. We use applicants' rank-ordered choice lists to measure preferences and to construct selection-corrected estimates of treatment effects on test scores and high school graduation. We also estimate impacts on college attendance and college quality. Parents prefer schools that enroll high-achieving peers, and these schools generate larger improvements in short- and long-run student outcomes. We find no relationship between preferences and school effectiveness after controlling for peer quality.

The AEA and the job market

Should the American Economic Association make further interventions to facilitate the job market for new economists?  Should it issue a code of conduct to guide behavior in various realms in which economists interact?  Both of those are under consideration, as announced today on the society's website.

Here's the text of the email announcement to members:

Statement of the AEA Executive Committee

October 20, 2017 To: Members of the American Economic Association From: Peter L. Rousseau, Secretary-Treasurer Subject: Statement of the AEA Executive Committee Many members of the economics community have expressed concern about offensive behavior within our profession that demeans individuals or groups of individuals. The American Economic Association strongly condemns misogyny, racism, homophobia, antisemitism and other behaviors that harm our profession. AEA President Alvin E. Roth has charged an ad hoc committee on professional conduct to formulate a set of guidelines for economists to be considered by the Executive Committee. The ad hoc committee is charged with evaluating various aspects of professional conduct, including those which stifle diversity in Economics. It will submit a report in time for discussion in January. There will be a period for comment by the AEA membership on that report following its release. The Association is also exploring the possibility of creating a website/message board designed to provide additional information and transparency to the job market for new Ph.D.s, and will be surveying departments to assess what information about their search processes might be shared.

Repugnance watch: Appeals court in SF allows challenge to state law banning prostitution

The SF Chronicle has the story: Appeals court in SF allows challenge to state law banning prostitution

"Advocates of legalized prostitution took their challenge to California’s 145-year-old ban on commercial sex before a federal appeals court Thursday and appeared to get a hint that they’ll have another chance to show why the law should be cast aside.


The case was brought by three former prostitutes, a would-be client and the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Educational and Research Project. They contend the law violates the right to engage in consensual sex, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2003 ruling overturning criminal laws against gay sexual activity.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of Oakland rejected their argument last year, saying the high court ruling protected only intimate personal relationships, not commercial sex. He said the state had adequately justified the current law as a deterrent to violence against women, sexually transmitted diseases and human trafficking.

But at Thursday’s hearing, members of a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco suggested that the law might need closer scrutiny, given today’s less restrictive standards, as recognized by the high court, on sex between consenting adults.

“Why should it be illegal to sell something that it’s legal to give away?” asked Carlos Bea, one of the court’s most conservative judges.

Another conservative, Judge Consuelo Callahan, pointed out that prostitution, like gay sex, had historically been “subject to moral disapproval.” Just as in 2003, the current case, she said, “deals with individuals’ rights,” so why wouldn’t a ruling for the right to engage in prostitution be “a natural extension of Supreme Court precedent?”


Deputy Attorney General Sharon O’Grady, the state’s lawyer, responded that the difference is in “the commercial aspect ... the commodification of sex.”

“The state is not telling anyone who they can sleep with,” O’Grady said. It is prohibiting only a harmful category of business transactions, not intimate or enduring relationships, she said.

But Bea said the 2003 Supreme Court ruling might require the court to send the case back to White for another review, and perhaps even a full-scale trial, in which the state would have to show a compelling need for the law.

California made prostitution a crime in 1872, defining “every common prostitute” as a “vagrant” subject to a $500 fine and six months in jail. The law was updated in 1961 to reclassify prostitution or soliciting prostitution as disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

The Ninth Circuit left the state law intact in a 1988 ruling that said the relationship between a paid escort and a client “possesses few, if any, of the aspects of an intimate association.” H. Louis Sirkin, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the current case, argued that the ruling is no longer binding.

The Supreme Court’s 2003 decision established “the right of individuals to make their own individual choices as to how they want to behave” in consensual sexual relationships, Sirkin told the court. “If people put a dollar amount on it, that should not alter the intimate relationship.”

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting tomorrow and Saturday

The market design meeting starting tomorrow in Boston includes two "New Directions" sessions, one on Transportation and Market Design and one on Development Economics and Market Design.

Here's the program: Market Design Working Group Meeting

Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak, Organizers

October 20-21, 2017

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

Friday, October 20
9:00 am	Haluk Ergin, University of California at Berkeley Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College Utku Unver, Boston College Efficient and Incentive Compatible Liver Exchange
9:45 am	Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University Michael A. Rees, University of Toledo Medical Center Paulo J. Somaini, Stanford University and NBER Daniel C. Waldinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology An Empirical Framework for Sequential Assignments: The Allocation of Deceased Donor Kidneys
10:30 am	Break
11:00 am	Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER Robin S. Lee, Harvard University and NBER Will the Market Fix the Market? A Theory of Stock Market Competition and Innovation
11:45 am	Albert "Pete" Kyle, University of Maryland Jeongmin Lee, Washington University in St. Louis Toward a Fully Continuous Exchange
12:30 pm	Lunch
2:00 pm	Paul Milgrom, Stanford University Ilya Segal, Stanford University Deferred-Acceptance Clock Auctions and Radio Spectrum Reallocation
2:45 pm	Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland Christina Aperjis, Power Auctions LLC Oleg V. Baranov, University of Colorado Boulder Market Design and the FCC Incentive Auction
3:30 pm	Ulrich Doraszelski, University of Pennsylvania and NBER Katja Seim, University of Pennsylvania and NBER Michael Sinkinson, Yale University and NBER Peichun Wang, University of Pennsylvania Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction
4:15 pm	Break
	New Directions: Transportation and Market Design
4:30 pm	Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER Michael Schwarz, Google Research To Be Announced
5:00 pm	Peter Cramton, University of Maryland Richard Geddes, Cornell University Axel Ockenfels, University of Cologne Markets for Road Use: Eliminating Congestion through Scheduling, Routing, and Real-Time Road Pricing
5:30 pm	Juan Camilo Castillo, Stanford University Dan Knoepfle, Uber Technologies Glen Weyl, Microsoft Research Surge Pricing Solves the Wild Goose Chase (slides)
6:00 pm	Adjourn
Saturday, October 21
8:15 am	Coach Bus leaves Royal Sonesta Hotel for NBER
8:30 am	Continental Breakfast
9:00 am	Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Peng Shi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology How Well Do Structural Demand Models Work? Counterfactual Predictions in School Choice
9:45 am	Georgy Artemov, University of Melbourne Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University Yinghua He, Rice University Strategic `Mistakes': Implications for Market Design Research
10:30 am	Break
11:00 am	Jacob D. Leshno, Columbia University Irene Y. Lo, Columbia University The Cutoff Structure of Top Trading Cycles in School Choice
11:45 am	Esen Onur, CFTC David Reiffen, CFTC Lynn Riggs, CFTC Haoxiang Zhu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Mechanism Selection and Trade Formation on Swap Execution Facilities: Evidence from Index CDS
12:30 pm	Lunch
2:00 pm	Constantinos Daskalakis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Christos H. Papadimitriou, University of California at Berkeley Christos Tzamos, Microsoft Research Does Information Revelation Improve Revenue?
2:45 pm	Dirk Bergemann, Yale University Tibor Heumann, HEC - Montreal Stephen Morris, Princeton University Information and Market Power
3:30 pm	Break
	New Directions: Development Economics and Market Design
4:00 pm	Jean-François Houde, Cornell University and NBER Terence R. Johnson, University of Notre Dame Molly Lipscomb, University of Virginia Laura A. Schechter, University of Wisconsin, Madison Using Market Mechanisms to Increase the Take-up of Improved Sanitation in Senegal
4:30 pm	Reshmaan N. Hussam, Yale University Natalia Rigol, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Benjamin N. Roth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Targeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field
5:00 pm	Yusuke Narita, Yale University Experimental Design as Market Design: Billions of Dollars Worth of Treatment Assignments
5:30 pm	Adjourn

Remembering Howard Raiffa

The Negotiation Journal has published some memories of Howard Raiffa, who passed away in July of last year. Here's my contribution:

Some Memories of My Academic Grandfather

Authors

• 
  

  
  

• First published: 18 October 2017Full publication history
• DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12203  View/save citation
• Volume 33, Issue 4, October 2017 Pages 373–374
• 
  

I first met Howard shortly after I received my Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1974. Robert B. Wilson, my advisor, had been Howard's student, and so Howard was my academic grandfather. I visited Howard in his office at Harvard Business School and talked with him about my dissertation. I had worked on a generalization of what were called von Neumann-Morgenstern solutions, which were sets of game outcomes, characterized by two properties, internal and external stability. As I recall the discussion, Howard said something like this to me: “If you want to generalize solutions, you have to give up one of those two properties. Which one did you give up?” When I told him I had relaxed the requirement of external stability, he paused and then said, “That's a lot to give up!” I recall thinking that my introduction to Howard had gotten off to a poor start.

I did not see Howard often after that until 1998, when my wife, Emilie, and I moved to Brookline, Massachusetts. We invited Howard and his wife, Estelle, to our Passover Seder, and they were among the last guests to arrive. They explained that they had driven from their home in Belmont to ours in Brookline, seen a line of cars parked outside a house similar to the one we had described, and had gone in and mingled. Only when that family took their seats for the Seder did they discover that they were at the wrong house. And indeed, they knew many more of the guests at our Seder. They became regulars at our Seder until they started spending more time in Arizona.

A distinguished line of academic descendants have followed Howard's lead in seeking what motivates practical behavior. These include Bob Wilson's students Paul Milgrom and Bengt Holmstrom, and a growing number of their students and mine as well. The thriving fields of experimental and behavioral economics and market design testify to Howard's legacy.

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Here is the table of contents of the special issue

1. Special Issue: Celebrating Howard Raiffa's Legacy
   

   James K. Sebenius and Max H. Bazerman

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12209

   • Abstract
   • Article
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2. Howard Raiffa: The Art, Science, and Humanity of a Legendary Negotiation Analyst (pages 283–307)
   

   James K. Sebenius

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12188

   • Abstract
   • Article
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3. Prescriptions Based on a Realistic View of Human Behavior (pages 309–315)
   

   Max H. Bazerman

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12189

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4. Conflict Resolution by the Numbers (pages 317–322)
   

   Carrie Menkel-Meadow

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12190

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5. Balancing Analysis and Intuition (pages 323–327)
   

   Lawrence Susskind

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12191

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6. Howard Raiffa and Our Responsibility to Rationality (pages 329–332)
   

   Richard Zeckhauser

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12192

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7. A Short Course from Howard Raiffa (pages 333–335)
   

   Deborah M. Kolb

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12193

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8. Counting and Caring (pages 337–339)
   

   Lawrence H. Summers

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12194

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9. Learning from a Tzadik about Academia, Following One's Own Path, and Life(pages 341–346)
   

   David A. Lax

   Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12195

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10. Overcoming the Tensions and Antagonisms of the Cold War to Create a Research Institute of International Eminence (pages 347–350)
    

    Mark S. Thompson

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12196

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11. Mr. Positive Sum (pages 355–357)
    

    William Ury

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12198

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12. Tales of a True Mensch (pages 351–354)
    

    Robert H. Mnookin

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12197

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13. Howard Raiffa: Scholar, Leader, Teacher, Mentor, Friend (pages 359–362)
    

    Ralph L. Keeney

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12199

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14. Wisdom in Simplicity (pages 363–365)
    

    Jared R. Curhan

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12200

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15. Bridging Data, Decisions, and Negotiations (pages 367–370)
    

    Michael Wheeler

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12201

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16. Life Is Not Binary (pages 371–372)
    

    Mary Rowe

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12202

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17. Some Memories of My Academic Grandfather (pages 373–374)
    

    Alvin E. Roth

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12203

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18. Asking the Right Questions (pages 375–378)
    

    Susan G. Hackley

    Version of Record online: 18 OCT 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/nejo.12204

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