Richard A. Posner (1939-2026)

Dick Posner, a giant of law and economics died on Tuesday, at the age of 87.

Here's the brief announcement from U. Chicago:

Law School Mourns the Passing of Richard A. Posner, Senior Lecturer, Law and Economics Pioneer, and Former Federal Appellate Judge 

"Senior Lecturer Richard Allen Posner, a longtime University of Chicago Law School scholar, former federal appellate judge, and pioneer in the field of law and economics, died on November 10. He was 87.  

Posner, who joined the Law School faculty in 1969 and spent 36 years as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, is widely considered to be the most influential legal scholar of all time and, during his time on the bench, was considered to be among the most powerful jurists outside the Supreme Court. He authored thousands of court opinions, hundreds of academic articles, and dozens of books, and was a leading scholar of law and economics, a field born and developed at the University of Chicago beginning in the early 20th century. " 

#######

Here's a longer obit from the Washington Post:

Richard Posner, influential and iconoclastic federal judge, dies at 87
He served nearly 36 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago and was ranked by many as second in influence only to members of the Supreme Court. By Paul W. Valentine

"Before he became a judge, Mr. Posner ran a litigation consulting firm where he helped pioneer the concept of applying economic analysis to legal issues. He developed his approach more fully in his book “Economic Analysis of Law” (1973), now a classic text, contending that the economic consequences of laws should be considered in all aspects of the legal system. He once proposed abolishing adoption agencies to stop black-market adoptions and allowing pregnant women to sell unwanted babies on the open market.

...

"He evolved from his economic cost-benefit pragmatism early in his career to advocacy later of more liberal positions on such issues as workplace discrimination, voter ID laws, same-sex marriage and physician-assisted suicide for the elderly.

"He favored legalizing marijuana but questioned animal rights. “It is wrong to give as much weight to a dog’s pain as to an infant’s pain,” he argued in a debate with animal rights advocate Peter Singer in 2001. 

...

"Mr. Posner later distanced himself from many of his more provocative pronouncements and, in an unusual gesture by a federal judge, questioned whether he had ruled correctly on a major national issue: voter identification laws.

"After writing a majority opinion in 2007 upholding Indiana’s law requiring photo identification, he wrote in his book “Reflections on Judging” (2013) that the law is “now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”

"He went on to say in a clarifying article in the New Republic, also in 2013, that judges sometimes lack relevant “empirical data” to help decide specific cases, and for that reason “I may well have been wrong” in the Indiana voter ID case." 

######## 

 With Chris Avery and Christine Jolls, I had the opportunity to coauthor two papers with Judge Posner, both concerning the matching market between appellate judges and law clerks (a market that is still in flux):

Avery, Christopher, Christine Jolls, Richard A. Posner, and Alvin E. Roth, “The Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks”, University of Chicago Law Review, 68, 3, Summer, 2001, 793-902. 

Avery, Christopher, Christine Jolls, Richard A. Posner, and Alvin E. Roth, “The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks”, University of Chicago Law Review, 74, Spring 2007, 447-486 

Human organ trafficking and missing persons in China, PNAS

 Here's a study, recently published in PNAS, that tries to very indirectly infer the rate of illegal organ trafficking in China.  It's sure to be controversial.

X. Wang, Human organ trafficking and missing persons in China, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (44) e2608464123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2608464123 (2026). 

 "Abstract

The persistent shortage of human organs for transplantation has long been a global challenge. The prospect of substantial profit creates strong incentives for illegal organ trafficking, including murder for organ harvesting, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. This study addresses this gap by exploiting a unique quasi-natural experiment created by China’s organ policy reform. From 1984 to 2014, executed prisoners were the primary source of transplant organs in China. In 2015, the Chinese government abolished the use of organs from executed prisoners, sharply exacerbating the organ shortage. Following this policy change, the number of missing persons rose notably nationwide. Employing difference-in-differences and triple-difference strategies, we show that, compared to cases unrelated to organ trafficking (e.g., voluntary disappearances), the number and incidence of involuntary missing persons plausibly related to organ trafficking increased significantly after 2015. The effects are especially pronounced among individuals with mental illness and in regions with higher transplant demand and greater transplant capacity. Although we do not directly observe organ trafficking, the spatial, temporal, and demographic patterns we document are consistent with the hypothesis that increased organ scarcity intensified incentives for illicit organ procurement. More broadly, the findings suggest that severe organ shortages may generate unintended and highly harmful consequences, even in a low-crime setting such as China. These results underscore the importance of accounting for behavioral responses and illicit-market incentives when designing policies that restrict the supply of scarce, high-value goods such as transplant organs."

 

Call for papers: 21st Matching in Practice Workshop, Budapest, December 14-15

 Here's a call for papers for the  21st Matching in Practice Workshop in Budapest in December.

21st Matching in Practice Workshop
December 14 @ 9:00 am - December 15 @ 3:00 pm
"The MiP Workshop is an annual meeting organized by the Matching in Practice network of European researchers working in the research field of Matching Theory and Market Design.

The event has no registration fee, but invitation is needed for attendance. Catering and dinner will be provided to all participants, but the travel and accommodation costs are only covered for the plenary speaker. The host organisation is the Institute of Operations and Decision Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest.

The plenary talk will be given by Irene Lo (Stanford), and the roundtable discussion will be on school choice.

We call for submissions for 12 selected contributed talks. The deadline for submitting the papers is 12 November, sent in pdf format to peter.biro@uni-corvinus.hu (title: “MiP workshop submission”), decisions will be made on 13 November by the scientific committee. We especially welcome submissions on school choice or other two-sided matching market applications."

School choice in San Francisco: plans and politics happen at different speeds

 A report  in PNAS last week on a long-running study of school choice proposals in San Francisco came out almost simultaneously with an announcement that San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) plans to largely step back from school choice and revert to a system of neighborhood schools determined by students' home addresses. Below are the PNAS paper, the SFUSD announcements, and then some links to the history of school choice in SF.

I. Lo, K. Mentzer, M. YahyazadehJeloudar, H. O’Connell, J. Monardo, & I. Ashlagi, Designing school choice for diversity in the San Francisco Unified School District, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (45). November 2, 2026, e2524796123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2524796123 (2026). 

 "Abstract.  More than 65 years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that school segregation is unconstitutional, public schools across the United States are again experiencing rising segregation. In districts like San Francisco, efforts to implement district-wide choice policies have largely failed to reverse these trends. Since 2019, we have collaborated with the San Francisco Unified School District to design a student assignment policy meeting the district’s goals of diversity, predictability, and proximity. We use optimization techniques to develop policies restricting choice to zones. We compare these to district-wide choice policies by estimating a choice model using historical application data and simulating assignment. Our results show multiple policies can reduce school segregation while preserving varying degrees of proximity, choice, and predictability. Zone-based policies with reserves reduce the concentration of racial minority students in high-poverty schools and maintain proximity, but reduce choice. District-wide choice with reserves and distance-based priority can further reduce segregation, but at the cost of predictability. Tradeoffs are necessary as no policy dominates another policy. In addition, we show that spatial segregation indices capture average patterns in these tradeoffs but miss important variation revealed by our simulation framework. Our work informed the design and approval of a zone-based policy in San Francisco in 2020, and supports ongoing policy implementation."

 

##########

Oct. 20, 2026 Message from SFUSD Superintendent Dr. Maria Su to Families: Link to this section

Historic Step Toward a Great Neighborhood School for Every Student 

Oct. 13, 2026 Press Release:  Link to this section

San Francisco Board of Education Approves Resolution to Move SFUSD Toward Neighborhood-Based Student Assignment System

---

Introduction:  Link to this section

SFUSD is changing how students are assigned to elementary schools. On October 13, 2026, the Board of Education voted to replace the current lottery with a neighborhood-based system. Under the proposed policy, every family would be guaranteed a seat at a school near home, no matter when they apply. Families could still apply to citywide programs, such as language programs and K-8 schools. We are making this change because families have told us the current process feels complicated and unpredictable. Where your child goes to school should not come down to luck.

The Board’s vote sets a direction. It is not the final policy. Over the next few months, we will meet with families in their schools and neighborhoods, in many languages, to work out the details. The Board will hold its final vote on April 13, 2027. Nothing changes for current families. The new system will start with students who enroll in the 2028-29 school year.

A new assignment system is only part of the work. Every child deserves a strong school close to home, so we also plan to invest in schools in every neighborhood, starting with those that have been the most underserved.

###########

San Francisco has been considering and tinkering with school choice for a long time, during a period in which other kinds of political turmoil rocked SF and its schools.  Here (mostly from 2010) and here are some of my earlier posts on school choice in SF. 

The Milken Institute Review on blood and plasma, and altruism (with art work)

 You can  be paid to donate blood plasma, and still be an altruist.

Issue four, 2026 of the Milken Institute Review, excerpts the chapter on blood supply from my book Moral Economics. 

The last quoted line of the  chapter is  "Health care that's good enough for the rich shouldn't be repugnant for the poor."

Peter Passell, the long-time editor of the review, writes

"Nobel Prize winners in the sciences can justifiably lay claim to mind-bending insights and stunning discoveries that change our lives. Readers may be excused, though, for wondering whether the same can be said about the achievements honored by the Nobel in economic science, which generally excite only the nerds among us. ¶ Not so for the work of Alvin Roth, a Stanford University economist whose deep dives into how markets function earned him a trip to Stockholm in 2012. He pioneered changes in what are called “matching markets” – work that has revolutionized the process for matching kidney donors and recipients. ¶ In his new book Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work,* Roth dissects markets in which the legitimacy of voluntary transactions is widely disputed. Here, we excerpt the chapter on the market for human blood, where millions of patients’ lives depend on sources of blood that cannot legally be purchased. It’s a tale that’s going to surprise you.

— Peter Passell, Published October 30, 2026 "

*Copyright © 2026 by Alvin E. Roth. Reprinted by permission of Basic Venture, an imprint of Basic Books Group, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved. 

#########

It turns out that Peter excerpts my books as fast as I can write them:)

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 Chapter 4 of Who Gets What and Why, in the Milken Institute Review (with art work...) 

https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/who-gets-what-and-why 

 

William Nordhaus (1941-2026) and Jim Andreoni (1959-2026)

 I returned from a long trip and an arduous conference last week to learn that two important economists had passed away, Bill Nordhaus, who won a Nobel, and Jim Andreoni, who could have.

Nordhaus' work on climate change was prescient, and is well known.  Here's the Nordhaus obit from Yale:

William Nordhaus, Nobel laureate who integrated economics and climate change, devoted Yale citizen  Oct 31, 2026  By Penelope Laurans  

"William Nordhaus ‘63, Sterling Professor of Economics who won a Nobel Prize in 2018 for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis, died Oct. 30 at age 85. 

##########

Jim Andreoni was a multi-talented scholar of public goods, well known in the experimental economics community.  The work that in my mind made him a Nobel candidate was his work on different forms that altruism can take.

Two of his papers that I really like are 

Andreoni, James. "Impure altruism and donations to public goods: A theory of warm-glow giving." The economic journal 100, no. 401 (1990): 464-477.

and

James Andreoni, Justin M. Rao, and Hannah Trachtman, Avoiding the Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving. Journal of Political Economy 2017 125:625-653. 

The first of those, a theory paper, I think of as one of the foundational papers about effective altruism, but from the point of view that much altruism is not primarily of the effective sort.

The second paper is an experiment that I'll present to my class today, in Jim's memory. 

 

 #############

 Vigorous, personal disagreement about what constitutes altruism in organ donation and transplantation was what made my Geneva conference so arduous (and what makes the kinds of controversial markets I discuss in Moral Economics so controversial:).

Monday, October 26, 2026 Brocher conference on boundaries for incentives in organ donation Oct 27-29 in Geneva

(No description of the conference has been posted yet, but it was hot and heavy, and everyone was an altruist...) 

  

happy post-Halloween

In our garden: