Market design in Siam and Germany--(book reviews of Who Gets What and Why)

First in the Siam news (not this Siam, rather this Siam),

May 02, 2016

Mathematical Matchmaking--Algorithms That Address Real-World Problems

By James Case

Who Gets What—And Why. By Alvin E. Roth, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2015, 272 pages, $28.00.

Case likes the book but warns the non-economist reader as follows:
"In closing, it should be mentioned that by classifying matchmaking venues as markets, Roth gives the impression that economists are uniquely qualified to design and modify them, though nothing in the traditional economics curriculum seems particularly relevant. On the contrary, students of combinatorics, computer science, and/or operations research (in which Roth himself received his doctoral degree) would seem at least as well prepared for the task. "
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And from Germany:

Macht der Matching-Märkte  ("Power of Matching Markets")Nicht der Preis entscheidet über Angebot und Nachfrage

I liked this phrase from Google Translate: " fast and refreshingly drinkable written book"
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While I'm at it, here's another recent review, from a blog called "Don't worry, I'm an economist!"

Interview about Who Gets What and Why at the American Academy in Berlin (audio, 10 minutes)

When I was in Berlin in March I gave an interview which I just noticed is on the web...

The Effect of Rules on Market Performance: a guest post by James Case

Jim Case, the author of Competition: The Birth of a New Science , who also frequently reviews books for the SIAM Review, writes that I could have written a different book than Who Gets What and Why, and offers some thoughts on what it might cover. Here's his guest post.

The Effect of Rules on Market Performance  by Jim Case

          The early chapters of Who Gets What and Why argue, by means of examples, that the success or failure of individual markets often depends less on the details of supply and demand than on the way the markets are organized, and the rules (written or unwritten) that govern participant behavior. History offers any number of memorable examples, of which the following seem particularly instructive:

The parimutuel system of betting at racetracks was invented in 1867. The large amount of calculation involved led to the development of a specialized mechanical calculating machine known as a “totalizator,” or “tote board”. The first one was installed at a track in New Zealand in 1913. The U.S. introduction was in 1927, at Arlington Park, near Chicago. The system was immediately popular with gamblers, for allowing them to bet against other gamblers, rather than “the house,” invariably suspected of acting on inside information.

Air-Brakes on Railroads engaged in interstate commerce were mandated by federal law in 1893. Before that, no individual road could afford the expense of installing such brakes. When all were required to have them, however, freight and passenger rates could be raised sufficiently to make them affordable. Railroad profits actually increased, due to the feasibility of operating longer trains in relative safety!

The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) was allotted the task, during the 1920s, of regulating in-state oil production on the ground that (pipelines being yet few and far between) crude was mainly transported in railroad tank cars, limited numbers of which were available. After the discovery of the East Texas Field in 1931, the supply of crude oil so far outpaced demand that the price fell to 10 cents a barrel, ironically bringing many producers of “black gold” to the verge of bankruptcy. The commission responded by imposing limits on the fraction of rated capacity well owners were permitted to produce. Initially, they were allowed as little as ten percent, or three “producing days” per month. Texas oil men grew rich only after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the TRC was indeed within its rights to enforce such regulation by whatever means necessary.

The Securities and Exchange Commission was established in 1934 to regulate trade in stocks, bonds, and other securities. Before that time, controls on the issuing and trading of securities had been virtually nonexistent, allowing all manner of fraud and manipulation. Drastic measures were required to restore public confidence (and participation) in the stock market following the crash of 1929. The business community, ever wary of New Deal reforms, was mollified by the effective yet business-friendly chairmanships of Joseph P. Kennedy and William O. Douglas.

The Regulation of Radio Communication has been ongoing in the US since 1912. Military, emergency responder, police, and entertainment enterprises all wanted the ability to get their signals out over the airwaves to target audiences without interference. The Radio Act of 1912 authorized the establishment of a commission to designate which airwaves would be reserved for public use and which would be available to private users. In 1926, at the request of the nascent broadcasting industry, the Federal Radio Commission was established for the immediate purpose of assigning non-interfering radio frequencies to near-by broadcasters. Advertising time became markedly easier to sell when potential buyers could be assured that their messages would be audible to target audiences. It was exactly the boost the fledgling industry needed at the time, and hastened the day when governments could generate significant revenue by auctioning radio frequencies. The Communications Act of 1934 replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission, holding dominion over telephone as well as radio (& later TV) traffic.

The New Jersey Holding Company Act of 1893: Large corporations were illegal under English common law, which formed the basis of state law in most of the United States. Wholesale mergers and acquisitions therefore remained impossible until legal obstacles were eliminated. The critical piece of legislation is generally held to be the New Jersey Holding Company Act of 1889, which reversed the common law taboo forbidding corporations to buy and hold stock in other corporations. Further restrictions were removed in 1893 and 1896. The result was the consolidation of some 5300 original manufacturing firms into just 318 large corporations between 1897 and the panic of 1903, mostly under New Jersey law. By 1920, most US industries had become oligopolies, with consequences the economics profession has been reluctant to acknowledge.

          It should be added that failure to modify the rules of conduct within specific markets can lead directly to market failure. Congress’ failure to regulate the sale and purchase of derivative securities during the 1990s, and its continued failure to impose a carbon tax, are but two of many cases in point.

Discussion of Who Gets What and Why in Japan: a book review and an article (in Japanese)

A book review and an article about my lecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology:

Matching of the economy: "Who Gets What" by Noburi Ikeda

At 10:00 on April 25, 2016

• 

Nobuo Ikeda

Who Gets What- match new economics of Mei King and market design [book]

Alvin · E · Ross

Japan Jingji News Publishing

★★★★★

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With Akira Ikegami at Tokyo Institute of Technology

More press (and radio) from my visit to Germany last month, in German

Here's a recent German review of the German translation of my book which comes with an audio link, also in German, on the program  DeutchlandRadio Kultur:
Alvin E. Roth: "Wer kriegt was und warum?"
Wenn der Mensch sich selbst zu Markte trägt
Von Wolfgang Schneider



Alvin E. Roth: Wer kriegt was und warum? Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl
Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch von Thorsten Schmidt. 
Siedler Verlag. München 2016. 304 Seiten, 24,99 Euro

The audio link also is here: http://www.ardmediathek.de/radio/Lesart-das-Literaturmagazin-Deutschl/Alvin-E-Roth-Wer-kriegt-was-und-warum/Deutschlandradio-Kultur/Audio-Podcast?bcastId=21541016&documentId=34550182


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Here's Austrian radio:  Wer kriegt was und warum?
Von Wirtschaftsnobelpreisträger Alvin Roth

There's a link to the audio there, on which you can hear the interview in German (with voiceover for my parts...)

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Here's an  account, published nearer the time of my visit, of an interview in Cologne, by the Aueddeutsche Zeitung

18. März 2016, 19:00 Uhr
Matching Point--Mensch und Markt
Der Nobelpreisträger Alvin E. Roth erforscht, wie Märkte funktionieren und wie sie das ganze Leben prägen.
Google Translate renders the headline this way:
[March 18, 2016,
Matching Point--Man and market
The Nobel Prize winner Alvin E. Roth examines how markets work and how they shape the whole life.]

Who Gets What and Why, in Turkish: Kim Neyi Neden Alır?

The Turkish translation of Who Gets What and Why is now available:

Kim Neyi Neden Alır?

Here's what appears to be a pre-publication review.

And here's what appears to be an early review of the published book:

Eşleştirme Ekonomisi ve kim, neyi, neden alır?

Who Gets What and Why in Japanese―マッチメイキングとマーケットデザインの新しい経済学 単行本 –

The Japanese translation has come out, and I will be travelling to Japan this week to talk about market design. (Professor Yosuke Yasuda has described the lectures and discussions I'm involved in on April 5 and 6 here; Google Translate works well enough to give you the idea.)

Here's the link to the book in Japanese:

Who Gets What(フー・ゲッツ・ホワット) ―マッチメイキングとマーケットデザインの新しい経済学 単行本 – 

Who Gets What and Why? at Duke Law School (video: one hour including Q&A)

Here's a video of one of the talks I gave at Duke Law School last Wednesday, sponsored by The Duke Project on Law and Markets.



And here is a link to Kim Krawiec's blog post about this and my other talks at Duke on the same day: Our Day Of Market Design,

 It came with this picture:

And here is a link to some more pictures from Kim:
"Who Gets What And Why? Photos And Video

Our communications folk were out in full force for Al Roth’s lecture on Wednesday and have already posted some nice photos from the event and uploaded a video of the lecture to YouTube. "

A trading firm promises to restrain itself from early exploding offers

Self restraint doesn't always do the trick, but is worth a try: here's a post from the Jane Street blog.

Unraveling of the tech hiring market

Thu, 2016/03/17 - 3:20pm - David Powers | OCaml

Recruiting talented people has always been challenging.

In some years that meant competing with a hot new company that aggressively courted every fresh graduate with promises of stock options and IPO glory.  In other years there wasn’t a specific company so much as an entire rising industry looking for people (I’m looking at you cloud services, driverless cars, and peer-to-peer sharing).  Either way, we understood the yearly back and forth.  Our job was to explain to candidates how we stacked up, and more importantly, why a career at Jane Street might be the right choice for many of them.

But this year I got to learn a new name for a new challenge.  “Unraveling”.

I first encountered it in a book I was reading for fun: "Who Gets What, and Why", by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth.  He does a lovely job explaining the idea of a matching market.  In a matching market each person wants only one of each item, each item is unique, and each item can be given to at most one person at a time.  Jobs are a classic matching market, and just like any market, matching markets can work well, or poorly.

Unraveling is one of the primary things that makes a matching market fail.  When a market unravels  matches start to happen earlier and earlier, to the point where people no longer get a complete view of their options.  In the book Roth relates the story of a person who stepped off of a plane to find three voicemails on his phone.  The first offered him a job, the second urged him to respond soon, and the last rescinded the offer because he hadn't responded quickly enough.

We call them exploding offers, and this year they have gotten completely out of hand as companies race to the bottom in their efforts to recruit the next wave of interns and fresh graduates.

Colleges try to impose deadline limits explicitly to stop unraveling, and in the past these have largely been honored.  The cheating and fudging, such as it was, was kept to the fringes.  But this year it seems like the seal is broken, and we've seen major companies delivering internship and full-time offers with 2 week (and less) hard deadlines.  Other companies now routinely deliver expiring bonus offers for signing early.  Many of these offers circumvent or outright break the guidelines set down by schools, and if past matching markets are a model for this one, next year will come with even earlier offers and worse conditions.

This unraveling has been the subject of a lot of discussion, both internally at Jane Street and with the various schools we recruit at, who see it - rightly - as bad for their students.  How can someone make a thoughtful decision about where they want to build a career without the time to interview at more than one or two places?  Unfortunately, most of this discussion is out of the public light, and so the unraveling continues.

We can't control the actions of others, but we also don’t have to follow the herd, so we'd like to be clear:

Jane Street is committed to making sure that you have the time and information you need to decide on an offer from us.  Our offer letters do have good-until dates as a matter of professional practice, but we try to work with every candidate to choose a date that works for them.  We are also happy to extend the date if something unexpected comes up, or, frankly, if someone just needs more time.

Choosing where to start your career is a big decision and we hope you have the time to make a good one.

Who Gets What and Why at the European School for Management and Technology in Berlin--video

Here's a video of a public lecture followed by a discussion (about half an hour each) about my book Who Gets What and Why, which just came out in German.   The location of the lecture was once an East German government building where the head of state had his office, and is now a business school, the European School for Management and Technology.  I was introduced by Gerhard Caspar, the head of the American Academy in Berlin and former president of Stanford. (My talk begins about minute 11:30 of the video, the discussion begins about minute 41, with Christoph von Marschall, Managing Editor of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, which touches on market designers in Germany, the legal barriers to kidney exchange there, and refugee resettlement.)

Who Gets What and Why at Duke Law School:

It looks like Duke Law School is seriously addressing the incentives of lecture-goers to arrive on time: lunch is served on a first come first served basis...

Al Roth: Who Get's What and Why?

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 • 12:30 PM • Law School 3037Duke Law Events

Alvin E. Roth, The Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford University, and co-recipient, 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will discuss his book, "Who Gets What - And Why: The Hidden World of Matchmaking and Market Design." A bagged lunch will be served to attendees on a first come, first serve basis. Sponsored by The Duke Project on Law and Markets. Please contact Victoria Zellefrow (victoria.zellefrow@law.duke.edu) with any further questions.

I'll also speak at the Law and Markets faculty workshop, on global kidney exchange. Kim Krawiec is the host, and here's the title of her blog post yesterday: Tomorrow Is Al Roth Day!
(You can see why I can't resist her invitation to talk...)

Steine lecture at Vanderbilt

I'll be in Nashville today, speaking at Vanderbilt, in their Steine Lecture series.

Nobel Prize-winning economist will deliver Steine Lecture March 22

Alvin Roth

Alvin E. Roth, who shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, will discuss “Who Gets What and Why: The Economics of Matching and Market Design” from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, in Wilson Hall, Room 103. A reception will follow his talk, which is part of the Department of Economics’Steine Lecture Series.

Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He works in the areas of game theory, experimental economics and market design.

Roth is responsible for re-designing the National Resident Matching Program, through which approximately 20,000 doctors a year find their first employment as residents at American hospitals. He also is one of the founders and designers of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, which serves incompatible patient-donor pairs.

Roth is president-elect of the American Economic Association and served for many years as chair of the association’s Ad Hoc Committee on the Job Market, which has designed a number of recent changes in the market for new Ph.D. economists. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society and has been a Guggenheim and Sloan fellow. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

The David Steine Lectureship was established in 1978 by multiple donors to provide support for an annual lecture in the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Science. The lecture honors former Vanderbilt professor David L. Steine and addresses an economic problem of interest to the general public.

Who Gets What and Why in Cologne: Wer kriegt was?

Today I speak in Cologne...

Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth asks: Who Gets What – and Why?

Are you one of those people who believe that the word “market” only applies to large share deals? In Who Gets What – and Why, Alvin E. Roth, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on game theory, shows us that market rules also apply when looking for a job or a school, or matching organ donors. Using specific examples, he explains how markets determine our lives – and how we can learn to use them to our advantage. Host: Nicole Bastian

 7:00pm  Börsensaal der IHK zu Köln, Unter Sachsenhausen 10-26, 50667 Köln

 Contributors

©privat

Roth, Alvin E.

©Pablo Castagnola / Handelsblatt

Bastian, Nicol

Who Gets What and Why at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), in Berlin.

I'm in Berlin to speak about Who Gets What and Why...

Wednesday, March 09, 2016, 07:00 pm

Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

AMERICAN ACADEMY BOOK PRESENTATION

In his lecture, Alvin E. Roth shines a light on the everyday world of matching markets in diverse areas such as organ donation, public school choice programs, college admissions, employment, and online dating. Unlike commodity markets such as stocks and bonds, where price alone determines who gets what, in a matching market you are not free to choose but must also be chosen. Roth is in the forefront of the “market design” school, which aims to solve problems plaguing matching markets that are not “thick” enough (lacking sufficient participants) or suffer from “congestion” (an overwhelming range of options). As an example, he points out that over 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for kidney transplants, yet only about 11,000 non-directed kidneys become available each year. Using market design principles, Roth helped design the New England Program for Kidney Exchange. As another example, he examines the college application process, a vicious cycle in which, as students apply to more colleges, acceptance rates go down. After reading Roth’s book, readers may or may not make better matches, but they will better understand how matching markets work.

Moderated by Christoph von Marschall, Managing Editor, Der Tagesspiegel

In cooperation with Siedler Verlag and the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT).

Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design will be released
in March 2016 by Siedler Verlag as Wer kriegt was und warum? Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl: Wie Märkte funktionieren.

The lecture will take place at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), Schloßplatz 1, 10178 Berlin.

See also  ESMT Open Lecture und Buchpräsentation mit Wirtschaftsexperte und Nobelpreisträger Alvin E. Roth

A Freakonomics listener was inspired to become a non-directed kidney donor by the podcast on kidney exchange

In June, 2015, right around the time my book Who Gets What and Why was published, Steven Dubner and his team at Freakonomics published a podcast called Make Me a Match, in which he interviewed me and others about kidney exchange, among other things. Now, in a new podcast, Dubner interviews a listener named Ned Brooks who was inspired by that interview to become a non-directed kidney donor and start a kidney exchange chain. In fact, not only does Dubner interview the donor, he interviews the woman who received his kidney, and in fact introduces the two of them for the first time. Pretty dramatic stuff.

Here's the link to the podcast, where you can (both) listen to it and read the whole transcript.

Ask Not What Your Podcast Can Do for You, February 25, 2016 by Stephen J. Dubner

Below is the part of the transcript that has to do with kidney donation and transplantation. If you read it through, I predict you'll be moved (at one point Dubner says he's crying, so at least he was moved), and if you get to the end you'll find out about a new organization that Brooks has established to help find new donors for people who need them.

"Let me introduce you now to Ned Brooks.

DUBNER: Ok. Hello, Ned?

NED BROOKS: Stephen, how are you?

DUBNER: Hey! Great, how’re you? Nice to meet you.

BROOKS: Nice to hear you.

DUBNER: Thanks for doing this, the interview, but doing the actual deed.

BROOKS: It was a very easy thing to do.

Ned Brooks is 65 years old.

BROOKS: I live in Norwalk, Connecticut. I’m semi-retired after a couple of careers, on Wall Street and in real estate.

He’s been married for 34 years. Three grown children. One day last year, Brooks was in his car.

BROOKS: And we were listening to your podcast about Alvin Roth, the Nobel Prize winner in economics who created a model to trade indivisible items without the use of money. And I think he was talking about houses at the time, but it seems to work very well for the kidney chain as well.

The episode was called “Make Me a Match.” Al Roth was describing how he and others had created a series of algorithms that helped match people in need of a kidney transplant with potential donors

BROOKS: And I listen to the podcast with growing interest because what came through to me about the power of the kidney chain, as somebody with a business background, is the concept of leverage. That one altruistic donor — and an altruistic donor is someone who gives a kidney without having anybody particular in mind to receive it. And it provides a lot of options for the people who put these things together, to start a kidney chain. And that results in a sequence of transplants that can affect a lot of people.

DUBNER: Now, have you ever considered giving a kidney before then?

BROOKS: No, no I did not.

DUBNER: And what was it about, about the message from Al Roth in that podcast that either, kind of, alerted you? What did you learn, or what changed your mind that made you start to think about that, then?

BROOKS: Well, the concept that we have two kidneys and we only need one.

DUBNER: Now did you know that ahead of time, or not really?

BROOKS: Yes, I did know that much. What I did not know is all the benefits that accrues to one who donates a kidney. The process is lengthy in terms of the amount of testing that you go through to do so. But …

DUBNER: Now, you’re saying that the medical tests were the benefits?

BROOKS: Oh, absolutely.

DUBNER: I just want to clarify here.

BROOKS: Absolutely. Look, you get many thousands dollars of testing for free.

DUBNER: Can I just say something, Ned? I think you and I are fundamentally different people, because if I were going to get several thousands of dollars worth of something free I would want it to be, you know, golf, or something, fishing boat. Not medical testing, but tell me more about your great desire …

BROOKS: Well, you’re not 65, and knowing that all your organs are free of any contaminants is a very reassuring thing, actually.

Let me be clear. It wasn’t really all the free medical testing that made Brooks want to become a kidney donor.

BROOKS: I think this is something I have to do. It required some thought, discussion with my wife that day in the car. I spent one restless night, probably about three hours trying to understand what my own motivations were and if they were the right ones to be doing this. And once I put that to rest, then it was a very easy thing to do.

DUBNER: Did you decide immediately to become a non-directed donor? Meaning that your kidney would be available for anyone who needed it? Or, did you think about trying to help someone in particular?

BROOKS: As great as it would be to help someone in particular, I didn’t know anyone who needed a kidney. And in fact, the leverage comes from being an altruistic donor. You can’t start a kidney chain unless you’re altruistic about it.

DUBNER: Let’s say I need a kidney and my wife is willing to donate or someone else in my family is willing to donate, but they’re not a match. They’re not a physiological match for me. But they would donate a kidney of theirs to someone else who is a match. They then enter the chain, correct?

BROOKS: So, call them “Couple A.” And Couple B is in the same situation as is Couple C, D, down the line.

DUBNER: But then there is this wildcard, X, that’s you. This guy who comes in that doesn’t have anyone that needs one, that just wants to give. Does that make you much more valuable?

BROOKS: That makes me valuable because it allows the algorithm to maximize the length of the chain and kick it off. If you didn’t have the altruistic donor to start, you’d have to have a perfect match. 

DUBNER: Talk about the procedure, working with the hospital, and talk about how the relationship works so that you are not made to feel that you’re being pressured.

BROOKS: Sure. In my case, I had the operation done at New York-Presbyterian. And I chose New York-Presbyterian because they do a lot of these operations. And I think that with any surgery like this you want to go to a place that does a lot of them. And so I was very comfortable with their record. They’ve never lost a donor yet. They provide you with two advocates. And those advocates are there to protect your interest throughout the process. And you go in for testing, you do it through your advocate, you go in for psychological testing, physical testing. They want to make sure you are financially able to this, because, of course, you cannot be compensated for a kidney donation.

DUBNER: To what degree did they push back? In other words, to what degree did they try actively to discourage you or at least make you take a step back and think it through a little bit more?

BROOKS: They didn’t actively discourage me.  The psychiatrist probed quite a bit. But after I seemed to have satisfied her on the answers, that was the end of it.  What they will not do is they will not come after you to keep you coming to hospital for every procedure that needs to be done. In other words, they set the time and the date for your next appointment, and they won’t call you. It’s up to you to make sure that you’re there.

DUBNER: Oh that’s interesting, yeah. And at no point did they catch on to the fact that you were just in it for the free medical testing?

BROOKS: Actually, actually yes. The doctor I spoke with there said, “This is a little-known secret, but the testing is so good that everyone should at least start out to be a kidney donor and find out how their tests go.”

DUBNER:  That is a secret that I’m guessing they really don’t want broadcast. Because I can see an army of senior citizens flooding in for their tests saying, “You know, I think I’m going to hang on to this — to the other kidney.”  And then talk to me about your family’s response.  Was everyone on board?

BROOKS: My wife was supportive. As I said, I have three children. One was very supportive, one was skeptical, and one was opposed. And I guess that’s what you get when you get three children. But the skeptical one, and the one who was opposed, turned around once they felt like they got a lot more facts about it.  It’s a very safe procedure relative to surgery, in general. And once they understood that, then I think their reservations went away.

DUBNER:  I understand you wrote a letter to your family when you had gotten pretty far along in the process. By then you’d undergone some of the testing?

BROOKS: Yes, yes.

DUBNER: Do you happen to have that letter handy?

BROOKS: Actually, I do have it here.

DUBNER:  If you don’t mind giving that a read, that would be great.

BROOKS: Sure. This is a letter that I wrote to my family when I realized that it was what I wanted to do, and I wanted to inform them all at the same time. So, I sent them an email and it goes like this:

All, as you have commented upon, I have had a number of medical tests over the summer. I did not fully answer your questions about those because I wanted to wait until I had cleared all the tests. I’m happy to report that I’m about as healthy as is possible for a 65-year-old male to be.  

Back in the spring, I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast about a man who won the Nobel Prize in economics for constructing a model of a market to trade indivisible objects without the use of money. He was thinking about houses, but it turns out that the model works very well for other things. His work had been used to create an extensive network for the matching of kidney donors and recipients. The more I listened to the podcast, the more fascinated I became as I learned that just one altruistic donor — a person who donates without a targeted recipient — can launch a chain of kidney transplants that can number as high as 43.

I spoke with the National Kidney Foundation and learned more about the process. I registered as a potential donor and began extensive series of tests at New York-Presbyterian, which have now concluded with me be being accepted as a kidney donor.

So why am I doing this? Many of our friends and acquaintances have had their share of health challenges in recent years. It is mightily frustrating to watch the pain and suffering and be unable to give any help. I, on the other hand, am in perfect health. I have no need for my second kidney, and I appreciate that my actions may greatly benefit the lives of not just the recipients of those kidneys but their entire families. Without it being too much of a stretch, my one wholly redundant organ can potentially change and improve the lives of hundreds of people.

There were 5,355 kidney transplants from living donors last year, and there are over 100,000 people on the wait list right now for a kidney.  The operation is several hours. They start about 3 a.m. in order to catch the morning flights around the country, particularly Los Angeles. L.A. does more transplants than any place in the country, and New York-Presbyterian does the most east of the Mississippi. They’ll have me walking that same day, and I should stay two days in the hospital. I’ll be uncomfortable for two weeks, and fully recovered after four weeks. The operation is laparoscopic, with a single incision in the abdomen. I’ve been working hard with my trainer on my abs.

My advocate tells me that because I am blood type O, a universal donor and an altruistic donor, I will light up computer screens across the country when they list me tomorrow. I am happy to report that Mom is fully on board with this. I could go on for a while, but I think you have the picture. If you have interest in hearing the podcast that inspired me, you can find it here and the short Freakonomics blog on the subject here. Let me know if you have any questions.

Love you all, Dad.

The left kidney that Brooks donated wound up launching a three-recipient chain.

BROOKS: I knew nothing about my recipient until the day of the surgery when I was told that it was a 37-year-old female in Denver area and that she was very, very sick and unlikely to find a donor anytime soon. And that this was a real one-in-a-million match.

DUBNER: Did you know anything about the cause of her illness? And would that have mattered to you if you did know?

BROOKS: No, I had no idea.

DUBNER: Look, you’re not getting paid; you might get thanked, you might not get thanked. You’re doing this for your own set of reasons. Was it important to you that that person appreciate those reasons, or appreciate you? Or did it not really work that way for you?

BROOKS: This is where the leverage comes in. They ask that same question in the initial stages in a little bit different way. What they ask is, “If something happens to your recipient, how upset are you going to be?” Quite frankly, my answer was, “This is multiple people who are getting a transplant because of what I’m doing. And if one of them doesn’t work out, I’m terribly sorry, but it’s going to change the lives for all the others.”

DUBNER: So Ned, you learned a little bit about your recipient, and from what I understand, you’ve been in contact — you’ve received a letter from her — is that right? Expressing her thanks?

BROOKS: The way this works is I go through my advocate at the hospital writing a letter to the recipient that goes through the advocate at her hospital to her. Then if she chooses to do so, she comes back to me with whatever she wants to say. And then through the advocates I go back and disclose my identification, then she does that back to me if she wants to. And that’s the way it worked. And we’ve exchanged emails. And I’ve gotten Christmas cards and such from her family, and so forth.

DUBNER: So you haven’t met with her or spoken with her by phone?

BROOKS: I have not met or spoken to her.

DUBNER: OK so, here’s the story. I believe that if technology has served us well that she’s on the other line right now. Danielle from Centennial, Colorado.

BROOKS: Oh my god!  I’ve not spoken to her yet! This would be great.

DUBNER: Danielle, can you hear us? This is Stephen Dubner.

DANIELLE SHAFFER:  Hi, I can hear you guys.

BROOKS: It’s Ned.

SHAFFER:  Hi Ned.

BROOKS: Hi.  

SHAFFER: How are you doing?

BROOKS: I’m doing great.

SHAFFER:  Good, good. This is exciting.

BROOKS: This is very exciting. It’s great to hear your voice. How are you feeling?

SHAFFER:  I’m doing good! I’m feeling real good. Lately it’s been a struggle since the surgery but I’m doing good. A lot better than I was.

BROOKS: Are you on lots of meds?

SHAFFER:  Yeah, unfortunately, I’ll have to be on a ton of meds for probably the rest of my life.  

DUBNER: Hey Danielle, this is Stephen. Can you tell us a bit about what led to your need for the kidney?

SHAFFER: Sure, sure. It all started October 8, 2014. I had received a call from my doctor saying that my blood work had come back — I’d gone to my regular doctor just because I was having a severe headache that wouldn’t go away. And so they did some blood work, they called me the next day and said, “You need to get to the hospital immediately.” They were telling me creatinine was at a 12 and I had no idea what that was. And so, I went to the hospital and was immediately hospitalized for the next 15 days, getting biopsies and MRIs and plasma freezes and dialysis and getting all these tubes put in my neck and chest. It just all happened so fast. To this day, they still don’t have any reason. It happened three weeks after I had my son but they don’t want to associate it to that. So they really have no answers of why this all happened to me.

DUBNER: And what was your, a) I guess, prognosis? Did they think that you would survive? And what was your prognosis for getting a donated kidney?

SHAFFER: Well, when I was hospitalized and they had no answers, and they were functioning a small part, but they said that they were failing. But they had hope — since they really had no idea what was going on with me — that they would kind of kick back in and restart themselves. So we kind of just waited and I started dialysis and everything. And while we were waiting for those next couple months, I actually tried acupuncture for, you know, organ treatment, specifically for that. You know, I was trying everything. And I said, you know what, I’m not going to wait any longer for them to restart. I better get on this transplant list now. So, come January of 2015, I started the process of getting on the transplant list. And starting there.

DUBNER: And what were you told about how long that would likely take you to get you a donated kidney?

SHAFFER: Well, it came back that I had antibodies in my blood from blood transfusions that I had during the hospitalization, and from having children they said I had created all these antibodies. So it made me a very rare match for  — I wasn’t a match to any of my family and so they said because of my rare antibodies I could possibly be on the list five or six years. So that’s the kind of range they gave me back in January of 2015. That, I was looking at five-to-six years being on dialysis.

DUBNER: Wow. How long was it before you heard that there was a donor?

SHAFFER: Well, it was probably come May of 2015 that I started getting word. Me and my father, we decided since I was having such a hard time and nobody in my family matched with me, my father really wanted to donate on my behalf. So we heard about the paired-donor program through the hospital and he wanted to donate his kidney on my behalf. So, it was probably around May of 2015 that we started the chain process. I had several chains lined up throughout the summer of 2015 but it kept falling through due to scheduling with some part of the chain — it kept falling through. So I had many chains lined up throughout the summer, and it was finally in August that we found — I guess Ned was matched to me, and we got the surgery date of September 22, and it kind of just happened really quickly from there.

DUBNER: Way to go, Ned.

BROOKS: Thanks.

DUBNER: What’s it feel like for you, Ned, hearing Danielle talk now? She’s obviously in a much better situation today with your kidney in her than she would be without. So what’s that feel like to hear her on the other end of the line?

BROOKS: It’s emotionally very powerful. It means a lot. A great deal.

SHAFFER: Yeah, it was a real struggle going through dialysis in the last year. I had to do four hours of treatment three days a week. So basically it took 15 hours out of my time every week. And I would go into a dialysis center. And, the first thing you do is you get checked in and they do your blood pressure, your weight, your temperature. They go through all your symptoms that you’re feeling. There’s really no privacy when they’re doing that — I mean, the next patient is five feet from you in their chair, and you’re talking about all of your bodily functions that are not going well for you with all the medications you’re taking and everything and it takes away a little bit of your integrity having to do that so publicly. And then, just to sit there for four hours doing nothing. I can’t get up, I can’t move. My blood is just sitting there, you’re watching your blood go through this machine and it’s really, really depressing. And, it was hard for me. I mean, I cried the first couple times just because I would sit there and I’d look around and I was the youngest, you know obviously, in the whole building. I was 37 years old. And I was the only one driving myself there. It’s just a really hard and depressing time to spend in your day. It was really hard for me to do because I have two small children as well.  

DUBNER: It’s remarkable. You say you were crying then. Now you sound so strong. Ned’s on the other line blubbering there. I’m on the border, holding it together. So…

SHAFFER:  It’s emotional every time I talk about my story too, so.

DUBNER: I’m curious, you said that your dad had entered the donor chain. Did he end up giving a kidney, and if so does he know who the recipient was?

SHAFFER: He ended up giving his kidney. And all we really know is that it went to Connecticut over there where Ned is, and we have not heard from the recipients on that end.

DUBNER: I have a copy of the letter that you wrote to your donor. It’s unclear to me whether you knew exactly who Ned was at this time. It begins, “To my wonderful kidney donor, I don’t even know where to begin.” And I’ve already started to cry. Sorry. I have nothing to do with either of you and I’m crying. OK. So, but then, toward the end, you write, “Just to let you know, your kidney is doing awesome, and I’m already getting my energy back.” Danielle, what’s it like to have this guy Ned’s kidney inside of you? Do you feel whole again? Do you feel different?  

SHAFFER: You know, it was amazing because the very next day after surgery, I felt incredible. I felt 100 percent different. I didn’t feel any of the symptoms that I was having before with the illness and the nausea and the anxiety and everything I was going through. I immediately felt better. My body felt better, and yeah. I was eating and drinking the foods and liquids I was restricted to for so long, and it’s just — I do have the energy again. It’s amazing how much better I feel. And I don’t know if he had any food habits that I’ve picked up, but.

BROOKS: How do you feel about single-malt scotch?

SHAFFER:  You know, I haven’t had the craving for any scotch. It is funny because we joke about that with my dad because he’s a single-malt scotch drinker too, and we say, “Oh, that person’s probably craving it now.”

DUBNER: Well, Danielle, I’m glad you’re doing better and I hope you continue to do even better.

SHAFFER: Yes, thank you so much. And Ned, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me and my family.

BROOKS: No need to thank me anymore. Thank you for being such a great recipient, and we’ll be in touch.

SHAFFER:  Yes, we will. Thank you.

DUBNER: Danielle, thanks for jumping on the phone with us. Bye bye.

SHAFFER: Alright bye guys.

DUBNER: Bye. Well, Ned, how do you feel now? See what you’ve done now?

BROOKS: Boy, I was shaking in here. This is really something. She’s a great person.

DUBNER: Well, I know you didn’t do it for the thanks, but thanks!

BROOKS: My pleasure.

Ned Brooks, inspired by his own experience — and the huge need for more kidney donations — is starting an organization to help build more altruistic kidney-donor chains. It’s called Donor to Donor."

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