Topics in Market Design: Econ 287/365: Winter quarter, Itai Ashlagi

Itai Ashlagi will be teaching Econ 287 this quarter, on topics in market design.  It's highly recommended.

He writes that the syllabus below is very tentative, and will depend in part on how many of the enrolled students took Econ 285 (Ostrovsky and Roth) in the Fall (back in 2023:-)

Topics in Market Design 2024, Itai Ashlagi

Market design is a field that links the rules of the of the marketplace to understand frictions, externalities and more generally economic outcomes. The course will provide theoretical foundations on assignment and matching mechanisms as well as mechanism design. There will be emphasis on theories at the intersection of economics, CS and operations as well as applications that arise in labor markets, organ allocation, platforms.

The class will further expose students to timely market design challenges and will we will host a few guest lectures. The class offers an opportunity to begin a research project. Students will reading critique papers, present papers and write a final paper.

Lectures: Monday 10:30am-1:20pm Shriram 052

Course requirements: (i) reading and writing critiques about papers, (ii), presenting papers in class, and (iii) a term paper.

Instructor: Itai Ashlagi. iashlagi@stanford.edu

Some potential papers for presenting:

Equity and Efficiency in Dynamic Matching: Extreme Waitlist Policies, Nikzad and Strack.

Eliminating Waste in Cadaveric Organ Allocation, Shi and Yin

Pick-an-object mechanisms, Bo and Hakimov

Monopoly without a monopolist, Huberman, Leshno and Moallemi

The College Portfolio Problem, Ali and Shorrer

Equal Pay for Similar Work, Passaro, Kojima, and Pakzad-Hurson

Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price, Haberman and Jagadessan.

Optimal matchmaking strategy in two-sided marketplaces, Shi

Practical algorithms and experimentally validated incentives for equilibrium-based fair division (ACEEI),

Budish, Gao, Othman, Rubinstein

Congestion pricing, carpooling, and commuter welfare, Ostrovsky and Schwarz

Artificial intelligence and auction design, Banchio and Skrzypacz

Selling to a no-regret buyer, Braverman et al.

Dynamic matching in overloaded waiting lists, Leshno

The regulation of queue size by levying tolls, Naor

Optimal search for the best alternative, Weitzman

Whether or not to open Pandora’s box, Doval

Descending price optimally coordinates search, Kleinberg, Waggoner, Weyl

Market Failure in Kidney Exchange? Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherstone and Omer Karaduman

Choice Screen Auctions, Michael Ostrovsky

Incentive Compatibility of Large Centralized Matching Markets, Lee

Tentative schedule:

Week 1: Two-sided matching, stability and large markets.

Week 2: One-sided matching, duality, optimization and constraints.

Week 3: Multi-item auctions, auction design, revenue equivalence, optimal auctions, interdependent

valuations.

Week 4: Congestion, dynamic matching.

Week 5: Waitlists, search and learning.

Week 6: Foundations of mechanism design.

Week 7: Robustness in implementation

Weeks 8-10: Projects

We will host several guest lectures. Presentations of papers will take place throughout the course.

Background references

1. List of (mostly applied) papers are given in a separate document.

2. Books

Roth, Alvin E.and Marilda A. Oliveira Sotomayor, Two-sided matching: A study in game-theoretic modeling and analysis. No. 18. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Vijay Krishna, Auction Theory, 2010.

Tilman Borgers, An Introduction to Mechanism Design by Tilman Borgers.

Milgrom, Paul, Putting Auction Theory to Work, 2004.

3. Papers

(a) Introduction

Roth, Alvin E. The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 2002. 1341-1378.

Klemperer, Paul, What Really Matters in Auction Design?, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(1): 169-189, 2002.

Weitzman, Martin, Is the Price System or Rationing More Effective in Getting a Commodity to Those Who Need it Most?, The Bell Journal of Economics, 8, 517-524, 1977.

(b) Stable matching and assignment

Gale, David and Lloyd Shapley, College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage, American Mathematical Monthly, 69: 9-15,1962.

Roth and Sotomayor, Chapters 2-5.

Hylland, Aanund, and Richard Zeckhauser. The efficient allocation of individuals to positions, The Journal of Political Economy, 293-314,1979.

Roth, Alvin E., The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory. Journal of Political Economy, 92: 991-1016, 1984.

Kojimam, Fuhito and Parag A. Pathak. Incentives and stability in large two-sided matching markets. American Economic Review, 99:608-627, 2009

Abdulkadiroglu, Atila and Tayfun Sonmez. School choice: A mechanism design approach. American Economic Review, 93:729-747, 2003.

Abdulkadiroglu, Atila , Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth. The New York City high school match. American Economic Review, 95:364-367, 2005.

Ashlagi, Itai, Yash Kanoria, and Jacob D. Leshno. Unbalanced random matching markets: The stark effect of competition, Journal of Political Economy,

Ashlagi, Itai and Peng Shi. Optimal allocation without money: An engineering approach. Management Science, 2015.

Peng Shi and Nick Arnosti. Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation, Management Science, 2019.

Peng Shi, Assortment Planning in School Choice, 2019.

Ashlagi, Itai, and Afshin Nikzad. What matters in tie-breaking rules? how competition guides design, 2015.

(c) Auctions and revenue equivalence

Myerson, Roger Auction Design, Mathematics of Operations Research, 1981.

Milgrom, Paul. Putting Auction Theory to Work. Chapter 2-3.

W. Vickrey, Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders, The Journal of Finance, 16(1) 8–37, 1961.

R. Myerson, Optimal auction design, Mathematics of Operations research, 1981.

J. Bulow and J. Roberts, The simple economics of optimal auctions, Journal of Political Economy, 1989.

J. Bulow and P. Klemperer, Auctions vs negotiations, American Economic Review, 1996.

P.R. McAfee and J. McMillan, Auctions and bidding, Journal of Economic Literature 1987.

P. Milgrom and R. Weber, A theory of auctions and competitive bidding, Econometrica, 1982.

Roth, A. E. and A. Ockenfels, Late-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon.” American Economic Review, 92(4): 1093-1103, 2002.

(d) Mechanism design

Vickrey, William (1961): Counterspeculation, Auctions and Competitive Sealed Tenders. Journal of Finance, 16(1): 8-37.

Ausubel, Larry and Paul Milgrom, The Lovely but Lonely Vickrey Auction. in Cramton et. al Combinatorial Auctions, 2005.

J.C. Rochet, A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi-linear context”, 1987.

K. Roberts, The characterization of implementable choice rules”, 1979.

F. Gul and E. Stacchetti, Walrasian equilibrium with gross substitutes, Journal of Economic Theory, 1999.

I. Ashlagi, M. Braverman, A,. Hassidim and D. Monderer, Monotonicity and implementability, Econometrica, 2011.

(e) Dynamic mechanism design and dynamic pricing

G. Gallego and G. Van Ryzin, Optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons. Management science, 40(8), 999-1020, 1994.

S. Board and A. Skrzypacz, Revenue management with forward-looking buyers, Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University,2010.

A. Gershkov, B. Moldovanu, P. Strack, Revenue Maximizing Mechanisms with Strategic Customers and Unknown, Markovian Demand

D. Bergemann and J. Valimaki, The dynamic pivot mechanism, Econometrica, 2010.

A. Gershkov and B. Moldovanu, Dynamic Revenue Maximization with Heterogeneous Objects: A Mechanism Design Approach, 168-198, 2009.

F. Gul, H. Sonnenschein, R. Wilson, Foundations of dynamic monopoly and the Coase conjecture, J. of Economic Theory, 1986.

D. Besanko and W. L. Whinston, Optimal price skimming by a monopolist facing rational consumers, Management Science, 1990.

(f) Dynamic matching

Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth. New challenges in multihospital kidney exchange. American Economic Review, 102:354-359, 2012

Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherston and Omer Karaduman. Market Failure in Kidney Exchange, 2018.

Anderson, R., Ashlagi, I., Gamarnik, D. and Kanoria, Efficient Dynamic Barter Exchange, Operations Research, 2015.

Mohammad Akbarpour, Shengwu Li, and Shayan Oveis Gharan. Dynamic matching market design. JPE, 2019.

Baccara, Mariagiovanna, SangMok Lee, and Leeat Yariv, Optimal dynamic matching, 2015.

Jacob Leshno, Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Waiting Lists, 2017.

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023, Cambridge MA

 Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2023

Friday, October 27

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 1: Equity

9:00 am

Equal Pay for Similar Work

Diego Gentile Passaro, Brown University

Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University

Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, Brown University

9:45 am

Market Design for Social Justice: A Case Study on A Constitutional Crisis in India

Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

M. Utku Ünver, Boston College

10:30 am

Break

Session 2: Artificial Intelligence

10:45 am

Artificial Intelligence and Statistical Collusion

Martino Banchio, Google Research

Giacomo Mantegazza, Stanford University

11:30 am

Combining Human Expertise with Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Evidence from Radiology

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Alex Moehring, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Pranav Rajpurkar, Harvard University

Tobias Salz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

12:15 pm

Lunch

Session 3: Auctions

1:30 pm

Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price

Alexander Haberman, Stanford University

Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Unobserved Auctions

Hao Li, University of British Columbia

Michael Peters, University of British Columbia

3:00 pm

Entry and Exit in Treasury Auctions

Jason Allen, Bank of Canada

Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER

Eric Richert, University of Chicago

Milena Wittwer, Boston College

3:45 pm

Break

Session 4: Mechanism Design for Social Good

4:15 pm

Test-Optional Admissions

Wouter Dessein, Columbia University

Alexander P. Frankel, University of Chicago

Navin Kartik, Columbia University

5:00 pm

Maximizing the Effect of Altruism

Nicholas T. Wu, Yale University

Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research

Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research

5:45 pm

Adjourn

6:30 pm

Group Dinner at Bambara (across the street from the Royal Sonesta)

Saturday, October 28

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

Session 5: Distributed Ledgers

9:00 am

The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and Anonymous, Decentralized Trust on the Blockchain

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

9:45 am

Can Open Decentralized Ledgers be Economically Secure?

Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago

Rafael Pass, Cornell University

Elaine Shi, Carnegie Mellon University

10:30 am

Break

Session 6: School Choice

11:00 am

Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: Robust Analysis of School Choice

Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University

Dong Woo Hahm, University of Southern California

YingHua He, Rice University

11:45 am

Search and Biased Beliefs in Education Markets

Patrick Agte, Princeton University

Claudia Allende, Stanford University and NBER

Adam Kapor, Princeton University and NBER

Christopher Neilson, Yale University and NBER

12:30 pm

Lunch

Session 7: Signalling and Screening

1:30 pm

Comparison of Screening Devices

Frank Yang, Stanford University

Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University

2:15 pm

Privacy Preserving Signals

Philipp Strack, Yale University

Kai Hao Yang, Yale University

3:00 pm

Adjourn

New Directions in Market Design, NBER conference May 11-12, 2023 in Washington DC (and on YouTube)

 I'm on my way to this conference, celebrating a quarter of a century of practical market design by economists.

New Directions in Market Design, NBER conference May 11-12, 2023 (US Eastern Time)

LOCATION Convene, 600 14th St NW in Washington, DC. and livestreamed on YouTube 

ORGANIZERS Irene Y. Lo, Michael Ostrovsky, and Parag A. Pathak

 NBER conferences are by invitation. All participants are expected to comply with the NBER's Conference Code of Conduct.

Supported by Schmidt Futures

 Thursday, May 11

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am Opening Talk: Alvin Roth, Stanford University and NBER ("Market Design and Maintenance") 

9:30 am Break

9:45 am Electricity and Renewable Energy Market Design

Overview: Mar Reguant, Northwestern University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Martin Bichler, Technical University of Munich

Viewpoint 2: Richard O’Neill, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

11:05 am Market Design for the Environment

Overview: Estelle Cantillon, ULB

Viewpoint 1: Rachel Glennerster, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Nathan Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund

12:25 pm Lunch discussions

2:00 pm Market Design in Healthcare

Overview: Benjamin Handel, University of California at Berkeley and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Mark Miller, Arnold Ventures

Viewpoint 2: Fanyin Zheng, Columbia University

3:20 pm Market Design for Organ Transplantation

Overview: Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College

Viewpoint 1: Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Jennifer Erickson, Organize

4:40 pm Break

5:00 pm Market Design for Education

Overview: Parag Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Derek Neal, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Irene Lo, Stanford University

6:20 pm Adjourn

6:45 pm Group Dinner - JW Marriott

Friday, May 12

8:00 am Continental Breakfast

8:30 am Market Design for Public Housing

Overview: Nathan Hendren, Harvard University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Winnie van Dijk, Harvard University and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Mary Cunningham, Urban Institute

9:50 am Market Design in Transportation

Overview: Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: David Shmoys, Cornell University

Viewpoint 2: Wai Yan Leong, Singapore Land Transport Authority

11:10 am Break

11:30 am Market Design in Financial Markets

Overview: Haoxiang Zhu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

Viewpoint 2: Scott Mixon, CFTC

12:50 pm

Lunch discussions

2:20 pm Market Design Tools in the Regulation of Online Marketplaces

Overview: Susan Athey, Stanford University and NBER

Viewpoint 1: Preston McAfee, Google

Viewpoint 2: Michael Schwarz, Microsoft

3:40 pm Artificial Intelligence and Market Design

Overview: Kevin Leyton-Brown, University of British Columbia

Viewpoint 1: Hal Varian, Google

Viewpoint 2: Nikhil Devanur, Amazon

5:00 pm Break

5:20 pm Closing Talk: Paul Milgrom, Stanford University

5:50 pm Adjourn

6:30 pm Group Dinner - JW Marriott

Kidney exchange collaboration between Stanford and APKD

 I recently had occasion to review the long collaboration between my Stanford colleagues and Mike Rees and the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation. It turns out that, together with other coauthors, Mike and his APKD colleagues have written well over a dozen papers with me and my colleagues at Stanford.  (My own collaboration with Mike and APKD goes back to when Itai Ashlagi and I were still in Boston, where my earliest papers on kidney exchange were with  Tayfun Sönmez and Utku Ünver, and with Frank Delmonico and his colleagues at the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.)

Here's the list I came up with, probably not exhaustive:

Mike Rees/APKD collaborations with Stanford scholars (Ashlagi, Melcher, Roth, Somaini)

 1. Rees, Michael A., Jonathan E. Kopke, Ronald P. Pelletier, Dorry L. Segev, Matthew E. Rutter, Alfredo J. Fabrega, Jeffrey Rogers, Oleh G. Pankewycz, Janet Hiller, Alvin E. Roth, Tuomas Sandholm, Utku Ünver, and Robert A. Montgomery, “A Non-Simultaneous Extended Altruistic Donor Chain,” New England Journal of Medicine, 360;11, March 12, 2009, 1096-1101. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0803645

2.     Ashlagi, Itai, Duncan S. Gilchrist, Alvin E. Roth, and Michael A. Rees, “Nonsimultaneous Chains and Dominos in Kidney Paired Donation – Revisited,” American Journal of Transplantation, 11, 5, May 2011, 984-994 http://www.stanford.edu/~alroth/papers/Nonsimultaneous%20Chains%20AJT%202011.pdf

3.     Ashlagi, Itai, Duncan S. Gilchrist, Alvin E. Roth, and Michael A. Rees, “NEAD Chains in Transplantation,” American Journal of Transplantation, December 2011; 11: 2780–2781. http://web.stanford.edu/~iashlagi/papers/NeadChains2.pdf

4.     Wallis, C. Bradley, Kannan P. Samy, Alvin E. Roth, and Michael A. Rees, “Kidney Paired Donation,” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, July 2011, 26 (7): 2091-2099 (published online March 31, 2011; doi: 10.1093/ndt/gfr155, https://academic.oup.com/ndt/article/26/7/2091/1896342/Kidney-paired-donation

5.     Rees, Michael A.,  Mark A. Schnitzler, Edward Zavala, James A. Cutler,  Alvin E. Roth, F. Dennis Irwin, Stephen W. Crawford,and Alan B.  Leichtman, “Call to Develop a Standard Acquisition Charge Model for Kidney Paired Donation,” American Journal of Transplantation, 2012, 12, 6 (June), 1392-1397. (published online 9 April 2012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-6143.2012.04034.x/abstract )

6.     Anderson, Ross, Itai Ashlagi, David Gamarnik, Michael Rees, Alvin E. Roth, Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver, " Kidney Exchange and the Alliance for Paired Donation: Operations Research Changes the Way Kidneys are Transplanted," Edelman Award Competition, Interfaces, 2015, 45(1), pp. 26–42. http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/inte.2014.0766

7.     Fumo, D.E., V. Kapoor, L.J. Reece, S.M. Stepkowski,J.E. Kopke, S.E. Rees, C. Smith, A.E. Roth, A.B. Leichtman, M.A. Rees, “Improving matching strategies in kidney paired donation: the 7-year evolution of a web based virtual matching system,” American Journal of Transplantation, October 2015, 15(10), 2646-2654 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/ajt.13337/ (designated one of 10 “best of AJT 2015”)

8.     Melcher, Marc L., John P. Roberts, Alan B. Leichtman, Alvin E. Roth, and Michael A. Rees, “Utilization of Deceased Donor Kidneys to Initiate Living Donor Chains,” American Journal of Transplantation, 16, 5, May 2016, 1367–1370. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.13740/full

9.     Michael A. Rees, Ty B. Dunn, Christian S. Kuhr, Christopher L. Marsh, Jeffrey Rogers, Susan E. Rees, Alejandra Cicero, Laurie J. Reece, Alvin E. Roth, Obi Ekwenna, David E. Fumo, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Jonathan E. Kopke, Samay Jain, Miguel Tan and Siegfredo R. Paloyo, “Kidney Exchange to Overcome Financial Barriers to Kidney Transplantation,” American Journal of Transplantation, 17, 3, March 2017, 782–790. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.14106/full  

a.     M. A. Rees, S. R. Paloyo, A. E. Roth, K. D. Krawiec, O. Ekwenna, C. L. Marsh, A. J. Wenig, T. B. Dunn, “Global Kidney Exchange: Financially Incompatible Pairs Are Not Transplantable Compatible Pairs,” American Journal of Transplantation, 17, 10, October 2017, 2743–2744. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.14451/full

b.     A. E. Roth, K. D. Krawiec, S. Paloyo, O. Ekwenna, C. L. Marsh, A. J. Wenig, T. B. Dunn, and M. A. Rees, “People should not be banned from transplantation only because of their country of origin,” American Journal of Transplantation, 17, 10, October 2017, 2747-2748. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.14485/full

c.      Ignazio R. Marino, Alvin E. Roth, Michael A. Rees; Cataldo Doria, “Open dialogue between professionals with different opinions builds the best policy, American Journal of Transplantation, 17, 10, October 2017, 2749. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.14484/full

10.  Danielle Bozek, Ty B. Dunn, Christian S. Kuhr, Christopher L. Marsh, Jeffrey Rogers, Susan E. Rees, Laura Basagoitia, Robert J. Brunner, Alvin E. Roth, Obi Ekwenna, David E. Fumo, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Jonathan E. Kopke, Puneet Sindhwani, Jorge Ortiz, Miguel Tan, and Siegfredo R. Paloyo, Michael A. Rees, “The Complete Chain of the First Global Kidney Exchange Transplant and 3-yr Follow-up,” European Urology Focus, 4, 2, March 2018, 190-197. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405456918301871

11.  Itai Ashlagi, Adam Bingaman, Maximilien Burq, Vahideh Manshadi, David Gamarnik, Cathi Murphey, Alvin E. Roth,  Marc L. Melcher, Michael A. Rees, ”The effect of match-run frequencies on the number of transplants and waiting times in kidney exchange,” American Journal of Transplantation, 18, 5, May 2018,  1177-1186, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.14566

12.   Stepkowski, S. M., Mierzejewska, B., Fumo, D., Bekbolsynov, D., Khuder, S., Baum, C. E., Brunner, R. J., Kopke, J. E., Rees, S. E., Smith, C. E., Ashlagi, I., Roth, A. E., Rees, M. A., “The 6-year clinical outcomes for patients registered in a multiregional United States Kidney Paired Donation program- a retrospective study,” Transplant international 32: 839-853. 2019. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tri.13423

13.   Roth, Alvin E., Ignazio R. Marino, Obi Ekwenna, Ty B. Dunn, Siegfredo R. Paloyo, Miguel Tan, Ricardo Correa-Rotter, Christian S. Kuhr, Christopher L. Marsh, Jorge Ortiz, Giuliano Testa, Puneet Sindhwani, Dorry L. Segev, Jeffrey Rogers, Jeffrey D. Punch, Rachel C. Forbes, Michael A. Zimmerman, Matthew J. Ellis, Aparna Rege, Laura Basagoitia, Kimberly D. Krawiec, and Michael A. Rees, “Global Kidney Exchange Should Expand Wisely, Transplant International, September 2020, 33, 9,  985-988. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tri.13656

14.  Vivek B. Kute, Himanshu V. Patel, Pranjal R. Modi, Sayyad J. Rizvi, Pankaj R. Shah, Divyesh P Engineer, Subho Banerjee, Hari Shankar Meshram, Bina P. Butala, Manisha P. Modi, Shruti Gandhi, Ansy H. Patel, Vineet V. Mishra, Alvin E. Roth, Jonathan E. Kopke, Michael A. Rees, “Non-simultaneous kidney exchange cycles in resource-restricted countries without non-directed donation,” Transplant International,  Volume 34, Issue 4, April 2021,  669-680  https://doi.org/10.1111/tri.13833

15.   Afshin Nikzad, Mohammad Akbarpour, Michael A. Rees, and Alvin E. Roth “Global Kidney Chains,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 7, 2021 118 (36) e2106652118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106652118 .

16.    Alvin E. Roth, Ignazio R. Marino, Kimberly D. Krawiec, and Michael A. Rees, “Criminal, Legal, and Ethical Kidney Donation and Transplantation: A Conceptual Framework to Enable Innovation,” Transplant International  (2022), 35: doi: 10.3389/ti.2022.10551, https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/articles/10.3389/ti.2022.10551/full

17.   Ignazio R. Marino, Alvin E. Roth, and Michael A. Rees, “Living Kidney Donor Transplantation and Global Kidney Exchange,” Experimental and Clinical Transplantation (2022), Suppl. 4, 5-9. http://www.ectrx.org/class/pdfPreview.php?year=2022&volume=20&issue=8&supplement=4&spage_number=5&makale_no=0

18.  Agarwal, Nikhil, Itai Ashlagi, Michael A. Rees, Paulo Somaini, and Daniel Waldinger. "Equilibrium allocations under alternative waitlist designs: Evidence from deceased donor kidneys." Econometrica 89, no. 1 (2021): 37-76.

And here’s a report of work in progress:

The First 52 Global Kidney Exchange Transplants: overcoming multiple barriers to transplantation by MA Rees, AE Roth , IR Marino, K Krawiec, A Agnihotri, S Rees, K Sweeney, S Paloyo, T Dunn, M Zimmerman, J Punch, R Sung, J Leventhal, A Alobaidli, F Aziz, E Mor, T Ashkenazi, I Ashlagi, M Ellis, A Rege, V Whittaker, R Forbes, C Marsh, C Kuhr, J Rogers, M Tan, L Basagoitia, R Correa-Rotter, S Anwar, F Citterio, J Romagnoli, and O Ekwenna.  Transplantation: September 2022 - Volume 106 - Issue 9S - p S469 doi: 10.1097/01.tp.0000887972.53388.77  https://journals.lww.com/transplantjournal/Fulltext/2022/09001/423_9__The_First_52_Global_Kidney_Exchange.697.aspx

Dynamic Matching and Queueing Workshop July 5-6, 2022 Paris School of Economics

Dynamic Matching and Queueing Workshop July 5-6, 2022 Paris School of Economics

In Person & Zoom Event    Registration

July 5th:

12:00 PM (UTC+2): Lunch (Room R2-20)

2:00 PM (UTC+2): “Matching in Dynamic Environments” - Amin Saberi (Stanford)

3:00 PM (UTC+2): “Near-Optimal Policies for Dynamic Matching” - Itai Ashlagi (Stanford), Itai Gurvich (Northwestern) and Suleyman Kerimov (Stanford)

4:00 PM (UTC+2): Coffee Break

4:30 PM (UTC+2): “A Dynamic Estimation Approach for Centralized Matching Markets: Understanding Segregation in Day Care” - Olivier De Groot (TSE) and Minyoung Rho (UAB)

5:30 PM (UTC+2): “Choices and Outcomes in Assignment Mechanisms: The Allocation of Deceased Donor Kidneys” - Nikhil Agarwal (MIT), Charles Hogdson (Yale) and Paulo Somaini (Stanford)

July 6th:

2:00 PM (UTC+2): “You Can Lead a Horse to Water: Spatial Learning and Path Dependence in Consumer Search” - Charles Hodgson (Yale) and Greg Lewis (Amazon)

3:00 PM (UTC+2): “Online Matching in Sparse Random Graphs: Non-Asymptotic Performances of Greedy Algorithm” - Nathan Noiry (Télécom Paris), Flore Sentenac (CREST) and Vianney Perchet (CREST)

4:00 PM (UTC+2): Coffee Break

4:30 PM (UTC+2): “Constrained Majorization: Applications in Mechanism Design” - Afshin Nikzad (University of Southern California) / Online

5:30 PM (UTC+2): “Price Discovery in Waiting Lists: A Connection to Stochastic Gradient Descent ” - Itai Ashlagi (Stanford), Jacob Leshno (Chicago Booth), Pengyu Qian (Purdue University), and Amin Saberi (Stanford) / Online

6:30 PM (UTC+2): Social gathering

Organizers: Yeon-Koo Che (Columbia), Julien Combe (CREST, Polytechnique), Victor Hiller (Panthéon-Assas, LEMMA) and Olivier Tercieux (PSE)   

Paris School of Economics, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 PARIS

Econometric Society Summer School in Dynamic Structural Econometrics: Market Design

Market design isn't just about game theory these days:

Econometric Society Summer School in Dynamic Structural Econometrics: Market Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, August 15-20, 2022

Lecturers of the summer school and invited conference speakers include:

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Irene Lo, Stanford University

Victoria Marone, University of Texas at Austin

Robert A. Miller, Carnegie Mellon University

Whitney Newey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisory board: 

Ariel Pakes, Harvard University

Parag Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paulo Somaini, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Daniel Waldinger, New York University

2022 organizers: 

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Whitney Newey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kidney Transplant Collaborative

 The Kidney Transplant Collaborative has a new grants program, that includes the following exciting initiatives:

1. Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates

Grant Project:  Pulsatile Perfusion from Procurement to Delivery at Accepting Centers 

Project Team:    David Dwyer, Transplant Center Liaison; Brian Roe, Chief Financial Officer; Jennifer Daniel, Organ Operations Director

2. Stanford University in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Grant Project:  Using Machine Learning to Improve Utilization and Reducing Discards in Deceased Donor Organ Allocation 

Project Team:  Itai Ashlagi, Associate Professor – Stanford; Paulo Somaini, Assistant Professor of Economics – Stanford; Nikhil Agarwal, Associate Professor of Economics – MIT

3. HonorBridge 

Grant Project:   Kidney Transplant in Rapid Organ Recovery from Donation after Uncontrolled Circulatory Death Donors 

Project Team:   Kimberly Koontz, Chief Operating Officer; Nissa Casey, Manager of Recovery Services; Joel Baucom, Director of Organ Operations; Lora Smitherman, Manager of Hospital Services

4. Columbia University in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and the National Kidney Foundation 

Grant Project:   Using Shared Decision Making to Improve Kidney Transplantation Rates 

Project Team:  Sumit Mohan, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology – Columbia University; Syed Ali Husain, Assistant Professor of Medicine – Columbia University; Kristin King, Data Analyst - Columbia University;  Anne Huml, Assistant Professor of Medicine – Cleveland Clinic; Jesse Schold, Director of Outcomes Research in Kidney Transplantation - Cleveland Clinic;  Peter Reese, Associate Professor of Medicine - University of Pennsylvania 

5. Cambridge85, LLC 

Grant Project:   Deceased Donor Kidney Chains 

Project Team:  Simon Keith, Founder/Principal ,Cambridge 85; Kelly Ranum, CEO, Louisiana Organ Procurement Organization; Diane Brockmeier, CEO, Mid-American Transplant; Kyle Herbert, CEO

Live on Nebraska;  Matt Wadsworth, CEO, Life Connection of Ohio

Market design at the Econometric Society summer school in Dynamic Structural Econometrics

 Here's an announcement that came by email from the Econometric Society (which reflects the continued evolution of market design):

ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY SUMMER SCHOOL in DYNAMIC STRUCTURAL ECONOMETRICS

Theme: Market Design

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

August 15–20, 2022

APPLY AT http://dseconf.org

DEADLINE: FRIDAY APRIL 1

We are pleased to announce the next event in the sequence of Econometric Society summer schools in Dynamic Structural Econometrics.

The primary focus of DSE summer schools is to provide early-stage PhD students with the tools to carry out research in the rapidly developing area of empirical market design with a strong emphasis on closely integrating economic and econometric theory in empirical work. The school covers the theoretical and methodological foundations in market design, the state-of-the-art methods for estimating models that are fundamental in this literature and providing an overview of open questions. We will use a variety of empirical applications to illustrate how these tools and methods are combined to address important applied questions.

The 2022 Econometric Society DSE summer school consists of 4 days of lectures held in conjunction with the Dynamic Structural Econometrics Conference 2022 (August 19-20). The conference brings together top junior and senior researchers from the field to discuss recent advances in theoretical and applied work. The summer school and the conference are hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lecturers of the summer school and invited conference speakers include:

• Nikhil Agarwal (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Fedor Iskhakov (Australian National University)

• Irene Lo (Stanford University)

• Victoria Marone (University of Texas at Austin)

• Robert A. Miller (Carnegie Mellon University)

• Whitney Newey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Ariel Pakes (Harvard University)

• Parag Pathak (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• John Rust (Georgetown University)

• Bertel Schjerning (University of Copenhagen)

• Paulo Somaini (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• Daniel Waldinger (New York University)

Interested students and presenters are invited to submit their applications via the website http://dseconf.org. Application deadline is April 1, 2022.

Online and Matching-Based Market Design (forthcoming in 2022), edited by Echenique, Immorlica, and Vazirani

 What to read in 2022? Here's a teaser...

Online and Matching-Based Market Design, forthcoming in 2022 from Cambridge University Press

Editors: Federico Echenique, Nicole Immorlica, Vijay V. Vazirani  

With a Foreword by Alvin E. Roth

The publisher's leaflet describes the book this way:

"The field of matching markets is, due to a unique confluence of circumstances, at the same time mature and yet in its infancy. Its birth goes back to the seminal 1962 paper of Gale and Shapley on stable matching. Over the decades, this field has become known for its highly successful applications, having economic as well as sociological impact. Its recent resurgence, with the revolutions of the Internet and mobile computing, has opened up altogether new avenues of research and novel, path-breaking applications. The distinctive feature of this book lies in treating this field in its true interdisciplinary spirit --- the field veritably sits at the intersection of economics, computer science, operations research and discrete mathematics, and this viewpoint has already led to a sequence of fundamental research results. Comprised of chapters written by over 50 top researchers, it still has the clarity, cohesiveness and organization of a textbook."

CONTRIBUTORS: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Nikhil Agarwal, Samson Alva, Itai Ashlagi, Mariagiovanna Baccara, Gabriel Carroll, Hector Chade, Jiehua Chen, Yan Chen, Nikhil Devanur, Federico Echenique, Lars Ehlers, Matthew Elliott, Michal Feldman, Zhe Feng, Tamas Fleiner, Alfred Galichon, Renato Gomes, Aram Grigoryan, Guillaume Haeringer, Hanna Halaburda, John Hatfield, Zhiyi Huang, Nicole Immorlica, Ravi Jagadeesan, Philipp Kircher, Bettina Klaus, Robert Kleinberg, Scott Kominers, Soohyung Lee, Jacob Leshno, Shengwu Li, Irene Lo, Brendan Lucier, David Manlove, Aranyak Mehta, Paul Milgrom, Jamie Morgenstern, Thanh Nguyen, Alexandru Nichifor, Michael Ostrovsky, David Parkes, Alessandro Pavan, Marek Pycia, Aaron Roth, Bernard Salanie, Aleksandrs Slivkins, Paulo Somaini, Sai Srivatsa Ravindranath, Eduard Talamas, Alexander Teytelboym, Thorben Tröbst, Vijay Vazirani, Andrew Vogt, Rakesh Vohra, Alexander Westkamp, Leeat Yariv

Market Design by Nikhil Agarwal & Eric Budish (forthcoming in the Handbook of Industrial Organization)

 Here's an NBER working paper that will appear in the Handbook of Industrial Organization:

Market Design by Nikhil Agarwal & Eric Budish

NBER WORKING PAPER 29367,  DOI 10.3386/w29367,  October 2021

Abstract: "This Handbook chapter seeks to introduce students and researchers of industrial organization (IO) to the field of market design. We emphasize two important points of connection between the IO and market design fields: a focus on market failures—both understanding sources of market failure and analyzing how to fix them—and an appreciation of institutional detail.

"Section II reviews theory, focusing on introducing the theory of matching and assignment mechanisms to a broad audience. It introduces a novel “taxonomy” of market design problems, covers the key mechanisms and their properties, and emphasizes several points of connection to traditional economic theory involving prices and competitive equilibrium.

"Section III reviews structural empirical methods that build on this theory. We describe how to estimate a workhorse random utility model under various data environments, ranging from data on reported preference data such as rank-order lists to data only on observed matches. These methods enable a quantification of trade-offs in designing markets and the effects of new market designs.

"Section IV discusses a wide variety of applications. We organize this discussion into three broad aims of market design research: (i) diagnosing market failures; (ii) evaluating and comparing various market designs; (iii) proposing new, improved designs. A point of emphasis is that theoretical and empirical analysis have been highly complementary in this research"

Here's the first paragraph:

"Textbook models envision markets as abstract institutions that clear supply and demand. Real markets have specific designs and market clearing rules. These features affect market participants and their allocations in various ways – they determine the actions an agent can take, the incentives for taking those actions, the information environment, the interactions between agents’ actions, and, ultimately, the final allocation. Well-designed markets have rules that coordinate and incentivize behavior in ways that lead to desirable outcomes. But it is not a given that all markets have good design. The Market Design field studies these  rules in order to understand their implications, to identify potential market failures, and to remedy them by designing better institutions."

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2021

Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2021

DATE October 21-23, 2021 (Times in EDT)

ORGANIZERS Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak

NBER conferences are by invitation. All participants are expected to comply with the NBER's Conference Code of Conduct.

Thursday, October 21

12:00 pm

Randomized FIFO Mechanisms 

Francisco Castro, UCLA

Hongyao Ma, Columbia University

Hamid Nazerzadeh, University of Southern California

Chiwei Yan, University of Washington

12:45 pm

The Value of Excess Supply in Spatial Matching Markets 

Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University

Yeganeh Alimohammadi, Stanford University

Shengwu Li, Harvard University

Amin Saberi, Stanford University

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Choices and Outcomes in Assignment Mechanisms: The Allocation of Deceased Donor Kidneys 

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Charles Hodgson, Yale University

Paulo J. Somaini, Stanford University and NBER

2:45 pm

Price Discovery in Waiting Lists: A Connection to Stochastic Gradient Descent 

Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago

Amin Saberi, Stanford University

Pengyu Qian, Columbia Business School

3:30 pm

Adjourn

Friday, October 22

12:00 pm

Linear Pricing Mechanisms without Convexity 

Paul Milgrom, Stanford University

Mitchell L. Watt, Stanford University

12:45 pm

The Equilibrium Existence Duality: Equilibrium with Indivisibilities and Income Effects 

Elizabeth C. Baldwin, University of Oxford

Omer Edhan, University of Manchester

Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University

Paul D. Klemperer, University of Oxford

Alexander Teytelboym, University of Oxford

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Flow Trading 

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

Peter Cramton, University of Cologne

Albert "Pete" Kyle, University of Maryland

Jeongmin (Mina) Lee, Washington University in St. Louis

David Malec, University of Maryland

2:45 pm

Designing a Combinatorial Financial Options Market 

Xintong Wang, Harvard University

David Pennock, Microsoft Research

Nikhil Devanur, Amazon

David M. Rothschild, Microsoft Research

Biaoshuai Tao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Michael Wellman, University of Michigan

3:30 pm

Adjourn

Saturday, October 23

12:00 pm

Choice Screen Auctions 

Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER

12:45 pm

Mechanism Design meets Priority Design: Redesigning the US Army's Branching Process 

Kyle Greenberg, United States Military Academy at West Point

Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Decentralizing Centralized Matching Markets: Implications from Early Offers in University Admissions  

Julien Grenet, Paris School of Economics

Yinghua He, Rice University

Dorothea Kübler, WZB

2:45 pm

Mechanism and Priority Design for Distributional Objectives: An Application to Decrease Inequalities in Access to Experienced Teachers 

Julien Combe, CREST - Ecole polytechnique

Umut M. Dur, North Carolina State University

Olivier Tercieux, Paris School of Economics

Camille Terrier, University of Lausanne

M. Utku Ünver, Boston College

3:30 pm

Adjourn