Monday, February 1, 2021

Economics and Engineering (and market design): some history and prehistory, at Stanford and elsewhere

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The  December 2020 issue of History of Political Economy  is devoted to Economics and Engineering. Here's an account of Stanford and Bob...
Sunday, January 31, 2021

Paying employees to be vaccinated against Covid. (Is that repugnant? Could it be illegal??)

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 Apparently paying workers to get vaccinated (even giving them paid time off to get vaccinated) may face some legal complications. The Washi...
Saturday, January 30, 2021

Mechanism design conference (virtually) at Pitt, April 15-17, with keynotes by Tuomas Sandholm and Utku Unver

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  Here's the announcement: the conference is sponsored by the NBER Mechanism Design for Vulnerable Populations Thurs Apr 15- Sat Apr 17,...
Friday, January 29, 2021

Vaccine delivery in the U.S. continues to be congested

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As of today, congestion is still competing with short supply to limit vaccination in the US. Some doses are being wasted or delayed in the n...
Thursday, January 28, 2021

National Academies committee on Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation, and Distribution

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The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine have formed a committee on A Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Tra...
Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Basketball is still adjusting to the three-point field goal

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Rules are an important part of the design of marketplaces, and also of games and competitive sports. And it can take time for participants t...
Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Removing disincentives from kidney donation: pro and con in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases

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 Two dueling papers in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases consider the effects of compensating kidney donors to remove disincentives fr...
Monday, January 25, 2021

Congestion in vaccine delivery, and shortage of overall supply: latest news, and a call for increased production

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Covid vaccines in many parts of the U.S. are being distributed only slowly, while other places are experiencing shortages.  The NY Times bri...
Sunday, January 24, 2021

Mike Rees wins transplant surgeon excellence award for innovations in kidney exchange

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Mike Rees, who founded the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation (APKD), received The American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP)   2021 M...
Saturday, January 23, 2021

Forbes interviews Jennifer Erickson on organ donation

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 I met Jennifer Erickson when she was at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration, and helped...
Friday, January 22, 2021

Mike Luca on social media bans

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  Mike Luca writes, in Wired, about social media bans as part of their design. Social Media Bans Are Really, Actually, Shockingly Common--B...
Thursday, January 21, 2021

SAT eliminates subject tests

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 The portfolio of standardized tests available to college admissions offices is shrinking (or at least changing)... The WSJ has the story: C...
Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Vaccine congestion: short planning horizons

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  ProPublica has the story: How Operation Warp Speed Created Vaccination Chaos--States are struggling to plan their vaccination programs wit...
Tuesday, January 19, 2021

School choice under discussion in Vienna (video, in English and German)

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  On Wednesday I spoke about school choice in Vienna.  (Here's the prospectus .)The video is below. (I start speaking around minute 9:30...
Monday, January 18, 2021

Congestion in decentralized vaccination

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 The news is full of stories of people obsessively refreshing web pages, hoping to get an appointment for a Covid vaccine. The Washington Po...
Sunday, January 17, 2021

A proposed match for English professors, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

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 Here's a proposal for a centralized clearinghouse for new Ph.D.s in English.  It's a thought experiment, unconstrained by considera...
Saturday, January 16, 2021

Covid vaccine causes outbreak of smoking in New Jersey

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  Strategy-proofness is an idea that shouldn't be appreciated only by game theorists. The NY Times has the story: Smokers in N.J. Are El...
Friday, January 15, 2021

More on convalescent plasma for treating Covid-19

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Early results concerning the effectiveness of convalescent plasma have been mixed.  Here's a new study, in the NEJM, and reported in the...
Thursday, January 14, 2021

Another pandemic shortage: donor sperm

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  Sperm from conventional sperm banks is now in short supply. But there are "known donor" peer to peer websites and Facebook group...
Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Regulating the timing of job search: evidence from the labor market for new college graduates, by Hiroko Okudaira

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  Regulating the timing of job search: evidence from the labor market for new college graduates Hiroko Okudaira , Doshisha University, Labou...