Monday, May 3, 2021

Can heroin be used responsibly? Is the war on drugs worse than the crime?

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 The psychologist Carl Hart , who studies drug addiction, has a book in which he describes his own careful use of heroin, and suggests that ...
Sunday, May 2, 2021

Repugnance as paternalism: bans on flavored tobacco products

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 The NY Times has the story on the recent FDA policy: Biden Administration Plans to Propose Banning Menthol Cigarettes. The move has been lo...
Saturday, May 1, 2021

Repugnant language: "How the N-Word Became Unsayable" in the NY Times, by John McWhorter

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  The linguist  John McWhorter , author of the book Nine Nasty Words ,  may be familiar to some readers of this blog through his podcasts wi...
Friday, April 30, 2021

Not all excess mortality during the pandemic comes from infection: overdose deaths in Cook County

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 A recent paper in JAMA reminds us that not all excess mortality during the pandemic is due to infection with Covid-19: Mason M, Arukumar P,...
Thursday, April 29, 2021

NYC to stop prosecuting prostitutes (but will continue to prosecute their customers)

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 NYC will stop prosecuting prostitution, but will continue to prosecute the customers of prostitutes, and pimps. The NY Times has the story:...
Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Selective NYC high schools aren't as hard to get into as is sometimes reported: Sam Abrams in the Columbia Journalism Review

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  In the Columbia Journalism Review, Sam Abrams explains how data from NYC's deferred acceptance algorithm for assigning students to sc...
Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Cannabis in Canada

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It's not so easy for a heavily regulated legal market to compete with an unregulated black market.  The NY Times has the story: After ‘G...
Monday, April 26, 2021

Cross border sales of cannabis between Oregon (legal) and Idaho (illegal)

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  It's hard to effectively ban a transaction in one jurisdiction if it is legal just across the border.  The patchwork of marijuana laws...
Sunday, April 25, 2021

The rise and fall of convalescent plasma as a treatment for Covid

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 The NY Times follows the story: The Covid-19 Plasma Boom Is Over. What Did We Learn From It?  The U.S. government invested $800 million in ...
Saturday, April 24, 2021

Dynamic Matching and Queueing Workshop at Columbia, April 29-30

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  Columbia University's Market Design Initiative is sponsoring a Dynamic Matching and Queueing Workshop on Thursday and Friday April 2...
Friday, April 23, 2021

Challenge trial for Covid-19 reinfection, in Britain.

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A second round of (controvesial) challenge trials is being conducted in England, this one designed to assess how susceptible are people to r...
Thursday, April 22, 2021

Lawsuits to overturn bans on repugnant transactions: kidney sales and incest

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  What to do if a transaction you would like to engage in is banned?  You could sue to overturn the ban.  Here are two recent news stories, ...
Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Signals and interviews in the transition from medical school to residency

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Late last year I was interviewed by Dr. Seth Leopold, who is a Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine at the Univer...
Tuesday, April 20, 2021

The surge in exam-optional applications for college admissions

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 Covid forced lots of colleges to make standardized tests optional in admissions, and that seems to have jolted the growth in college applic...
Monday, April 19, 2021

Controversial Markets: Public lecture at the Zurich Center for Market Design (video)

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  A video of my April 13 lecture on Controversial Markets is now available at the Zurich Center for Market Design.  (The talk proper is abou...
Sunday, April 18, 2021

Texas gas and electricity

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 The electric power system failure in Texas following severe winter weather continues to draw commentary (and may eventually draw politicall...
Saturday, April 17, 2021

The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020

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  In the preliminary data for 2020, COVID is the number 3 cause of death in the US, after only heart disease and cancer.  (Kidney disease mo...
Friday, April 16, 2021

Foster care: professionalism vs. altruism, and related matters

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 Foster care in families is one of the areas in which there is in many places considerable repugnance to paying the caregivers, partly out o...
Thursday, April 15, 2021

Limiting job applications in an online labor market: by John Horton and Shoshana Vasserman

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  Here's an experiment that involved limiting the number of applications to particular jobs in an online labor market, in which many app...
Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Exploding offers of admission to Notre Dame Law School

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Notre Dame Law School has apparently sent out more acceptance letters than it has positions, and the offers will expire automatically once s...