NBER market design conference Oct 19-20, 2012: preliminary program

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.

Market Design Working Group Meeting

Susan Athey and Parag Pathak, Organizers

October 19-20, 2012

NBER
2^nd Floor Conference Room1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA
PROGRAM

Friday, October 19:
8:30 am	Continental Breakfast
9:00 am	Mechanism Design and Congestion William Fuchs, University of California at Berkeley Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University Costs and Benefits of Dynamic Trading in a Lemons Market
	Jacob Leshno, Columbia University Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Systems
10:20 am	Break
10:35 am	Auctions Kenneth Hendricks, University of Wisconsin and NBER Daniel Quint, University of Wisconsin Indicative Bids as Cheap Talk Sergiu Hart, Hebrew University Noam Nisan, Hebrew University The Menu-Size Complexity of Auctions
	Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei University Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University Efficient Assignment with Interdependent Values
12:35 pm	Lunch
1:15 pm	Organ Exchange
	Itai Ashlagi, MIT Alvin Roth, Stanford University and NBER Kidney Exchange in Time and Space
	Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College M. Utku Unver, Boston College Welfare Consequences of Transplant Organ Allocation Policies
2:40 pm	Break
3:00 pm	FCC Incentive AuctionLawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland Paul Milgrom, Stanford University Ilya Segal, Stanford UniversityThe 'Incentive Auctions' and Mechanism Design Peter Cramton, University of Maryland Title to be announced
5:15 pm	Adjourn Saturday, October 20: 8:30 am Continental Breakfast 9:00 am Empirical Market Design Aditya Bhave, University of Chicago Eric Budish, University of Chicago Primary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of "Bob the Broker" Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke University Nikhil Agarwal, Harvard University Parag Pathak, MIT and NBER Centralized vs. Decentralized School Assignment: Evidence from NY 10:20 am Break 10:40 am Matching Markets Qingmin Liu, Columbia University Marek Pycia, University of California at Los Angeles Ordinal Efficiency, Fairness and Incentives in Large Markets Scott Duke Kominers, University of Chicago Tayfun Sonmez, Boston College Designing for Diversity in Matching 12:00 pm Lunch 1:00 pm New Frontiers Elisa Celis, University of Washington Gregory Lewis, Harvard University and NBER Markus Mobius, Iowa State University and NBER Hamid Nazerzadeh, University of Southern California Buy-it-Now or Take-a-Chance: Price Discrimination through Randomized Auctions Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania Mallesh Pai, University of Pennsylvania Aaron Roth, University of Pennsylvania Jonathan Ullman, Harvard University Mechanism Design in Large Games: Incentives and Privacy David Rothschild, Microsoft Research David Pennock, Microsoft Research The Extent of Price Misalignment in Prediction Markets 3:00 pm Adjourn

Charter schools and waiting lists in D.C. schools

When school choice procedures result in some children having multiple offers, others must wait for an assignment, which can be taxing. Even in cities that have begun to use single-best-offer school choice systems for the public schools, there can be a lot of congestion if the charter schools aren't integrated into the process. The Washington Post has the story:  Parents struggle with ‘wait-list shuffle’ in D.C. schools


"Thousands of seats change hands in the first weeks of class as students leave one school for another, a quiet migration triggered by the intense competition for a good public education in the nation’s capital.

"This is the wait-list shuffle. Parents say it’s a downside of the city’s school-choice movement — a nationally watched experiment that has given Washington families more options than ever but also has injected a new level of agony and instability into the start of the academic year.

"The change has been spurred by the rapid expansion of public charter schools, which operate outside the traditional school system and under different enrollment rules. As parents try to get their children into the best schools, they can apply to an unlimited number of them. Once admitted, students can hold seats in more than one school.

"Those parents seeking to preserve their options often relinquish the extras only when forced to on the first day of class. Principals then scramble to fill their rolls from long wait lists, recruiting students who are enrolled elsewhere. The cascading effect lasts into October.
...
"There has long been a scrum to win seats in the city’s best traditional public schools, but the rise of charter schools — which now enroll more than 40 percent of Washington’s 77,000 students, a larger proportion than any other city except New Orleans — has helped turn that scrum into a frenzy.

"A growing number of parents are entering lotteries for D.C. public schools, especially for pre-
kindergarten — but they are limited to six applications each year and can’t enroll in more than one at a time.

"The charter school process is a free-for-all: There are 57 different charter schools, and parents can enter as many lotteries as they like. Many track their options with elaborate spreadsheets, relying on word of mouth, test scores and gut feelings to identify favorites.
...
"Each year, lucky students win seats in more than one charter school, or one traditional school and several charters. Other families spend the summer months eagerly refreshing school Web sites, watching their children move slowly up long lists.

"This spring, the waiting lists for charter and D.C. public schools topped out at more than 35,000 names, many of them duplicates. 


"The lists begin to move during the summer, as families settle on choices or move away. Then they accelerate after the first day of school, when principals see who doesn’t show up and turn to their wait lists.

"According to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, 1,141 students withdrew from a charter school within the first month of classes in fall 2011. Another 2,671 entered a charter school within that same time frame.
...
"Parents who take multiple seats say they’re playing by the rules of the game and doing what’s necessary to get what’s best for their children.

"One mother of a kindergartner — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering school officials and other parents — spent the first week of classes this fall holding slots at two of the city’s most coveted charter schools, weighing whether she could afford after-school care at the one she preferred."

30 years of the ultimatum game

Come celebrate in Cologne at the 2012 ESA European Conference, Sept. 12-15.

"In 1982 Güth, Schmittberger, and Schwarze published their seminal paper on the ultimatum game. The experiments were conducted at the University of Cologne. We will celebrate this 30th anniversary and invite submissions of papers that review insights from the ultimatum game and/or deal with new results. "

They also encourage submissions concerning "Bounded Ethicality."

The Keynote speakers are
• Max Bazerman (Harvard Business School)
• Urs Fischbacher (University of Konstanz)
• Werner Güth (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

Gastroeconomics

There has been a lot of interest in neuroeconomics lately, focusing on decision-making and the brain. But there are also a lot of neurons in the gut, which raises the possibility of a part of neuroeconomics that might be called gastroeconomics.

This Scientific American article brought all this to mind:
Microbes Manipulate Your Mind: Bacteria in your gut may be influencing your thoughts and moods

(This shouldn't be confused with the gastroeconomics associated with the market for gastroenterologists:)

The supply of American doctors

American medicine is a market with tightly restricted entry, at all levels. Proposed legislation offers a glimpse: Bill Would Create More Medical-Residency Slots, Potentially Easing Physician Shortage

"Legislation introduced in Congress on Monday would expand the number of Medicare-sponsored training slots for new doctors by 15,000, a step that two medical-education groups said would go a long way toward easing a projected shortage of physicians.

"The bill, the Physician Shortage Reduction and Graduate Medical Education Accountability and Transparency Act (HR 6352), is sponsored by Rep. Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican, and Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat.

"Medical schools have been expanding their enrollments and new schools have been opening up as concerns have grown about a shortage that could reach more than 90,000 physicians by 2020, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"Those worries have intensified with passage of the Affordable Care Act, which will greatly increase the number of people seeking medical care by providing insurance coverage to 32 million more people.

"But while more students are making their way through the medical-school pipeline, they're likely to run into bottlenecks because of a cap on the number of Medicare-supported residency training slots that Congress imposed in 1997."

Medical internships in Australia are in short supply

Medical students languish in a critical condition

"The Australian Medical Students' Association estimates almost 500 students will miss out on an internship next year because of insufficient places. Under the internship system students must work for a year under supervision in a hospital before they can work as doctors.

"Recent changes to the application process have further complicated the situation in Victoria. International students will now have priority for internships over Victorian students who have studied interstate but want to return for hospital placements.
 ...

"Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton points to the curious situation where the nation has a shortage of doctors, yet there are too few internships. A report by Health Workforce Australia has forecast a shortfall of 2701 doctors by 2025.

"The placement system has fallen apart, he says, because the federal government regulates the number of students universities can enrol while its state counterparts oversee the provision of internships. ''Nobody's got the control levers for the pipeline,'' he says.

"A complicating factor has been the ability of universities to enrol an unlimited number of full-fee-paying international medical students without guaranteeing a hospital placement at the end of the course."

Fishery management in ancient Hawaii

Ancient Civilizations Reveal Ways to Manage Fisheries for Sustainability

"The authors of the study, titled "Multicentury trends and the sustainability of coral reef fisheries in Hawai‘i and Florida", point to the U.S. National Ocean Policy as an example of emerging attempts to manage ocean ecosystems more holistically, and local fisheries co-management as a modern way of including community members in designing effective fishing regulations. However, the authors caution that effective enforcement needs to go hand in hand with the development of local governance. “The ancient Hawaiians punished transgressors with corporal punishment,” observed Kittinger. “Clearly, we don’t recommend this, but it’s easy to see there’s room to tighten up today’s enforcement efforts.”

HT: Ben Greiner

Bill of Health: new blog on health law policy

Here's the announcement of a new blog (in which I hope to find a way to cross-link some posts related to health related market design issues):

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our latest venture – the launch of a new blog, titled Bill of Health, edited by Petrie-Flom faculty co-director, I. Glenn Cohen, and Petrie-Flom executive director, Holly Fernandez Lynch.  The blog will go live Wednesday, September 5, 2012, and can be accessed at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/.  

Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for readers interested in news, commentary, and scholarship in the fields of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.  You can expect to find regularly updated posts reacting to current events, testing out new scholarly ideas, reviewing the latest books, and announcing conferences, events, and job openings.  We also hope to cultivate a strong community of commenters, so that the blog becomes an interactive discussion forum.

A widely collaborative effort, Bill of Health features content from Petrie-Flom affiliates, as well as leading experts from Harvard and beyond.  Institutional collaborators include HealthLawProfs Blog, the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Law Research program at Temple.  We’ve also lined up a stellar cast of bloggers so far, including:  

Tom Baker
Cansu Canca
Arthur Caplan
Daniel Carpenter
Amitabh Chandra
Greg Curfman
Einer Elhauge
Richard Epstein
Nir Eyal
Michele Goodwin
Rebecca Haffajee
Russell Korobkin
Greg Koski
Katie Kraschel
Stephen Latham
Ted Marmor
Max Mehlman
Michelle Meyer
Abby Moncrieff
Efthimios Parasidis
Wendy Parmet
Frank Pasquale
Suzanne Rivera
Al Roth
Ted Ruger
Bill Sage
Laura Stark
Erin Talati
Nicolas Terry
Katharine Van Tassel
Daniel Vorhaus

In addition, we’ll be joined by some great guest bloggers, including Mark Hall, Allison Hoffman, Adam Kolber, Jon Kolstad, Kristin Madison, Anup Malani, Arti Rai, Annette Rid, Chris Robertson, Nadia Sawicki, Seema Shah, Talha Syed, Dan Wikler, and Susan Wolf, as well as a several Petrie-Flom graduate student affiliates.   Read more about our team here.

Please take a moment to stop by and check out Bill of Health!

For more information, contact:

Holly Fernandez Lynch, hlynch@law.harvard.edu, 617.384.5475

Unravelling of product announcements--ahead of the new iPhone

Lucas Coffman points me to the following unravelling story (which I figured I had better post without further delay :)  Rivals Jostle Before Apple Announces New iPhone

"...technology companies are watching every one of Apple’s moves — and scrambling to get out in front of them.

"Several major tech companies are cramming product announcements into this holiday-shortened workweek.

"Nokia and Motorola Mobility, former leaders in the mobile race who are now also-rans, have scheduled events for Wednesday at which they are likely to announce new smartphones. And the next day, Amazon is expected to introduce new Kindle devices.

"Sony and Samsung, among others, got a jump on things last week with announcements of new tablets and phones at a consumer electronics conference in Berlin.

"But next week, the tech event calendar is largely blank — with the exception of an Apple news conference that is said to be scheduled for Sept. 12, where the company will reveal its latest iPhone, according to a person briefed on the company’s plans, who declined to be named because those plans had not yet been made public.

“It seems that the rumor of an Apple announcement is having an effect on competitors’ announcements, unless it’s an amazing coincidence” that several events are scheduled this week and none the next, said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Gartner. "

Cass Sunstein on the regulator as market designer

Here's his essay: Empirically Informed Regulation
It was written while Sunstein was Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. It focuses on what he sees as the lessons from behavioral economics.

"In recent years, a number of social scientists have been incorporating empirical findings about human behavior into economic models. These findings offer useful insights for thinking about regulation and its likely consequences. They also offer some suggestions about the appropriate design of effective, low-cost, choice-preserving approaches to regulatory problems, including disclosure requirements, default rules, and simplification.

"A general lesson is that small, inexpensive policy initiatives can have large and highly beneficial effects.  The purpose of this Essay is to explore relevant evidence, to catalogue recent practices and reforms, and to discuss some implications for regulatory policy. And while the primary focus is on small, inexpensive regulatory initiatives, there is a still more general theme, which involves the importance of ensuring that regulations have strong empirical foundations, both through careful analysis in advance and through retrospective review of what works and what does not."

School choice in Harlem

The Times reports on school choice in Harlem: School Choice Is No Cure-All, Harlem Finds

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made school choice a foundation of his education agenda, and since he took office in 2002, the city opened more than 500 new schools; closed, or is in the process of closing, more than 100 ailing ones; and created an environment in which more than 130 charter schools could flourish. No neighborhood has been as transformed by that agenda as Harlem.

 "When classes resume on Thursday, many of its students will be showing up in schools that did not exist a decade ago. The idea, one that became a model for school reform nationwide, was to let parents shop for schools the same way they would for housing or a cellphone plan, and that eventually, the competition would lift all boats.

"But in interviews in recent weeks, Harlem parents described two drastically different public school experiences, expressing frustration that, among other things, there were still a limited number of high-quality choices and that many schools continued to underperform."

Gender-pricing discrimination

The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs is on the case, the WSJ reports: City Nails Sex-Based Pricing.

Among the targets are salons that charge men and women differently for manicures and haircuts. But are those really the same products?

""It's ridiculous. I have some guys who need to come in every two weeks," said Ania Siemieniaka, the owner of Freckle Skin and Hair, which had to pay $175 for a violation. "If I raise my prices, I'll lose all my male customers."

"The city's Department of Consumer Affairs began stepping up enforcement of the law last year, when it issued 580 gender-pricing violations to businesses, more than double the 212 doled out the year before.

"We wanted to really send a strong message to businesses about this kind of illegal pricing, so we did a very focused sweep over the course of the year," said the department's commissioner, Jonathan Mintz. "That sweep was largely targeted at salons and barbershops and laundry and dry cleaning."

"Nearly all of the violations were the result of sweeps rather than complaints, said Mr. Mintz, because businesses and industry groups weren't correcting the practice on their own."
********

Here are earlier posts on a related topic: "Girl taxi" and "Ladies Nights", and The wheels of justice and Ladies' Nights

Uri Rothblum's intellectual legacies

The journal Linear Algebra and its Applications has published an article in memoriam of Uri Rothblum, who passed away in March of this year:   Uriel G. Rothblum (1947–2012) by Raphael Loewy.

The article has discussions of aspects of Uri's work by a number of his collaborators, one of whom is Hans Schneider, a longtime editor of LAA. I recently corresponded with Professor Schneider about the beginning of his long and productive collaboration with Uri, and (with his permission) here is some of that correspondence.

 Dear Professor Schneider: Eric Denardo shared with me the memoir of Uri Rothblum, and encouraged me to write a note to you about his very first interaction with you. My memory of it isn't all that clear.

It must have been in 1974 (the year that he and I graduated from Stanford) that you contacted him about his paper on nonnegative matrices. As I recall, your letter suggested that perhaps his results and some of yours should appear in collaboration. He wasn't sure that his English was up to the task of saying "no" in a diplomatic way, and so he asked me to help draft the letter, which explained that he had a special emotional attachment to that paper since it was a central part of his dissertation.

He valued enormously his subsequent collaboration with you, and never tired of telling me that the letter I had drafted for him might be the most productive piece I have written.

The world is certainly less complete without Uri in it.

All the best,

Al Roth
http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html
http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/

 From: Hans Schneider [hans@math.wisc.edu]
 Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2012 1:15 PM
 To: Roth, Alvin
 Cc: Eric Denardo
 Subject: Re: Uri's write-up in Linear Algebra and its Applications
 Dear AL,
 Thank you for your very interesting letter and  apologies for my slow reply. 
 ...

 But now to your remarks. You are right, I proposed that Uri and I combine our papers and he turned this  down. I did not know that you were involved until Eric told me this year.

 It was a good decision on his part and I need to thank you for your help to Uri.  The sequence of letters (mine, his) spectacularly achieved what I desired, viz. cooperation with a young mathematician who was interested in the same area as I. I think it is impossible for me to explain how mathematically isolated I felt at the time without sounding like a petulant child.

 BTW, I first saw Uri's paper #3 in early 1975. The correction is worth making for I spent calendar 1974 at  TU Munich and before I left my student Richman had essentially completed results for his Ph.D. which  were  waiting to be writtten up when I saw Uri's paper. That's the paper I offered to combine with Uri's. I recall that Uri said there was room for both papers; I wish I still had his letter. Richman-S finally appeared in LAMA in 1978.

 I have never again offered to make a joint paper of a submission to LAA, even when I felt I could improve it significantly. I got increasingly worried that this is crossing a line for an EIC.  (Full disclosure, there is another paper joint with me that was originally submitted by my co-authors, but it became joint at the suggestion of an editor when he saw my referee's report.)

 Finally , I am very glad to hear from you, AL, that Uri saw the events that brought us together so positively. To my recollection, we never discussed them in any meaningful way.

 best wishes

 hans

 ps The obit is now on line on the LAA site under 'articles in press'. 

******************

Some quick recollections of my own, of an intellectual history sort.

Uri and I were office mates in grad school, and I often benefited from his advice. I recall one time in particular, when I needed to prove that a certain interval was compact, and he showed me a proof that allowed me to complete the theorem that formed the basis for my dissertation. I later realized that a corollary of his proof was that _every_ interval was compact, so unfortunately I had to use another proof (and I recall a tense week between weekly visits to my advisor, at the end of which I was able to say "there was a problem with the proof I outlined last week" instead of "...with the theorem...").

Uri and I didn't collaborate as grad students, but we eventually wrote four papers together:

Roth, A.E. and Rothblum, U. "Risk Aversion and Nash's Solution for Bargaining Games With Risky Outcomes," Econometrica, Vol. 50, 1982, 639‑647.

Roth, A.E., Rothblum, U.G., and Vande Vate, J.H. "Stable Matchings, Optimal Assignments, and Linear Programming," Mathematics of Operations Research, 18, 1993, 803-828. 

 Blum, Y., A.E. Roth, and U.G. Rothblum "Vacancy Chains and Equilibration in Senior-Level Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, 76, 2, October 1997, 362-411.

Roth, A.E. and U.G. Rothblum "Truncation Strategies in Matching Markets--In Search of Advice for Participants," Econometrica, 67, January, 1999, 21-43.
  

The two two-author papers each began when, in the course of a long walk somewhere, I indicated that I was working on a problem that was too hard for me to solve.  The paper with John Vande Vate came about by combining two different such conversations. But the most unusual of the collaborations was initiated by Uri in connection with work he had started with his student Yossi Blum. I believe they figured out that a paper by Blum and Rothblum would look better if they had a third author named Roth.

Readers of this blog may already be familiar with his other papers on matching and market design:

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Stable matchings and linear inequalities,” Discrete Applied Mathematics 54 (1994), pp. 1-27.

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Courtship and linear programming,” Linear Algebra and Its Applications 216 (1995), pp. 111-124.

H. Abeledo and U.G. Rothblum, “Paths to marriage stability,” Discrete Applied Mathematics 63 (1995),  pp. 1-12

H. Abeledo, Y. Blum and U.G. Rothblum, “Canonical monotone decompositions of fractional stable matchings,” The International Journal of Game Theory 25 (1996), pp. 161-176.

Y. Blum and U.G. Rothblum, “ ‘Timing is everything’ and marital bliss,” Journal of Economic Theory 103 (2002), pp. 429-443.

N. Perach, J. Polak and U.G. Rothblum, “Stable matching model with an entrance criterion applied to the assignment of students to dormitories at the Technion,” The International Journal of Game Theory 36 (2008),
pp. 519-535.

N. Perach and U.G. Rothblum, “Incentive Compatibility for the Stable Matching Model with an Entrance Criterion,” accepted for publication in The International Journal of Game Theory, 17 pages.

Book review: U.G. Rothblum, Two Sided Matchings: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis (by A.E. Roth and M.A. Oliviera Sotomayor), Games and Economic Behavior 4 (1992), pp.161-165

Here is Uri's listing on Google Scholar.
Here is his list of publications in chronological order.
Here is the obituary by Boaz Golany in INFORMS online.

Internet dating survey

Quantifying the Online-Dating Revolution

"The internet is especially important in “thin” dating markets, those in which people encounter a dearth of potential partners in their daily lives. That helps to explain the same-sex numbers and also why it’s not tech-savvy twentysomethings who make the most use of the internet, for romantic connections, but people in their 30s and 40s—another finding."

Bad market design by design at U of Central Florida...and Craigslist?

Course registration can be a pain, but at the University of Central Florida they apparently don't want anyone trying to make it easier: Student Is Punished for Creating Class-Registration Web

"A student at the University of Central Florida has been placed on academic probation for creating a Web site that tells students when a seat becomes available in a given class.

"Tim Arnold, a senior at Central Florida, built the U Could Finish site this year. The site became available in June, but, within days, was blocked from accessing the university site without notice. The Office of Student Conduct then told Mr. Arnold that he had violated university policy regarding technology use..."
*********

It's easier to see how Craigslist might have a legitimate interest in preventing entrepreneurs from developing superior front ends (recall eBay vs. Bidder's Edge): The SF Chronicle has the story.
3taps, PadMapper face Craigslist challenge

"Kidd's 3taps and a website that uses the data it collects, PadMapper, are the latest in a long line of Web developers to face legal action from Craigslist, the San Francisco company that has dominated the online classified advertising market for 17 years. Since 2008, at least three dozen similar services such as MapsKreig, Craiglook and CraigsFish have received cease-and-desist letters from Craigslist, most for building websites that presented Craigslist listings in ways they considered to be more dynamic, visually appealing and helpful.
...
"Craigslist has never added features such as mapping, videos and mobile apps, or any other tools that would improve user experiences. It still sorts items in chronological order, and doesn't allow nationwide searches of all its local websites at once. Its reluctance to update its Web services has opened the door for Kidd and other developers like him.

"Some of the developers shut down by Craigslist pulled data directly from its website, but 3taps uses a novel approach - searching Craigslist through Google, copying the data off Google, reordering it and then formatting it in a way other websites can easily display. PadMapper uses content generated by 3taps for its mapping services.

"Kidd noted that Craigslist chooses to allow price, location and description information from listings to appear on Google. As a result, he said, it shouldn't be allowed to stop other websites from displaying the same information in unique maps and tables. And the online classifieds leader certainly can't claim that data points as crucial to commerce as prices, locations and basic descriptions can be copyrighted.

"Legal experts say presenting the entirety of listings in the same format as Craigslist would be troublesome, but that's not what PadMapper is doing. And a 1991 case dealing with phone books suggests that the bare-bones data in listings is not subject to copyright law, these experts say.
...
"Craigslist and its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. In the lawsuit, Craigslist says that "the originality, simplicity, and clarity" of its website "are fundamental to Craigslist's reputation and garner substantial and valuable goodwill with users." 

Kidney donation and (loss of) medical insurance

Some things are so far off the equilibrium path that they drive me crazy: The Reward for Donating a Kidney: No Insurance

"Like most other kidney donors, Mr. Royer, a retired teacher in Eveleth, Minn., was carefully screened and is in good health. But Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota rejected his application for coverage last year, as well as his appeals, on the grounds that he has chronic kidney disease, even though many people live with one kidney and his nephrologist testified that his kidney is healthy. Mr. Royer was also unable to purchase life insurance."

File this under "negative compensation for donors."

Collusion, for fun and profit: Marshall and Marx

I was delighted to receive in the mail the new book The Economics of Collusion: Cartels and Bidding Rings, by Robert C. Marshall and Leslie M. Marx.

The book is devoted to the description and analysis of explicit collusion (their emphasis). I haven't read it yet, but one of the things that makes explicit collusion so entertaining to study and read about is that there are often detailed accounts (typically from court cases) about just how the collusion was accomplished.

Examples:
Marshall:  "Collusive Bidder Behavior at Single Object Second price and English Auctions," with D. Graham, Journal of Political Economy, 1987, 95, 1217-1239.

John Asker: A Study of the Internal Organisation of a Bidding Cartel

American Economic Review, v100(3), 724-762, 2010. 

Circumcision: maybe not so repugnant after all

While a German court's ban on circumcision earlier this summer continues to be debated in Germany (where criminal charges have now been filed against a mohel--a religious circumciser), the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a report saying that the health benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, and that it should be covered by medical insurance.

Here's the NY Times story: Benefits of Circumcision Are Said to Outweigh Risks

"The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its stance on infant male circumcision, announcing on Monday that new research, including studies in Africa suggesting that the procedure may protect heterosexual men against H.I.V., indicated that the health benefits outweighed the risks.

"But the academy stopped short of recommending routine circumcision for all baby boys, saying the decision remains a family matter. The academy had previously taken a neutral position on circumcision.

"The new policy statement, the first update of the academy’s circumcision policy in over a decade, appears in the Aug. 27 issue of the journal Pediatrics. The group’s guidelines greatly influence pediatric care and decisions about coverage by insurers; in the new statement, the academy also said that circumcision should be covered by insurance.

"The long-delayed policy update comes as sentiment against circumcision is gaining strength in the United States and parts of Europe. Circumcision rates in the United States declined to 54.5 percent in 2009 from 62.7 percent in 1999, according to one federal estimate. Critics succeeded last year in placing a circumcision ban on the ballot in San Francisco, but a judge ruled against including the measure.

"In Europe, a government ethics committee in Germany last week overruled a court decision that removing a child’s foreskin was “grievous bodily harm” and therefore illegal. The country’s Professional Association of Pediatricians called the ethics committee ruling “a scandal.”

"A provincial official in Austria has told state-run hospitals in the region to stop performing circumcisions, and the Danish authorities have commissioned a report to investigate whether medical doctors are present during religious circumcision rituals as required.

"Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which for several years have been pondering circumcision recommendations of their own, have yet to weigh in and declined to comment on the academy’s new stance. Medicaid programs in several states have stopped paying for the routine circumcision of infants."
*********************

The American pediatricians are unlikely to have much impact on the debate in Europe, but their opinion might make it even harder for attempts to ban circumcision in the U.S., like the failed attempt in California.

Iraqi arranged marriages--the suicide constraint

The individual rationality constraint isn't very binding when individuals don't have good outside options, but it doesn't entirely go away. In Iraq, it's taking the form of suicide by unwilling brides in arranged marriages: Where Arranged Marriages Are Customary, Suicides Grow More Common

"In this desolate and tradition-bound community in the northwest corner of Iraq, at the foot of a mountain range bordering Syria, Ms. Merza’s reaction to the ancient custom of arranged marriage is becoming more common. Officials are alarmed by what they describe as a worsening epidemic of suicides, particularly among young women tormented by being forced to marry too young, to someone they do not love.

"While reliable statistics on anything are hard to come by in Iraq, officials say there have been as many as 50 suicides this year in this city of 350,000 — at least double the rate in the United States — compared with 80 all of last year. The most common methods among women are self-immolation and gunshots.

"Among the many explanations given, like poverty and madness, one is offered most frequently: access to the Internet and to satellite television, which came after the start of the war. This has given young women glimpses of a better life, unencumbered by the traditions that have constricted women for centuries to a life of obedience and child-rearing, one devoid of romance.
...

"Ms. Merza’s father, Barkat Hussein, interviewed later in private, said he was aware that the shooting was not an accident.

“We gave her to her cousin less than 20 days ago,” he said. “She accepted him. Like anyone who gets married, she should be happy.”

"He said he would not force her to return to her husband, who lives next door. But, he said: “I hope she will go back to him. His father is my brother.”

"He, too, blamed the Turkish soap opera for his daughter’s unhappiness, and he nodded toward the room where his wife was working. “I got married to my cousin,” he said. “I wasn’t in love with her, but we are here, living together. That’s what happens here, we marry our relatives.”

Call for Papers: "Special Issue on Matching under Preferences" - Algorithms

Mike Ostrovsky forwards me this announcement he received by email:

Call for Papers: Special Issue: "Special Issue on Matching under Preferences" - Algorithms (ISSN 1999-4893)

The following Special Issue will be published in Algorithms (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms/, ISSN 1999-4893), and is now open to receive submissions of full research papers and comprehensive review articles for peer-review and possible publication:

Special Issue: Special Issue on Matching under Preferences

Website: http://www.mdpi.com/si/algorithms/selected_papers_2012/

Guest Editors: Dr. David Manlove and Dr. Péter Biró Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2012

Article Processing Charges are waived for well prepared manuscripts in this Special Issue.

You may send your manuscript now or up until the deadline.

Submitted papers should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We also encourage authors to send us their tentative title and short abstract by e-mail for approval to the Editorial Office at algorithms@mdpi.com.

This Special Issue will be fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations as indicated by several studies.

More information is available at http://www.mdpi.com/about/openaccess/.

Algorithms (ISSN 1999-4893) is an open access journal of computer science, theory, methods and interdisciplinary applications, data and information systems, software engineering, artificial intelligence, automation and control systems, is published online quarterly by MDPI. It maintains a rigorous and fast peer-review system and accepted papers are immediately published online. Because it is an online and open access journal, papers published in Algorithms will receive high publicity.

Please visit the website of Instructions for Authors before submitting a paper at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms/instructions/.

Manuscripts should be submitted through the online manuscript submission and editorial system at http://www.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload/.

MDPI publishes several peer-reviewed, open access journals listed at http://www.mdpi.com/. The Editorial Board members, including several Nobel Laureates (http://www.mdpi.com/about/nobelists/), are all leading active scholars. All MDPI journals maintain rapid, yet rigorous, peer- review, manuscript handling and editorial processes. MDPI journals have increased their impact factors, see "2011 Newly Released Impact Factors", http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/235/.

In case of questions, please contact the Editorial Office at:

algorithms@mdpi.com

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Chelly Cheng

On behalf of the Guest Editors

Dr. David Manlove

School of Computing Science

University of Glasgow

Glasgow G12 8QQ

UK

Website:http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~davidm/

E-Mail:David.Manlove@glasgow.ac.uk

and

Dr. Péter Biró

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Institute of Economics, Budapest

1112 Budaörsi út. 45.

Hungary

Website: http://econ.core.hu/english/inst/biro.html

E-Mail: biro.peter@krtk.mta.hu

--

Algorithms Editorial Office

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CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland

Tel. +41 61 683 77 34

Fax: +41 61 302 89 18

E-Mail: algorithms@mdpi.com

http://www.mdpi.com/

Regulating prostitution in New Zealand

An incentive issue (although they are not the focus of this story):
"But the Prostitutes Collective warned that outlawing popular streets would encourage sex workers to stop carrying condoms in case they are questioned by police."

Incentives and organ donation in Germany

Bettina Klaus writes:  There is an article about a recent organ donation scandal at the university hospital Goettingen. 

One of the transplant surgeons there seems to have manipulated patient files (25 cases are currently under investigation) in order to push his patients up on the waiting list. Interestingly his salary depended on the numbers of transplants he did and the article states that under his lead the number of liver transplants at the university hospital Goettingen had significantly increased in 2009 and 2010. 

Here's an English account of that, and organ sales as well: Desperation, Greed and the Global Organ Trade 
************

Something similar  to the Goettingen events led to a change in the deceased-donor liver allocation system in the U.S.
*******************************

See also http://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/organspende-skandal-goettingen-montgomery-fordert-schaerfere-kontrollen-a-847985.html, for a related story (also in German), which focuses on recent changes in the German transplant and organ donation systems. (HT Rosemarie Nagel)
************

And Markus Mobius points to this article (also in German, but the headline is clear): Transplantationsskandal

He writes "The article says that an increasing share of transplants in Germany are now bypassing the waiting list and go straight to in-house patients.
"10 years ago, 9.1% of livers, 8.4% of hearts, 10.6% of lungs and 6.3% of pancreas bypassed the waiting list. Now the shares are 37.1%, 25.8%, 30.3% and 43.7%, respectively. "

Assisted dying: still illegal, still controversial

The death yesterday of a British advocate for medically assisted death for terminally ill patients brings back the debate about whether physician assisted suicide should always be a repugnant transaction.

Here's the BBC's story: Right-to-die man Tony Nicklinson dead after refusing food

"Tony Nicklinson, a man with locked-in syndrome who fought for the right to legally end his life, has died.

"The 58-year-old was paralysed from the neck down after suffering a stroke in 2005 and described his life as a "living nightmare".

"Last week Mr Nicklinson, from Melksham, Wiltshire, lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life.

"Mr Nicklinson's family solicitor said that he had refused food from last week."
*************

Here's the NY Times: British Man Who Fought for Assisted Suicide Is Dead

"A 58-year-old British man suffering from so-called locked-in syndrome died on Wednesday, six days after the nation’s High Court rejected his request for help in ending his life. His death is certain to galvanize the already contentious debate about assisted suicide in Britain."
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And here's an article about the controversy, in favor of a change in the laws against assisted suicice, published a few days earlier (it appears): The case for assisted dying

"The case for a law to legalise the choice of physician-assisted dying for mentally competent people with terminal illness, who have expressed a settled wish to die, is very easily stated. Unbearable suffering, prolonged by medical care, and inflicted on a dying patient against their will, is an unequivocal evil. What’s more, the right to have your choices supported by others, to determine your own best interest, when you are of sound mind, is sovereign. And this is accepted by a steady 80-plus per cent of the UK population in successive surveys.

"Even so, after decades of campaigning, the law has yet to change. How can this be? The answer is simple: there has been a highly organised opposition by individuals and groups, largely with strong religious beliefs that forbid assistance to die. "

Selective abortion based on gender: illegal in Britain but not in the U.S.

Two stories, the first from the Telegraph and the second from the Washington Post, reveal the different legal status of abortions for the purpose of choosing the gender of a child in Britain and the U.S.

Abortion investigation: doctors filmed agreeing illegal abortions 'no questions asked'. Women are being granted illegal abortions by doctors based on the sex of their unborn baby, an undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals.

"Doctors at British clinics have been secretly filmed agreeing to terminate foetuses purely because they are either male or female. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct such “sex-selection” procedures."
 ********

Bill banning ‘sex-selective abortions’ fails in the House

"A measure to ban abortions based on the sex of a child failed Thursday to earn enough support in the House, and abortion opponents said they plan to use the vote to paint Democrats as disingenuously supporting women’s rights because they voted against a bill protecting unborn baby girls.

Lawmakers voted 246 to 168 on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), which would punish doctors with up to five years in prison for performing abortions because the parents are seeking a child of the other sex. But the bill failed to pass as House Republicans brought it up under a suspension of normal rules that required it to earn a two-thirds majority vote. Twenty Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill; seven Republicans voted against it.

...

"Several nations, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, ban sex-selective abortions. The United States has no such law, even though the State Department has published reports critical of other countries, including China, for widely accepting the procedure.

Sex-selective abortions are so common in some Asian and Eastern European countries, including China, India, Armenia and Serbia, that the number of boys being born is much greater than the number of girls,according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research center. In the U.S., 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, a ratio that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention considers stable. But limited studies have found that the practice is common among Asian American communities, where women cite family pressure to have male children.

Efforts to combat sex-selective abortions are more active at the state level. Eight states have introduced measures this year to ban the procedure, and three states — Arizona, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma — ban sex-selective abortions. A similar law in Illinois was scrapped by state courts.

Organs and tissue markets and black markets

NPR has a series of posts on tissue donation, which includes bones and sinews, and for which there's a regulated market, but also a black market.

Human Tissue Donation

Calculating The Value Of Human Tissue Donation(68) 

July 17, 2012 Many organ donors are unaware they've also agreed to donate their veins, bones, skin and other tissue, which can be used not only to save a life, but also to help a cosmetic surgery patient. It's a $1 billion a year industry many know little about.
Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

Little Regulation Poses Problems Tracking Tissue(15) 

July 18, 2012 An NPR News investigation has found there's little scrutiny at key points in the tissue donation and transplant process, which could lead to serious medical mistakes.
Transcript

On Morning EditionPlaylist

Am I A Tissue Donor, Too?(23)  

July 18, 2012 NPR's Joseph Shapiro knew he had signed up to be an organ donor, but he didn't realize the red heart on his driver's license signifies that he also agreed to donate his tendons, bones, veins and other tissue.
Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

The Seamy Side Of The Human Tissue Business(26)  

July 19, 2012 Body-stealing cases like that of Michael Mastromarino illustrate how an industry built on altruism can fall into the hands of the greedy.
Transcript

On Morning Edition

****************

Andrew Sullivan has a video: The Global Cadaver Trade

****************

In my 2007 article Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets I wrote about the case of Alistair Cooke, whose body parts were misappropriated after his death. Here's a colorful recounting of that and related stories from a 2006  New York Magazine story called The Organ Grinder.


HT: Steve Leider

Moving on...new address

My new address:
Al Roth
Landau Economics Building
579 Serra Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6072

(Previous announcement here:)

Two-tier tuition and foreign students at British universities

How foreign students with lower grades jump the university queue:
 Exclusive: Foreign students are being offered places at top British universities with far lower A-level grades than school pupils in this country, a Daily Telegraph investigation discloses.

"Universities were accused of profiteering by rejecting tens of thousands of British teenagers, currently sitting A-levels, so they can fill places with more profitable foreign students.


"Universities say that even the new £9,000-a-year tuition fees for British and European Union students do not cover their costs, and they need to turn to foreigners who are charged 50 per cent more."
**********

I'm reminded of the line from Casablanca: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

Whales as food: the rise of a repugnant transaction

Pablo Guillen points me to the work of his Sydney Uni colleague Charlotte Epstein: The Power of Words in International Relations--Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse

"In the second half of the twentieth century, worldwide attitudes toward whaling shifted from widespread acceptance to moral censure. Why? Whaling, once as important to the global economy as oil is now, had long been uneconomical. Major species were long known to be endangered. Yet nations had continued to support whaling. In The Power of Words in International Relations, Charlotte Epstein argues that the change was brought about not by changing material interests but by a powerful anti-whaling discourse that successfully recast whales as extraordinary and intelligent endangered mammals that needed to be saved. Epstein views whaling both as an object of analysis in its own right and as a lens for examining discursive power, and how language, materiality, and action interact to shape international relations. By focusing on discourse, she develops an approach to the study of agency and the construction of interests that brings non-state actors and individuals into the analysis of international politics. Epstein analyzes the "society of whaling states" as a set of historical practices where the dominant discourse of the day legitimated the killing of whales rather than their protection. She then looks at this whaling world's mirror image: the rise from the political margins of an anti-whaling discourse, which orchestrated one of the first successful global environmental campaigns..."

Matching to conceal homosexuality in China

Here's an unusual twist on repugnant transactions, from The Economist: Gay marriage gone wrong


"In recent years some have found a solution, of sorts. Chinagayles.com, a website with some 153,000 members, helps gay men meet lesbian women for matrimonial purposes. Individuals upload personal details, such as monthly income, hobbies and Zodiac signs. Some seek cohabitation without sexual contact. Others want children.


"Zhuang Xiang, a 30-year-old accountant from Shanghai, came to understand why he was drawn to boys when he was 17. On flicking through a gay comic book in a shop, he had his great “a-ha!” moment. He met his boyfriend in 2004. And then he married his lesbian wife in 2009. He and his wife don’t live together, but they visit each other’s parents once a week. Mr Zhuang even keeps some of her clothes on display at home, in case of unannounced visitors.

"Mr Zhuang says he is lucky to live in a big city like Shanghai, where such a solution is possible. But he wants to live in a country where gay men are accepted. His parents have started to talk about a grandchild. Mr Zhuang and his lesbian wife will likely get a forged certificate of infertility. Keeping up the appearance of their marriage feels like a never-ending battle, he says. But sometimes lies are more sensible than the truth."

HT: Laszlo Sandor

Preparing for sorority rush

The college kids who grew up on test preparation courses are now taking sorority rush preparation courses...to get a head start on rush...

For an old paper on this important matching market, check out
Mongell, S. and Roth, A.E., "Sorority Rush as a Two-Sided Matching Mechanism," American Economic Review, vol. 81, June 1991, 441-464

Salaries of new law grads

Salaries of new law grads have been bimodal for some time (at least since 2000), with the high mode being hires at large law firms. That mode, which is very narrow (all the big firms pay the same wage) has stayed at $160,000/year for the last several years. Here's a report from the NALP: Salaries for New Lawyers: An Update on Where We Are and How We Got Here by Judith N. Collins.

The paper contains graphs of the salary distributions for 1991, 1996, 2000, 2006, and 2011.

"As the 1990s progressed, the curve maintained its basic shape, though salary increases at large firms gradually moved more of the salaries to the right of the $70,000 mark. In 1996, salaries of $75,000 and $85,000 became more common than salaries of $70,000, but $75,000 and $85,000 still each represented just 6% of salaries, and 45% of salaries were in the $30,000 to $40,000 range.

"In 1998 and 1999, the marker again moved to the right, to $90,000, and about 6% of salaries. This corresponds with a period of salary increases, moving the median at firms of 251+ lawyers from $72,000 in 1995 to over $90,000 in 1999. The shift notwithstanding, the overall distribution maintained the basic, though lopsided, bell shape.

That shape changed dramatically in 2000 as large firms increased their starting salaries to $125,000. Beyond just the amount of the increase, of more consequence for the salary distribution was how widespread the increase was. Suddenly nearly 14% of salaries were reported at $125,000, a proportion that can only be partially explained by an increasing percentage of jobs taken in large firms. The result was, for the first time, two peaks, with the other encompassing the $30,000 to $50,000 range. Thus, even though the peak to the left was now fatter and accounted for more salaries — 48% versus the 14% at $125,000 — never before had a single salary so dominated the landscape. The $125,000 peak remained through 2005."
************

See previous posts on the various markets for lawyers, which are pretty interesting (the markets if not the posts...). For one thing, the market for new associates at big law firms is  unraveled in time, with new hires most often coming through the pipeline as second year summer associates, presently being hired at the beginning of their second year of law school.

College football playoffs on the horizon?

This is a bit dated but still interesting: Inside Higher Ed reports on Playoff Politics

"The move to a playoff does represent “a little bit of bowing” to pressure from fans and sports media who are dissatisfied with the system currently used to pick a Division I champion, Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz said. That system uses a combination of mathematical formulas and sportswriter and coaches’ polls to select the teams that will compete in the Bowl Championship Series title game – and it has come to questionable results more than once.

This year, for instance, the system bypassed Big 12 Conference champion Oklahoma State University to pit Southeastern Conference champion Louisiana State University against that same conference’s runner-up, the University of Alabama (a repeat, furthermore, of a ridiculously hyped match-up earlier in the season dubbed the “game of the century”).

But there's far more at stake than just who gets into the national championship. The fate of the other four prized BCS bowl games -- the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls -- hangs in the balance.

While all 12 conference commissioners have sat in on the meetings that are shaping the playoff, those who run the six BCS conferences make the most money and carry the most weight. And before the BCS did away with the “automatic qualifier” designation last month, which automatically placed the champion of each BCS conference into one of the four top bowls, they also had direct, lucrative ties to one of those five widely watched games. (It also likely played a role in the frenzy of conference realignment in recent years.)

So while commissioners like Larry Scott of the Pacific-12 Conference and Jim Delany of the Big 10 Conference have cited the tradition and sentimentality of the bowls as reason to keep them intact moving forward, there are also financial benefits to doing so. That's why talk of a tournament has revolved around keeping the bowls intact in some form, and tacking a four-team playoff onto that. 

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In the meantime, Big 12, SEC Agree to Pit Champions in Bowl

"The Big 12 and Southeastern Conference champions will meet in a new game starting after the 2014 season, unless one or both are selected to play in a planned four-team national playoff, the Big 12 announced today. If a champion reaches the playoff, another team from the same conference will be selected for the game. The bowl game’s location will be announced at a later date.

"The news comes as leaders of the Bowl Championship Series negotiate major-college football’s first playoff, which would replace the current one-game BCS championship and begin after the 2014 season. BCS leaders hope to have the new playoff format finalized by midsummer and discuss a new TV deal with ESPN, which has first negotiating rights, in October.

"The pact is reminiscent of the longstanding arrangement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12, whose champions usually meet in the Rose Bowl.
...

"The new bowl represents a potential threat to the Fiesta Bowl, which since the start of the BCS has pitted the Big 12 champion against an at-large team.
...

"The BCS’s 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick are meeting with their constituents about the particulars of the potential playoff, and will meet again June 20. If the four-team plan is approved, it will move to the BCS presidential oversight committee for approval in early July."