Social studies of markets, marketplaces, and market design in the journal Economy and Society

Economists aren't the only social scientists who study markets and market-like institutions and organizations, and some of the study of markets by non-economists falls under the loose heading of 'Social studies of markets'.

The Journal Economy and Society  has a special issue on Markets for Collective Concerns and their Failures (Volume 48, 2019 - Issue 2).

The articles in the issue focus both on the social study of markets per se, and on critiquing the way such studies are conducted.

The introductory article, "The organization of markets for collective concerns and their failures," by Christian Frankel, José Ossandón & Trine Pallesen, all professors in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School. summarizes the object of study by noting that
"Sociologists of different traditions share the view that part of their task is to provide definitions of markets." (emphasis added).

The concluding article, "On going the market one better: economic market design and the contradictions of building markets for public purposes,"  by Edward Nik-Khah and Philip Mirowski, criticizes social scientists for not taking sufficient account of market design, and criticizes market design for transforming markets from general purpose natural institutions into specialized human artifacts.

I find the level of abstraction in some of this work hard to follow. I guess I take it for granted that different markets are different, and that markets and marketplaces are (and always have been) human artifacts. (I agree though that sometimes other, more abstract simple views have held sway even among economists, and so I also agree that market design can take a bow for at least helping to add some nuance to the view that markets are simply emergent phenomena that arise without human intervention...)

But academic ideas influence popular ideas, and abstract ideas about markets have consequences. To paraphrase Keynes, I think it is sometimes the case that 'Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence,' are sometimes influenced by ideas about "markets" in the abstract.  So I'll probably continue to try to follow this kind of work, although I'm often disappointed that it doesn't help me to better understand markets and marketplaces and their roles in society.

Here's the table of contents of the special issue.

Article The organization of markets for collective concerns and their failures Christian Frankel, José Ossandón & Trine Pallesen Pages: 153-174 Published online: 16 Jul 2019 Abstract|Full Text|References| PDF (412 KB) | 564Views 0CrossRef citations 4Altmetric

Article Problematizing markets: market failures and the government of collective concerns José Ossandón & Sebastián Ureta Pages: 175-196 Published online: 16 Jul 2019 Abstract|Full Text|References| PDF (390 KB) | 346Views 0CrossRef citations 2Altmetric

Article Making an exception: market design and the politics of re-regulation in the French electricity sector Thomas Reverdy & Daniel Breslau Pages: 197-220 Published online: 17 Jul 2019 Abstract|Full Text|References| PDF (255 KB) | 270Views 0CrossRef citations 9Altmetric

Article Carving out a domain for the market: boundary making in European environmental markets Liliana Doganova & Brice Laurent Pages: 221-242 Published online: 19 Jul 2019 Abstract|Full Text|References| PDF (201 KB) | 243Views 0CrossRef citations 2Altmetric

Article On the difficulties of addressing collective concerns through markets: from market devices to accountability devices Daniel Neyland, Véra Ehrenstein & Sveta Milyaeva Pages: 243-267 Published online: 05 Jul 2019 Abstract|Full Text|References| PDF (217 KB) | 290Views 0CrossRef citations 0Altmetric

Article On going the market one better: economic market design and the contradictions of building markets for public purposes Edward Nik-Khah & Philip Mirowski Pages: 268-294

ASSA meetings--Sunday market design

Behavioral Market Design
Paper Session
 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020   1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Point Loma
Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Chair: Shengwu Li, Harvard University

Expectations-Based Loss Aversion May Help Explain Seemingly Dominated Choices in Strategy-Proof Mechanisms
Bnaya Dreyfus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ori Heffetz, Cornell University and Hebrew University
Matthew Rabin, Harvard University

Correlation Neglect in Student-To-School Matching
Alex Rees-Jones, University of Pennsylvania
Ran Shorrer, Pennsylvania State University
Chloe Tergiman, Pennsylvania State University

School Choice with Limited Attention
Modibo Sidibe, Duke University
Kehinde Ajayi, World Bank

Obvious Manipulations
Peter Troyan, University of Virginia
Thayer Morrill, North Carolina State University
 View Abstract

ASSA Market Design on Saturday

Matching under Inequality: Implications for Policy
Paper Session
 Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PST)
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Marriott Grand Ballroom 4
Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Chair: Raj Chetty, Harvard University

Trade and Inequality across Local Labor Markets: The Margins of Adjustment
Ryan Kim, Johns Hopkins University
Jonathan Vogel, University of California-Los Angeles

College Admissions at Selective Schools
Raj Chetty, Harvard University
David Deming, Harvard University
John N. Friedman, Brown University

Redistribution in Matching Markets
Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University
Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University
Scott Duke Kominers, Harvard Business School

Capital Mismatch and the Form of Capital Taxation
Ravi Jagadeesan, Harvard Business School

Discussant(s)
Costas Meghir, Yale University
Lawrence Blume, Cornell University
Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University
*************
Algorithmic Fairness and Bias
Paper Session
 Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Marriott Grand Ballroom 1
Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Chair: Bo Cowgill, Columbia University

Designing Organizations and Incentives with Human and Artificial Intelligence Agents
Susan Athey, Stanford University
Kevin Bryan, University of Toronto
Joshua Gans, University of Toronto

Biased Programmers? Or Biased Data? A Field Experiment in Operationalizing AI Ethics
Bo Cowgill, Columbia University
Fabrizio Dell'Aqua, Columbia University

Regulating Discrimination in the Presence of Algorithms
Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago
Sendhil Mullainathan, University of Chicago
Ashesh Rambachan, Harvard University

Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans
Megan Stevenson, George Mason University
Jennifer Doleac, Texas A&M University

Discussant(s)
Joshua Gans, University of Toronto
Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto
Jorge Guzmán, Columbia University
Shane Greenstein, Harvard Business School

ASSA meetings in San Diego--Market design on Friday

The ASSA meetings are a cornucopia.  Here are some sessions related to market design that caught my eye in the preliminary program for the first day of conferencing, Friday January 3. No one can go to all of them, aside from interviewing junior market candidates, some of these sessions conflict with each other...:-(

Frontiers in Market Design
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Catalina
Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY
Chair: Eric Budish, University of Chicago
Targeting In-Kind Transfers through Market Design: A Revealed Preference Analysis of Public Housing Allocation
Daniel Waldinger, New York University

Approximating the Equilibrium Effects of Informed School Choice
Claudia Allende, Columbia University and Princeton University
Francisco Gallego, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Christopher Neilson, Princeton University

The Efficiency of A Dynamic Decentralized Two-Sided Matching Market
Tracy Liu, Tsinghua University
Zhixi Wan, Didi Chuxing
Chenyu Yang, University of Rochester

Will the Market Fix the Market? A Theory of Stock Exchange Competition and Innovation
Eric Budish, University of Chicago
Robin Lee, Harvard University
John Shim, University of Chicago

When Do Cardinal Mechanisms Outperform Ordinal Mechanisms?: Operationalizing Pseudomarkets
Hulya Eraslan, Rice University
Jeremy Fox, Rice University
Yinghua He, Rice University
Yakym Pirozhenko, Rice University
*********
Search and Matching in Education Markets
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe 2
Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Chair: Eric Budish, University of Chicago

Simultaneous Search: Beyond Independent Successes
Ran Shorrer, Pennsylvania State University

Search Costs, Biased Beliefs and School Choice under Endogenous Consideration Sets
Christopher Neilson, Princeton University
Claudia Allende, Columbia University
Patrick Agte, Princeton University
Adam Kapor, Princeton University

Facilitating Student Information Acquisition in Matching Markets
Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research
Jacob Leshno, University of Chicago
Irene Lo, Stanford University
Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research

Why Are Schools Segregated? Evidence from the Secondary-School Match in Amsterdam
Hessel Oosterbeek, University of Amsterdam
Sandor Sovago, University of Groningen
Bas van der Klaauw, VU University Amsterdam

***********
Market Design
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, Del Mar
Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY
Chair: Sergei Severinov, University of British Columbia

Market Design and Walrasian Equilibrium
Faruk Gul, Princeton University
Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Princeton University
Mu Zhang, Princeton University

Repeat Applications in College Admissions
Yeon-Koo Che, Columbia University
Jinwoo Kim, Seoul National University
Youngwoo Koh, Hanyang University

Entry-Proofness and Market Breakdown under Adverse Selection
Thomas Mariotti, Toulouse School of Economics

Who Wants to Be an Auctioneer?
Sergei Severinov, University of British Columbia
Gabor Virag, University of Toronto
**********
Transportation Economics
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, La Costa
Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY
Chair: Tobias Salz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Selection of Prices and Commissions in a Spatial Model of Ride-Hailing
Cemil Selcuk, Cardiff University

The Welfare Effect of Road Congestion Pricing: Experimental Evidence and Equilibrium Implications
Gabriel Kreindler, University of Chicago

Customer Preference and Station Network in the London Bike Share System
Elena Belavina, Cornell University
Karan Girotra, Cornell University
Pu He, Columbia University
Fanyin Zheng, Columbia University

Platform Design in Ride Hail: An Empirical Investigation
Nicholas Buchholz, Princeton University
Laura Doval, California Institute of Technology
Jakub Kastl, Princeton University
Filip Matejka, Charles University and Academy of Science
Tobias Salz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
**********

Information (Design), Black Markets, and Congestion
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   2:30 PM - 4:30 PM
 Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, Torrey Hills AB
Hosted By: ECONOMIC SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
Chair: Dorothea Kuebler, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
An Experimental Study of Matching Markets with Incomplete Information
Marina Agranov, California Institute of Technology
Ahrash Dianat, University of Essex
Larry Samuelson, Yale University
Leeat Yariv, Princeton University

Information Design in Dynamic Contests: An Experimental Study
Yan Chen, University of Michigan
Mohamed Mostagir, University of Michigan
Iman Yeckehzaare, University of Michigan

How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems
Rustamdjan Hakimov, University of Lausanne
C.-Philipp Heller, NERA Economic Consulting
Dorothea Kuebler, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Morimitsu Kurino, Keio University

Application Costs and Congestion in Matching Markets
Yinghua He, Rice University
Thierry Magnac, Toulouse School of Economics

Discussant(s)
Christian Basteck, ECARES Brussels
Lionel Page, University of Technology Sydney
Robert Hammond, University of Alabama
Ahrash Dianat, University of Essex
*******

Tech Economics
Paper Session
 Friday, Jan. 3, 2020   2:30 PM - 4:30 PM
 Marriott Marquis San Diego, San Diego Ballroom A
Hosted By: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR BUSINESS ECONOMICS
Chair: Michael Luca, Harvard Business School

GDPR and the Home Bias of Venture Investment
Jian Jia, Illinois Institute of Technology
Ginger Jin, University of Maryland
Liad Wagman, Illinois Institute of Technology

New Goods, Productivity and the Measurement of Inflation: Using Machine Learning to Improve Quality Adjustments
Victor Chernozhukov, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Patrick Bajari, Amazon

Double Randomized Online Experiments
Guido Imbens, Stanford University
Patrick Bajari, Amazon

Global kidney exchange: continued controversies, perhaps moving towards resolution

As 2019 came to a close, several articles reminded us that global kidney exchange (GKE), while gaining increasing acceptance, still is regarded as repugnant in some quarters.

Here's an article in Forbes:
Why The Global Kidney Exchange Remains Controversial by Christine Ro, Dec. 15

"The GKE has been philanthropically funded so far, but it’s possible that US health insurance companies might assume the expenses in the future. The exchanges are cost-effective on the rich-country side because the costs of medical care are smaller in lower-income countries. As well, dialysis is an unusual medical procedure in that every US citizen is entitled to it. Kidney transplants work out to be much cheaper than years of dialysis.

"This lopsided cost-effectiveness is one of the main sources of controversy around the GKE. One argument is that, to use the example of the first GKE match, the US ultimately benefits much more than the Philippines. If the Filipino pair is already a match, but the first US pair isn’t, the Americans are receiving a kidney matching service (kickstarting a daisy chain) that the Filipinos didn’t need. What the Filipinos did require was payment of their expenses. If they had the financial resources, they wouldn’t need an exchange program at all. They, or their medical system, could have covered the costs of the transplant.
...
"The medical team involved in the first Filipino match are adamant that it was positive. In an impassioned letter to the editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, they write:

“Let us be clear: without GKE, the Filipino husband was never going to receive his spouse’s kidney. Without GKE, the husband was going to die, the wife was going to lose her spouse, and their son was going to be fatherless.”

“No alternative existed for this Filipino pair and millions more like them. GKE did not exploit this Filipino couple—it provided the mechanism for the wife to literally save her husband’s life. They could not afford dialysis.”

“For 3 years on Father’s Day, the couple’s child has written our team to thank us for saving his daddy’s life.”

********

The Forbes article also links (without pointing it out) to the recent robust defense of GKE in the Lancet (see Global Kidney Exchange in the Lancet, by Minerva, Savulescu and Singer ).

And I've written earlier about other, welcome support.

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

But in Spain, the National Transplant Organization has organized opposition against allowing patients and donors from poor countries to participate in kidney exchange.  So I was glad  to see a Spanish healthcare blog questioning their reasoning:

From the Spanish blog Avances en gestión clínica (Advances in Clinical Management):

¿Nobel de Economía o traficante de órganos? ["Nobel economist, or organ trafficker?"]
by Pedro Rey, Dec. 30

It turns out that isn't meant to be an inflammatory headline, rather it is a reaction to the inflammatory announcements that issued from the Spanish ONT (National Transplant Organization) in connection with global kidney exchange.  Below, for example, is one of many such stories, using just such words:

La ONT frena la entrada en Europa de «una nueva forma de tráfico de órganos» propuesta por un nobel de Economía  ["The ONT slows the entry into Europe of "a new form of organ trafficking" proposed by a nobel economist"

Beatriz Domínguz Gil, directora de la ONT, denuncia que la iniciativa de Alvin Roth es «una nueva forma de tráfico de órganos, pero presentada como una iniciativa buena y ética» 

[  "Beatriz Domínguz Gil, director of the ONT, denounces that Alvin Roth's initiative is "a new form of organ trafficking, but presented as a good and ethical initiative"]
******
Coming back to Professor Rey and his question ¿Nobel de Economía o traficante de órganos?. He points out that while the Spanish ONT is a world leader in recovering deceased donor organs, it doesn't have the same kind of leadership in living organ donation or in kidney exchange.  He says, in part (via Google translate):

"we may find it worrying that Spanish morals have slowed, before 28 countries, the development of an idea that could benefit many patients and reduce the economic burden to keep them on dialysis for a long time.To solve this problem, a public and serious debate that clarifies the specific interests of an ONT that has based its prestige on the proven effectiveness in transplants from deceased donors and not so much in cross-transplants and, even less, living transplants, would be desirable."
********

Professor Rey goes on to note that we shouldn't naively assume that problems in dealing with cross border issues, especially between rich and not so rich countries, can be easily navigated.  I agree, and I'm confident that the GKE chains that have been conducted so far will pass close scrutiny, and point the way towards finding global solutions to the global problem of kidney failure.

I hope this is an indication that in the coming year, some of the early, hysterical reactions to GKE in Spain may continue to give way to more reasoned discussion, that will let legitimate concerns be expressed and addressed, and separated from other personal and professional motivations that may have obscured the initial reception of GKE in Europe.

Kidney exchange explained in 1 minute (video), and a BBC story

Here's a link to a 1 minute BBC video that was recorded when I was in Berlin recently, discussing how changes in the German transplant law (which presently allows only immediate family members to donate a kidney to someone) could be minimally modified to allow kidney exchange also.

 (a short ad comes on first--my part is only 48 seconds:-)


Here's an accompanying story that somewhat confusingly (it seems to me)  mashes together discussions of kidney exchange, global kidney exchange, and compensation for donors.

How an economist helped thousands get a new kidney By Ian Rose, BBC News
Berlin
...
"Roth, working with Tayfun Sönmez and Utku Unver, has revolutionised kidney donation around the world by using an economic theory to make kidneys more available.
...

"German exchange change?
"We meet in Berlin as Nobel laureates and other luminaries gather to discuss the future of healthcare. Alvin Roth is there in part because Germany is one of the only major industrialised countries where kidney exchange is not lawful.

"I think that the bureaucratic rules and regulations for kidneys as for every market have to be revisited from time to time in the in the light of new developments, and should be modernized and adapted to current capabilities," he says.

"When contacted about the issue the German Health Ministry tells me that they are planning to organise a public debate on the issue but have no schedule for that yet.

"Prof Roth says he understands the concerns behind the German ban. "They're worried about organ trafficking.

"They're worried that if I showed up and wanted to give you a kidney, it would mean that you had paid me and it may be I was a poor and desperate person. But on the other hand, if your brother shows up and wants to give you a kidney, they're not worried about that."
********
update:
The BBC publishes in many languages, and so you can read the story in Chinese, Indonesian, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, and here's a site that has translated it to Hungarian.

The year in passings

I noted a number of deaths this year (and memorials for earlier passings):

•  Michel Balinski (1933-2019)
•  Alan Krueger (1960-2019)
•  Dr. Oscar Salvatierra, Jr. (1935 - 2019)
•  Special issue of NRL in honor of Uri Rothblum, February 2019
•  Memorial service for Martin Shubik today at Yale
• In Memoriam: Martin Shubik
•  Xenotransplants, Baby Fae, and the complex pioneering efforts of Dr. Leonard Bailey, RIP
• Mark Kleiman (1951-2019)
• Marty Weitzman, 1942-2019
• Ed Green, 1948-2019
• Egon Balas, 1922-2019
•  Who is a refugee? Remembering U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata

Some kinds of privacy may be gone forever

Lots of family secrets are revealed by DNA analysis, and it may no longer be possible to keep those secrets.  That is part of the argument made by Dr. Julia Creet, in an interview published at Bill of Health under the title "The End of Privacy?"


Dr. Julia Creet: I made the statement that any idea we had about privacy is over in response to a number of troubling trends in genetic genealogy. DTC genetic tests have revealed long-held family secrets, biological parents and siblings of adoptees, and the identities of sperm and egg donors. In each case, the question of the right of the searcher trumped the rights of those who wanted their privacy protected. In a few cases, sperm donors have sued for invasion of privacy. What these cases show is that even if we think we are protected by the privacy provisions of donor agreements or closed adoptions, genetic tests can leap over those privacy barriers. Many genealogists have declared that there will be no more family secrets in the future. So, family privacy is a thing of the past, which may or may not be a good thing. On a larger scale, law enforcement use of DTC genetic testing databases has demonstrated that data uploaded for one purpose can be used in the future for a completely unanticipated purpose. Without the ability to predict future uses of this information, we cannot put a privacy policy in place that will anticipate all the unforeseen future uses. I think the most telling cases in the last few weeks are the recent warrant that allowed law enforcement access to the GEDmatch database even though most users had opted out of having their results included in searches, and the rather frightening report for Peter Ney about the ease of malware intrusions on genetic genealogy databases.

U.S medical school enrollments by sex: women outnumber men for the first time

There are now more women than men applying to U.S. medical schools, being accepted (to the first year class) and enrolled (in all four years). See the 2019 Fall Applicant, Matriculant, and Enrollment Data Tables from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC)

xxx

Here's the recent history leading up to this:

In the 1950's, almost all medical school grads were men. As the number of women grew, the medical labor market had to start accomodating married couples both looking for residencies.  This is the first year in which the total enrollment of women exceeds that of men, but of course the last few years have seen that coming in the number of women matriculating: women first-year medical students outnumbered men already in 2017..

**************
Here's a news story from the Washington Post about these statistics:
The Big Number: Women now outnumber men in medical schools
By Linda Searing Dec. 23, 2019

"In the medical profession overall, male doctors still outnumber female doctors, 64 percent to 36 percent, according to 2019 data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But that may be changing, according to a report from the health-care company AthenaHealth. Its survey of 18,000 physicians at 3,500 practices on its network found that, in 2017, 80 percent of doctors 65 and older were men, but 60 percent of doctors younger than 35 were women. The disparity between male and female doctors appears to extend to their chosen field of specialization. A joint report this fall from the American Medical Association and AAMC finds that male doctors dominate orthopedic surgery (85 percent), neurological surgery (82 percent) and interventional radiology (81 percent), and female doctors dominate obstetrics and gynecology (83 percent), allergy and immunology (74 percent) and pediatrics (72 percent). Specialties with a nearly equal balance of male and female doctors are sleep medicine, preventive medicine, pathology and psychiatry. Overall, medical schools this year experienced about a 1 percent increase in applicants and in new enrollees, which the AAMC says contributes to an enrollment growth of 33 percent since 2002. Still, it notes, the country faces a projected shortage of 122,000 doctors by 2032."

A liver exchange in San Antonio, Texas

Here's a story of a liver exchange in Texas, between an incompatible pair and a compatible pair.

Living organ donors reunite with recipients at University Hospital

"The hospital transplant teams paired the two living donors with two patients who needed transplants in April.
...
"Although D'Angelo and Sanchez were a match, Sanchez was approached about possibly being a living donor for someone else.

"The other recipient was Mark Blair.
Blair's daughter, Anna Moreno, wanted to be a donor for her father, but she was not a match.
...
"The transplant teams paired Moreno with D'Angelo and Sanchez with Blair.

"We can now have incompatible donors successfully donate to recipients that are not originally intended recipients but somebody else," said Dr. Tarunjeet Klair, surgical director of the Living Liver Donor Program for University Health System. "The eventual outcome is a successful transplant of multiple parties, and that's saving lives."

KIDNEY EXCHANGE AND THE ETHICS OF GIVING by Philippe van Basshuysen

 Philippe van Basshuysen considers various forms of kidney exchange, including non-directed (altruistic) donor chains, but not global kidney exchange (GKE), which he defers for future consideration. His work is motivated by the effective ban on kidney exchange in Germany, and, he writes, in " Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland and Hungary, among others." He also notes that non-directed donors are excluded in " Belgium, France, Greece, Poland and Switzerland..."

KIDNEY EXCHANGE AND THE ETHICS OF GIVING
Philippe van Basshuysen,  December 2019
Forthcoming in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

"The arguments given here are not wedded to a specific moral theory. They will appeal to effective altruists, but because of their weak, conditional premises, many people who are not committed effective altruists will welcome them as well. They are also consistent with conservative views on donor protection and allocative justice concerning patients on waiting lists. I hope that these arguments will lead to a clarification of the debates about the ethics underlying KE programmes, particularly in countries that have hitherto banned these programmes."

Effective altruism and (non-directed) kidney donation

In their Christmas day discussion, the podcast Here Be Monsters considers the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYS) that can result from non-directed kidney donation, and how that qualifies it as a form of effective altruism.

December 25, 2019 Here Be Monsters HBM127: QALYs

"In 2014, a post showed up on effectivealtruism.org’s forum, written by Thomas Kelly and Josh Morrison.  The title sums up their argument well: Kidney donation is a reasonable choice for effective altruists and more should consider it. 

They lay out the case for helping others through kidney donation.  Kidney disease is a huge killer in the United States, with an estimated one in seven adults having the disease (though many are undiagnosed).  And those with failing kidneys have generally bad health outcomes, with many dying on the waitlist for an organ they never receive.  There’s currently about 100,000 people in the country on the kidney donation waitlist.  An editorial recently published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology estimated that 40,000 Americans die annually waiting for a kidney. 

The previously mentioned post on the EA forums attempts to calculate all the goods that kidney donation can do, namely adding between six and twenty good years to someone’s life.  Quantifying the “goodness” of a year is tricky, so EAs (and others) use a metric called “Quality Adjusted Life Years” or QALYs. 

The post also attempts to calculate the downsides to the donor, namely potential lost wages, potential surgery complications, and a bit of a decrease in total kidney function.  

The post concludes that kidney donation is a “reasonable” choice.  By the EA standards, “reasonable” is pretty high praise; a month or so of suffering to give about a decade of good life to someone else, all with little long term risk to the donor.  

On this episode, Jeff interviews Dylan Matthews, who donated his kidney back in 2016.  His donation was non-directed, meaning he didn’t specify a desired recipient.  This kind of donation is somewhat rare, comprising only about 3% of all kidney donations.  However, non-directed donations are incredibly useful due to the difficulty of matching donors to recipients..."
*********
The discussion of kidneys and effective altruism starts about minute 7 in the podcast:

Scandia Transplant Kidney Exchange Program (STEP) takes its first steps

Here's a timely story of gift giving from the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden:

Karolinska University Hospital part of the first kidney transplant program across Scandinavia – Scandia Transplant Kidney Exchange Program (STEP)
MON, DEC 23, 2019

"For the first time two kidney replacements have been performed involving donors and transplant patients who are part of the Scandinavian kidney exchange program STEP organized by Scandiatransplant.  The organization coordinates organ donations and transplants in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. During 2018 and 2019 Karolinska University Hospital performed and coordinated three STEP exchange programs with a total of six couples in cooperation with other hospitals in Sweden.
...
"Both kidney replacements performed during the autumn  involved two couples and  two other university hospitals in Scandinavia, says Lars Wennberg, Chief Physician and Patient Flow Manager Kidney Transplant at Theme Trauma and Reparative Medicine Karolinska University Hospital"

"STEP enables exchange of kidneys between medically accepted but immunologically incompatible donor-recipient pairs. A donor who wants to help a relative that needs a kidney donates anonymously to another unknown person in need of a kidney. In exchange, the next of kin receives a kidney from another recipient's kidney donor. Kidney changes can take place between two or more participating couples.

"Today, a total of 2261 people in the six countries that are included in STEP are waiting for a new kidney compared with 2208 in 2018. The ability to carry out kidney changes between the different countries means that we can shorten waiting times says Bo-Göran Ericzon, Chairman of Scandiatransplant and Professor of Transplantation Surgery Theme Trauma and Reparative Medicine Karolinska University Hospital.

"The necessary database to investigate immunological compatibility has been developed by Scandiatransplant, while the matching algorithm has been developed by Professor Tommy Andersson at the Department of Economics, Lund University in collaboration with Karolinska University Hospital."

Handbook of the Shapley Value

Google books makes available excerpts from the new
Handbook of the Shapley Value
edited by Encarnación Algaba, Vito Fragnelli, Joaquín Sánchez-Soriano
CRC Press, Dec 6, 2019

I wrote a Foreword:
The Shapley Value: a giant legacy, and ongoing research agenda,
the final paragraph (p6) of which is

"Lloyd Stowell Shapley was one of the founding giants of game theory, who helped lay the foundations of both cooperative and non-cooperative game theory, and who influenced everything and everyone in the field. He was born in 1923. His paper defining the Shapley value was published in 1953, when he was 30 years old.  A previous volume on the Shapley value, Roth (1988), was published in honor of his 65th birthday. The present volume brings up to date the important stream of research on the Shapley value that has continued, unabated, ever since Shapley first proposed it, and that I expect will continue for the foreseeable future."

In this connection, see my recent post about the use of the Shapley value for explaining particular predictions made by machine learning algorithms:

Sunday, December 22, 2019  The Shapley value and explainable machine learning

Paul Milgrom's Marshall Lectures are now available on video

Auctions are ancient, but the linked auctions Paul talks about in his lectures are stunningly modern, and depend on high powered, thoughtfully deployed, state of the art computation.

"Market Design When Resource Allocation is NP-Hard," in two lectures.
Here they are:

Lecture 1

and Lecture 2:

"The Ethical Algorithm" by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth (book talk at Google)

Here's a talk about "The Ethical Algorithm--The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design"
by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth.


IMHO it would make a fine last minute holiday gift for those interested in econ and market design as well as for fans of computer science and algorithms:) 

The Shapley value and explainable machine learning

Machine learning via deep neural nets is famously a black box approach to prediction, but efforts are being made to open the black box and explain why a given prediction was made, using the Shapley value.

Here's a story from Datanami:

December 9, 2019
Real Progress Being Made in Explaining AI, by Alex Woodie

"Google made headlines several weeks ago with the launch of Google Cloud Explainable AI.  Explainable AI is a collection of frameworks and tools that explain to the user how each data factor contributed to the output of a machine learning model.

“These summaries help enterprises understand why the model made the decisions it did,” wrote Tracy Frey, Google’s director of strategy for Cloud AI, in a November 21 blog post. “You can use this information to further improve your models or share useful insights with the model’s consumers.”

"Google’s Explainable AI exposes some of the internal technology that Google created to give its developers more insight into how its large scale search engine and question-answering systems provide the answers they do. These frameworks and tools leverage complicated mathematical equations, according to a Google white paper on its Explainable AI.

"One of the key mathematical elements used is Shapley Values, which is a concept created by Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Lloyd Shapley in the field of cooperative game theory in 1953. Shapley Values are helpful in creating “counterfactuals,” or foils, where the algorithm continually assesses what result it would have given if a value for a certain data point was different.

...

“The main question is to do these things called counterfactuals, where the neural network asks itself, for example, ‘Suppose I hadn’t been able to look at the shirt colour of the person walking into the store, would that have changed my estimate of how quickly they were walking?'” Moore told the BBC last month following the launch of Explainable AI at an event in London. “By doing many counterfactuals, it gradually builds up a picture of what it is and isn’t paying attention to when it’s making a prediction.”

Further scrutiny of Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs), now by the Senate Finance Committee

The Senate is piling on to the the recent regulatory changes that have been announced for OPOs.

Here's a letter from the Senate Finance Committee, asking for financial investigations.  The letter begins this way:

December 18, 2019
Ms. Joanne M. Chiedi
Acting Inspector GeneralOffice of Inspector General
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services3

"Dear Acting Inspector General Chiedi: We write  today  to  request  that  your  office  conduct  a  comprehensive  examination  of  the adequacy of the organ procurement and transplantation system in the United States."
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Here's the story from the WaPo:

Senate Republicans seek probe of organ transplant system  By
Kimberly Kindy and Lenny Bernstein Dec. 19, 2019

"Members of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday requested an in-depth examination of the nation’s organ recovery and transplant system, raising questions about suspected financial fraud and criticizing the system for its “poor performance.”

"The request to the Office of the Inspector General comes one day after the Trump administration announced a sweeping proposal to boost the number of organs collected for transplant by dozens of underperforming organ collection agencies and increasing federal payments to living kidney donors.

"In their letter to the Inspector General, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) praised the proposed regulations but pointed out it will be years before they take effect. In the meantime, they said, Americans are dying each day as they wait for organ transplants and more action should be taken now.
...
"Grassley, finance committee chairman, said in a statement that “more can be done right now to improve a system that is mired by inefficiency, waste and a serious lack of accountability.”

Like a virgin? Controversy surrounding "virginity tests."

Virginity testing has been in the news.

In the NY Times:
After the Rapper T.I.’s Remarks, N.Y. May Ban ‘Virginity Tests’
Legislation was introduced after the rapper said he subjects his daughter to a yearly hymen exam, sparking outrage on social media.
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In the Guardian:
'Now I have to check your hymen': the shocking persistence of virginity tests
In the US, it is still perfectly legal to doctors to perform ‘hymen checks’ as proof of virginity

"a small 2017 study found that of 288 US obstetrician and gynaecologists who were asked, 45 (16%) had been asked at least once to perform virginity testing or virginity “restoration”. Thirteen of those doctors complied.
...
"At present, it is not considered medical malpractice to perform a hymen examination – in fact, it’s completely legal. But one New York assemblywoman is hoping to make a tangible difference by changing the law.

"Michaelle Solages’s bill hopes to take the question completely out of a doctor’s hands. If passed, it will ensure that virginity testing is banned; that any medical professional undertaking such a practice will face losing their license; and that if the examination is performed in the US, whether inside or outside the medical office, it should be constituted as sexual assault.
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Here's an old blog post that claims that many young Zulu women in S. Africa are glad to be able to send a signal about their virginity, in defiance of a ban on virginity testing there.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Virginity testing: Repugnant under S. African law...

Zulus Eagerly Defy Ban on Virginity Test
S. Africa's Progressive Constitution Collides With Tribal Customs
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Here's a review of the scientific literature:

Reprod Health. 2017; 14: 61.
 doi: 10.1186/s12978-017-0319-0
Virginity testing: a systematic review
Rose McKeon Olson and Claudia García-Moreno

"Main Results: Seventeen of 1269 identified studies were included. Summary measures could not be computed due to study heterogeneity. Included studies found that hymen examination does not accurately or reliably predict virginity status. In addition, included studies reported that virginity testing could cause physical, psychological, and social harms to the examinee.

"Conclusions: Despite the lack of evidence of medical utility and the potential harms, health professionals in multiple settings continue to practice virginity testing, including when assessing for sexual assault. health professionals must be better informed and medical and other textbooks updated to reflect current medical knowledge. Countries should review their policies and move towards a banning of virginity testing."
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And here's an update featuring a story published this morning in the Washington Post--apparently the recently defeated Republican governor of Kentucky hadn't been an avid reader of the scientific literature...

Kentucky’s ex-governor pardoned a child rapist because the 9-year-old victim’s hymen was intact By Antonia Noori Farzan  Dec. 20, 2019

"Already under fire for handing out pardons to relatives of his supporters, Bevin is now facing an onslaught of criticism from medical and forensic experts. Scientists have debunked the notion that inspecting an alleged victim’s hymen can prove whether they were sexually assaulted, and found that most survivors of child sexual abuse do not have any physical damage. George Nichols, an expert in evaluating child abuse who also served as Kentucky’s chief medical examiner for 20 years, told the Courier-Journal on Thursday that Bevin “clearly doesn’t know medicine and anatomy.”

"Bevin, who had a reputation for making controversial and unproven claims during his single term as Kentucky’s governor, was narrowly defeated by Democrat Andy Beshear in November. Before leaving office, he issued 428 pardons, a group that includes multiple convicted murderers and sex offenders, the Courier-Journal reported."

International kidney exchange between Israel and Czech Republic

The news embargo is over for last week's kidney exchange chain between Israel and the Czech Republic. (On the Israeli side, the necessary software was supplied by Itai Ashlagi, here at Stanford.)

Itai writes:
"Some background: in August 2019 there was an agreement between Israel and Czech republic to check the possibility of kidney exchanges. This was initiated by Prof. Eitan Mor from Israel  and Dr. Proniak from the Czech Republic and the whole operation was conducted by the national Israeli center for transplantation led by Dr. Tamar Askenazi and their counterpart in Czech republic."

The Israeli database contains a list of all pairs, and uses kidney exchange software donated to Israel by Itai Ashlagi and Sukolsak Sakshuwong.   Czech software was used in Prague to identify the chain.

Here's the story from News1 in Israel:

6 transplants thanks to the exchange of kidney donations between Israel and the Czech Republic

"At 5 a.m., two kidneys from two donors were removed from Beilinson Hospital. One kidney was packed in ice cooler and transported by ambulance to Ben Gurion Airport.

"About an hour after taking off from Israel, an operation to remove a Czech donor kidney was started at the Prague Hospital. At the same time, Bilinson's second kidney was transplanted, and surgery was performed to remove a kidney at Hadassah Hospital – which was transported by ambulance to Bilinson's transplant.

"At 12:30 the kidney cooler from Israel landed at the Prague airport. A vehicle was waiting by the plane and moved to the mirroring spot. At this point, Dr. Jiri Froniac, director of the Prague Transplant Program and Dr. Ashkenazi from Israel, met and exchanged documents while the coolers were [scanned].

"At the same time, the kidney from Hadassah Hospital was transferred to Beilinson for a transplant. An hour later, the Israeli plane took off from Prague back to Israel with a cooler containing the kidney from the Czech donor. The kidney came to the operating room in Hadassah and before the evening was transplanted in a patient.
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Diagram of the exchange between IKEM in the Czech Republic and Hadassah and Beilinson Hospitals in Israel

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Here's the story in the Jerusalem Post (I don't have a link yet, this is a picture):

And see this related older story about Itai Ashlagi's software:

New software to help increase kidney matches for transplants

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And here is the story in the Czech news, forwarded by Pavel Chromy.

Čeští lékaři poprvé provedli párovou výměnu ledvin s Izraelem
[Google translate: Czech doctors first performed paired kidney replacement with Israel]
"In the first half of December, doctors from the Prague Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM) and two Israeli hospitals performed their first paired kidney exchange between the two countries. Three beneficiaries from the Czech Republic and three from Israel received the new authority. This is the first time a pair exchange has taken place with a non-European country, said IKEM director Michal Stiborek at a press conference."