Differential Privacy and Economics and the Social Sciences

Differential Privacy and Economics and the Social Sciences

SIMONS FOUNDATION

Thursday, March 7, 2013 from 9:00 AM to 9:30 PM (EST)

New York, NY

A day devoted to Economics and Social Sciences and the Science of Privacy will take place onThursday, March 7th in New York City. This event is funded by the Simons Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Tutorial on Differential Privacy 9:30 - 11:30 AM
LOCATION: Simons Foundation
Speaker: Aaron Roth (Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania).

Privacy and Issues in Mechanism Design 1:15 - 3:45 PM
LOCATION: Simons Foundation
Presentation by Alvin Roth (Economics, Stanford) on privacy issues in market design, a discussion, co-organized by Mallesh Pai (Economics, University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Budish (Booth School of Business, University of Chicago), on the issues raised by Roth.
Talks by by Scott Kominers (Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago) and Tim Mulcahy (NORC, University of Chicago

Topic-Specific Talks 4:45 - 5:50 PM
LOCATION: Simons Foundation
Talks by Julia Lane (American Institutes for Research), Ben Handel (Economics, Berkeley), and Hal Salzman (Public Policy, Rutgers) on privacy aspects of their research.

Evening Session 8:00 - 9:30 PM
LOCATION: Simons Foundation
An evening plenary session featuring a presentation by NYU Professor Steven Koonin, Director of the nascent Center for Urban Science and Progress, "a unique public-private research center that uses New York City as its laboratory and classroom to help cities around the world become more productive, liveable, equitable and resilient."  Remarks by Micah Altman (MIT and Brookings Institution) and Felix Wu (Benjamin Cardozo School of Law)

Registration is free and open to the public, on a first-come first-served basis. By registering you will confirm your attendance.

Experimental Economics and Market Design in Zurich: ESA meetings July 11-14, 2013

The international meeting of the Economic Science Association will be in Zurich. (Jacob Goeree will become the president of ESA at that time.) Registration deadline is June 1...

Keynote lectures will be delivered by:

• Peter Bossaerts (California Institute of Technology)
• Alessandra Casella (Columbia University)
• John Wooders (University of Technology, Sydney)

The ESA meetings will be preceded by a market design workshop:

On Thursday, July 11 the ESEI center for market design will host their second workshop.  Details about the workshop can be found on the website for the ESA World Meetings esa2013.esei.ch ("ESEI Workshop" tab) 

The workshop is organized around 5 major market design questions with presentations delivered by the following speakers:

1. Electricity Markets

o   Wedad Elmaghraby (University of Maryland)

o   Axel Ockenfels (University of Cologne)

2. Financial Markets

o   Paul Klemperer (Oxford University)

o   Peter Bossaerts (California Institute of Technology)

o   Jürgen Huber (University of Innsbruck)

3. Spectrum Auctions

o   Martin Bichler (Technical University of Munich)

o   Maarten Janssen (University of Vienna)

4. Airport Resource Allocation

o   Hamsa Balakrishnan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

5. Online Markets

o   Yan Chen (University of Michigan)

o   Tuomas Sandholm (Carnegie Mellon University)

The workshop starts at 8:20AM and ends at 5:00PM, when the reception for the ESA World Meetings starts.   The workshop is open to everyone and we very much welcome ESA conference participants.  

I speak to Stanford alums in LA this evening: Market Design as Economic Engineering

Event Details

Register

Date/Time:

Wed, March 19, 2014
06:30PM - 09:00PM

Venue:

Skirball Cultural Center

Location:

2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90049
Map address

Registration Period:

01/29/2014-03/13/2014

Contact:

Kelly Lanter

klanter@stanford.edu

650-724-3549

Join us for an evening with Nobel Prize winner and Stanford Professor Alvin Roth at Skirball on Wednesday, March 19.

Professor Roth will be speaking on Market Design as Economic Engineering: Using Economics to Assign Doctors, Get Kids Into High School and Save Lives

Alvin Roth is a pioneer in game theory and experimental economics and in their application to the design of new economic institutions. His work on the theory of matching markets includes redesigning mechanisms for selecting medical residents; multistep kidney exchanges; and school choice in New York City, Boston, Denver and New Orleans. Professor Roth shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work on market design. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and a member of the National Academy of Science. He has also been a Guggenheim and Sloan fellow.

Schedule of Events
6:30 -7:30 p.m.: Reception with cash bar
7:30 -9:30 p.m.: Presentation and Q&A

Registration will open on Tuesday, February 4. This event includes light hors d'oeuvres, non-alcoholic beverages and a cash bar.

In the event this event does't sell-out prior to registration closing on March 13, registrations will be available at the door for the increased cost of $30 general admission and $20 young alumni (undergrads '04-'13, grads '09-'13).

Event Activities

Professor Roth at Skirball 
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 @ 6:30 PM

Organ transplants and capital punishment don't go well together

 I recently blogged about a paper by Robertson and Lavee in the American Journal of Transplantation, looking at surgeries conducted in China before 2015, a period in which China acknowledged that most transplants there were conducted with organs from executed prisoners.  Now they summarize their report in a column in the WSJ.

In China, New Evidence That Surgeons Became Executioners. Clinical reports recount scores of cases in which organ donors were alive when operations began.  By Jacob Lavee and Matthew P. Robertson

"The Wuhan doctors write: “When the chest of the donor was opened, the chest wall incision was pale and bloodless, and the heart was purple and beating weakly. But the heartbeat became strong immediately after tracheal intubation and oxygenation. The donor heart was extracted with an incision from the 4th intercostal sternum into the chest. . . . This incision is a good choice for field operation where the sternum cannot be sawed open without power.”

"By casually noting that the donor was connected to a ventilator (“tracheal intubation”) only at midsurgery, the physicians inadvertently reveal that the donor was alive when the operation began.

...

"Our findings end in 2015, but we think the abuse likely continues. Medical papers like those we studied were first unearthed by Chinese grass-roots investigators in late 2014, and it would have been simple to command journals to stop publishing the incriminating details after that. While China claims to have stopped using prisoners in 2015, our previous research raises doubts. In a 2019 paper in the journal BMC Medical Ethics, we used statistical forensics to show that the official voluntary-organ donation numbers were falsified, inflating the success of a modest voluntary organ-donation reform program used to buttress the reform narrative.

"Global medical leaders have largely dismissed such concerns. The World Health Organization took advice from Chinese transplant surgeons in the establishment of its anti-organ-trafficking task force—and then installed them on the membership committee. In 2020, WHO officials joined long-time apologists for China’s transplant system, attacking our previous research showing falsified numbers."

...

"Dr. Lavee is the director of the Heart Transplantation Unit at Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center and a professor of surgery at Tel Aviv University. Mr. Robertson is a research fellow with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a doctoral candidate in political science at the Australian National University."

IgNobel Prize celebration today: laugh and think

 I'll be joining an IgNoble event this afternoon at Stanford, everyone is invited.

Ig Nobel Prize face-to-face

Health Data Science Center, Wednesday, March 22, 2023, 1:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

Stanford University Rotunda E241 (Chem-H + Wu Tsai Building)

This event is open to the general public

REGISTER HERE to attend

"Our esteemed founder of the prize (and the journal the Annals of Improbable Research), Marc Abrahams, will take us through the fascinating history of the Ig Nobel Prize, from its inception in 1991 to the present day. We will learn about the inspiration behind the award, the selection process, and his most unforgettable moments along the way.

"We will be joined by Professor Alvin Roth (Nobel Economics Prize 2012) who will share his insights in research and active blogging, as well as Dr. Genie Scott (Public Welfare Medal 2010) on her journey with Ig Nobel and improbable research.

"We will hear from some of the brightest minds in research today as our panelists engage in discussions about the significance of improbable research. Our panelists include Alvin Roth (Economics) and Genie C. Scott (Anthropology), past (Ig) Nobel Prize laureates who have made groundbreaking discoveries in fields such as physics, medicine, economics, public policies, and more. 

"Audience members will also have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in the conversation with our panelists, as well as sign up for a meet-and-greet with Marc after the event. 

"Join us for an unforgettable afternoon of laughs, learning, and thought-provoking discussions at the Ig Nobel Prize face-to-face Event!"