Kidney exchange, in French, in Forbes

Here's a short interview in French about kidney exchange, in Forbes France:

Alvin Roth, Lauréat Du Prix Nobel D’Economie Veut Revolutionner Les Dons De Reins
Philippe Branche   10 janvier 2020

Here's one bit:

Are you currently working with politicians, legislators or medical administrators to resolve this problem ? 

Alvin Roth: I am, but not with great success. I recently spoke to decision makers in several countries: India, China, Germany, Canada and of course the United States. In October, renowned bioethicist Peter Singer expressed strong support for the Global Kidney Exchange Program, so that recently the idea of ​​expanding kidney exchange to include international exchanges has gained momentum. I also recently debated with a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament. In Germany, kidney transplantation from a living donor is legal, but a patient can only receive a kidney from an immediate family member, and therefore the literal interpretation of the law makes it impossible to exchange kidneys. German law provides that monetary exchanges of parts of the human body are illegal and, apparently, it is to avoid any possibility of payment for a kidney that the limitation to family members is applied. A minimal amendment to German law could allow immediate family members to make an indirect donation, via the kidney exchange system, which would preserve the confidence that the donor was not paid to make an exchange. By designing this market in this way, we are trying to expand the database and reduce the waiting time for sick people.

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.

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."

Debate on kidney exchange in Germany

On Friday in Berlin I found myself in a debate with the chairman of the Research Committee of the Bundestag, the German Parliament, about legalizing kidney exchange in Germany. I proposed that a minimal amendment of the law, which now only allows close relatives to donate, would be to also allow them to be the intended donors of their close relatives in kidney exchange.  However it doesn't seem as if this is going to happen anytime soon (it looks like only the Free Democratic Party in inclined to support it...)

The medical newspaper ärztezeitung has the story
Transplantation
Lebendspende breiter aufstellen
Beim Thema Organspende rücken die Lebendspenden zunehmend in den Fokus. Ein Nobelpreisträger befeuert die aufkommende Debatte.
[Widen living donation
With regard to organ donation, living donations are increasingly coming into focus. A Nobel Prize winner fuels the emerging debate.]

"Nobel laureate Professor Alvin Roth submitted on Friday morning a proposal on how the living donation of kidneys in Germany could be broadened. Instead of considering only first and second degree relatives, spouses, registered partners and close friends as potential donors in the transplantation law, the pair organ exchange of living donors should also be possible, he said at the Nobel Prize Dialogue of the Leopoldina in Berlin. The aim of this model is to increase the chances of being able to mediate compatible organs to dialysis-dependent patients.

"The chairman of the Research Committee of the Bundestag, Ernst Dieter Rossmann (SPD) advised in his reply to not overburden the population in Germany. First, the contradiction solution must be introduced and its effect on the donor numbers to be waited, he warned.

"At the end of October, the Greens warned against commercialization and organ trade if the so-called cross-donation was introduced. At the FDP, the considerations have fallen on fertile ground."

Controversial markets, at Humboldt University

This evening I'll be speaking at Humboldt University:

BSE Lecture on "Controversial markets" by Nobel Laureate Alvin E. Roth

Wann: 07.11.2019 von 14:30 bis 15:45 

Wo: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 24, 10117 Berlin, Fritz-Reuter-Saal, 3rd floor

Abstract:Markets need social support to work well. So do bans on markets, since without sufficient social support, bans can be ineffective and can sometimes lead to active black markets.  I’ll describe some examples of how these tensions have played out differently in different places, for example,  for markets for surrogacy, prostitution, and drugs. A particular example will be the almost (but not quite) universal ban on monetary markets for kidneys, and how this has influenced the treatment of kidney disease and the organization of kidney transplantation around the world, including the development of kidney exchange, which is growing worldwide, but is effectively banned in Germany by current German transplant law.

"If you want to attend the lecture, please register by giving the subject "Registration BSE Lecture Alvin Roth" as well as your name and your institution via email to veranstaltungen@hu-berlin.de.

"After the lecture, at 16:00, up to 25 students (Master's and PhD) as well as Postdocs will have the opportunity to attend a round-table discussion with Alvin Roth in which he will address your questions. This round-table discussion will be held at room 2070a at HU's main building (Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin)."
************

Tonight I'll also speak at an event organized by the Einstein Institute, concerning how changes in the current German transplant law could make kidney exchange practical in Germany.

Kidney exchange in Germany? It will need an amendment to the Transplantation Act

Axel Ockenfels points out that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung has a recent piece on "Tauschen wir die Nieren?" ("Do we exchange kidneys?"). I can't find it online, but here's a picture:

Google translate renders the opening paragraphs as follows:

"Patients wait a long time for donor organs. That can be changed - with a proposal that has received the Nobel Prize.
Organ donation is literally a matter of life and death. Anyone who receives the urgently needed organ in good time lives on. In Germany, however, many are waiting for the necessary transplantation - often for years. At the same time, the number of organ donations is falling. So how can the number of donated organs be increased so that affected people can live? That's a tricky question, because too many answers tend to limit the voluntary nature of the donation. On Wednesday, the topic is on the agenda of German politics, when the Health Committee of the Bundestag deals with the amendment of the Transplantation Act.
The economists Dorothea Kübler and Axel Ockenfels advise the politicians to take a look at living donations. Kidneys or parts of the liver can also be donated by living people - and this is much less common in Germany than in other countries. The proposal goes in the direction of the FDP parliamentary group around the chairman Christian Lindner, who are pushing for more living donations. In a motion for the health committee on Wednesday, the FDP is proposing to allow the cross-donation of two couples and an anonymous live donation to an organ pool. "

Some movement towards kidney exchange in Germany

Axel Ockenfels writes:

"On 9 November 2018, members of the parliament of the German liberal party FDP submitted a petition ("Chancen von altruistischen Organlebendspenden nutzen – Spenden erleichtern") to ask the German government to draft a law that makes kidney exchange, non-directed altruistic kidney donations into a pool and, under certain circumstances, directed kidney donations to strangers possible in Germany": 
Chancen von altruistischen Organlebendspenden nutzen – Spenden erleichtern
"Make use of the opportunities of altruistic organ donation - make donations easier"

It calls for specific amendments to remove the current legal restrictions on kidney exchange.

German market design economists have been at the forefront of efforts to change the transplant law in this and other respects.

Here's an earlier post on the subject, whose links contain links to still earlier ones--maybe this series will converge soon in a way that reverses the decline in transplantation in Germany:

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Obstacles to kidney exchange in Germany

Obstacles to kidney exchange in Germany

An op-ed in yesterday's Handelsblatt Global (in English) proposes that kidney exchange should be allowed in Germany:
Germany should allow donating organs to strangers
by Fabian Kurz and Fred Roeder, July 2, 2018

An earlier brief discussion/blog post (in German) with some interesting links describes some of the current obstacles to kidney exchange in Germany:

Nieren-Tausch kann Leben retten (Kidney exchange can save lives)
von Alexander Fink & Fabian Kurz, 20. Juni 2018

Here's the German Transplant Act.

Here's a ruling of the German Federal Social Court, confirming the effective ban on kidney exchange.

Here's a 2005 news story about two patient-donor pairs who were allowed to engage in a kidney exchange after arguing that they had established a sufficient relationship with each other, to fit the requirement of the law that transplants can only be received from close relations, i.e. immediate family, or a "special personal bond" .
Nieren-Tausch soll Leben retten (Kidney exchange is supposed to save lives)
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Some earlier discussions and links:

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Transplants in Germany, further discussion of changing the transplant law, in Der Tagesspiegel

Sunday, January 21, 2018

The number of organ donors in Germany has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Organ donation in Germany

Organ donation in Germany is declining, from an already low rate.

Kidney exchange in Europe: 3rd Workshop of the European Network for Collaboration in Kidney Exchange Programmes (ENCKEP)

 The international participation in this conference is a sign of the growing reach of kidney exchange:

3rd Workshop of the European Network for Collaboration in Kidney Exchange Programmes (ENCKEP)

Program:
Thursday, September 28, 2017
9h15 Registration
09h40 Welcome and Introduction

10h10 Ruthanne Leishman (UNOS)

10h55 Lisa Burnapp and Rachel Johnson (desensitisation)

11h15 Coffee break

11h45 Joke Roodnat (Dutch KEP)

12h15 Tommy Andersson (Swedish KEP and STEP update)

13h00 Lunch (at workshop venue)

14h30 Round-table: Barriers to Establishing KEPs
Facilitator: Lisa Burnapp (UK)
Participants: Eyjólfur Ásgeirsson (Iceland)
Haris Gavranovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Balázs Nemes (Hungary)
Axel Rahmel (Germany)
Mikko Salonen (Finland)


16h00 Coffee break

16h30 David Manlove (UK KEP)

17h00 Bart Smeulders (Belgian KEP)

17h20 María Valentín and Francesc Castro" (Spanish KEP)

18h00 Close

Friday, September 29, 2017

09h30 Christian Jacquelinet (French KEP)

10h00 Xenia Klimentova (Portuguese KEP)

10h30 Pavel Chromy / Jiri Fronek (Czech/Austrian KEP)

11h00 Rafal Kieszek (Polish KEP)

11:30 Coffee break

12h00 Discussion: Next handbook, Skype Joris, Global Kidney Exchange, Financial Aspects of KEPs, ...

Kidney exchange in Switzerland in 1999, and some early repugnant reaction

Kidney exchange is well established and growing in Europe today, but the first exchange was greeted in some quarters as a repugnant transaction.

The first kidney exchange in Europe was actually an international exchange, involving a German couple and a Swiss couple. It was conducted in Basel on May 23rd 1999, and reported in

G. Thiel, P. Vogelbach, L. Guerke, T. Gasser, K. Lehmann, T. Voegele, A. Kiss, and G. Kirste  ”Crossover renal transplantation: hurdles to be cleared!”, Transplant Proc , 2001

They report that
"The Swiss Health Insurance paid the hospital bill without hesitation. The German insurance, however, refused to pay, despite the fact that the cost (including donor nephrectomy) was lower in Basel than cadaveric transplantation alone would have been in Germany and despite huge savings for the German insurance by being released from further payments for dialysis treatment. The insurance agency argued that crossover transplantation is not allowed in Germany, and that they would not pay for an illegal procedure. …Crossover transplantation is legal in Switzerland”

Following the publication of the paper, press coverage reflected a good deal of repugnance for kidney exchange and criticized the German surgeon Prof Dr. Gunter Kirste (with whom I have discussed these matters prior to my recent talk in Geneva). Muriel Niederle pointed me to this story from Der Spiegel 12.02.2001: “[Opening the] Door to Commerce”

Here's another, from the Suddeutsche Zeitung, also in 2001, kindly supplied by Dr. Kirste, which compares kidney exchange to organ trafficking: "Organs of a Travelling Salesman"

Zurich celebrates Tuomas Sandholm: Symposium on Electronic Market Design

A symposium and more in honor of Tuomas Sandholm:

Location

The symposium will take place at the Department of Education of the University of Zurich (building KAB), at Kantonsschulstrasse 3, 8001 Zurich in room G-01 (interactive map).

A map is available below.

Talks

Time	Speaker	Title
14:00 - 15:00	Prof. Tuomas Sandholm Carnegie Mellon University, USA	Keynote: Journey and new results in combinatorial auctions, automated mechanism design for revenue maximization, and kidney exchanges
15:00 - 15:45	Prof. Martin Bichler TU Munich, Germany	All models are wrong, but some are useful: About spectrum auction design and challenges in market design
15:45 - 16:15	Coffee Break
16:15 - 17:00	Prof. Sven Seuken University of Zurich, Switzerland	Designing better combinatorial auctions: Algorithms, incentives, and bidding languages
17:00 - 17:45	Prof. Axel Ockenfels University of Cologne, Germany	Engineering trust on eBay

Organizers

• Prof. Dr. Sven Seuken
• Dr. Timo Mennle

Who Gets What and Why at the European School for Management and Technology in Berlin--video

Here's a video of a public lecture followed by a discussion (about half an hour each) about my book Who Gets What and Why, which just came out in German.   The location of the lecture was once an East German government building where the head of state had his office, and is now a business school, the European School for Management and Technology.  I was introduced by Gerhard Caspar, the head of the American Academy in Berlin and former president of Stanford. (My talk begins about minute 11:30 of the video, the discussion begins about minute 41, with Christoph von Marschall, Managing Editor of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, which touches on market designers in Germany, the legal barriers to kidney exchange there, and refugee resettlement.)

Transplants in Germany, further discussion of changing the transplant law, in Der Tagesspiegel

My op-ed in Der  Tagesspiegel yesterday on changing the German transplant law has drawn some prompt further comment in today's paper (as near as I can tell from Google Translate).

Here's the new commentary (English courtesy of GT):

Ärzte und Politiker für mehr Lebendspenden

Deutsche Vorbehalte „passen nicht mehr in die Zeit“, kritisieren Mediziner. Auch der Austausch zwischen einander unbekannten Paaren sollte erlaubt werden. 

VON RAINER WORATSCHKA

[Organ transplant

physicians and politicians for more living donations German reservations "no longer fit into the time", criticizing physicians. The exchange between unacquainted pairs should be allowed.]

"The demand of the American Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth, to facilitate in Germany living donation of organs and to amend the Transplantation Act accordingly, has met with doctors and politicians on consent.

The requirement that living donation - this question come kidney or parts of the liver - may come only from the direct family environment, are too strict, the economists had in Tagesspiegel criticizes. As in other European countries and the United States would also in Germany more distant relatives, friends or colleagues may donate writes Roth. In addition, an exchange between unacquainted pairs should be allowed (cross-donation, crossover Donation) at incompatible donor organs."

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

Here are my two earlier posts on the subject, with links to my earlier op-ed and the one by Axel Ockenfels and Thomas Gutmann

German organ transplant law should be amended or reinterpreted to allow kidney exchange: my op-ed in Der Tagesspiegel

Promoting kidney exchange in Germany: Axel Ockenfels and Thomas Gutmann

German organ transplant law should be amended or reinterpreted to allow kidney exchange: my op-ed in Der Tagesspiegel

During my recent visit to Germany, I spoke with a number of people about the fact that the German transplant law effectively outlaws kidney exchange.  I was invited to write an op-ed on the subject for the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, and it has just appeared:

OrganspendenDeutschland muss sein Transplantationsgesetz ändern

In den USA können Patient-Spender-Paare untereinander ein Organ spenden, in Deutschland ist dieser Tausch verboten. Das muss sich ändern. Eine Position. 

ALVIN E. ROTH

Normally at this point I would use Google Translate to give a sense of the article, but in this case, since I wrote the op-ed in English, I can give you the original:

German organ transplant law should be amended or reinterpreted to allow kidney exchange

By Alvin E. Roth[i]

Kidney failure is epidemic around the world, and a shortage of organs for transplantation condemns many patients to dialysis, and early death. 

Most transplantable organs come from deceased donors, and there aren’t enough to fill the need. But because healthy people have two kidneys and can remain healthy with one, a healthy person can donate a kidney to a sick person.  A living-donor kidney works better than a deceased-donor kidney.

In the U.S. we now have around as many living donors as deceased donors (although we still have more deceased-donor transplants, since a deceased donor donates both kidneys).

But living donation isn’t always possible, even when a willing donor is available, because a kidney must be well-matched to its recipient. Often the life-saving gift cannot be given, because the donor’s kidney is incompatible with the patient. (It is now sometimes possible to successfully transplant an incompatible kidney, but, like a deceased-donor kidney, this does not keep the patient as healthy for as long as would a compatible living-donor kidney.)

In the U.S., there is a way for incompatible patient-donor pairs to help each other, through what we call kidney exchange, or kidney paired-donation. In its simplest form, two incompatible patient-donor pairs are identified by their doctors such that each patient is compatible with the kidney of the other patient’s donor. Then four surgeries are performed, two nephrectomies and two transplants, so that each donor gives a kidney and each patient receives a compatible kidney. Kidney exchange has become a standard form of transplantation in the U.S., and has saved thousands of lives. (This is one of the “matching” markets I helped design, and wrote about in my recently translated book, Wer kriegt was - und warum?.)

Notice that no money changes hands in this paired donation. It is just an exchange of gifts between two patient-donor pairs, which allows each donor to save a life and see his intended recipient restored to good health.

Laws around the world prohibit buying a kidney for transplantation, because of fear that allowing organs to be sold would exploit the poor and vulnerable. (The single exception is Iran, which has a monetary market for kidneys.) But German transplant law  imposes a severe further restriction: a patient may receive a living-donor kidney only from a member of his or her immediate family. This means that, unless a judge intervenes, kidney exchanges are illegal in Germany. (This law also restricts the number of direct living donations in Germany compared to countries like the U.S., in which uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues, members of the same church, etc., are often living donors.)

I surmise that the reason for this strict limitation in German law is to remove any possibility that a kidney being transplanted has been purchased rather than freely given. But if when you want to give a kidney to your brother there is no suspicion that you are a paid organ-seller, you should remain above suspicion even if your kidney is incompatible with your brother. Kidney exchange allows you to give a kidney and save a life, and have your brother’s life saved. Kidney paired donation is a mutually beneficial exchange of life-saving gifts, not a commercial transaction.

The U.S. law that includes the prohibition on organ sales is the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984.  When American surgeons explored kidney exchange in the first decade of this century, it wasn’t initially clear what its legal status might be, but in 2007 Congress passed an amendment to the NOTA making kidney exchange explicitly legal.  Kidney exchange is legal elsewhere in Europe, and is well developed in the Netherlands and Britain. A similar amendment to the German law, or even instructions to judges that kidney exchanges should be allowed after being examined, could save the lives of many patients in Germany, without opening to door to commercial transactions in body parts.

---

[i] Alvin Roth, a professor of economics at Stanford University, shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on market design. His recent book about markets has just appeared in German translation, Wer kriegt was - und warum?: Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl: Wie Märktefunktionieren

Promoting kidney exchange in Germany: Axel Ockenfels and Thomas Gutmann

In Germany, kidney exchange isn't legal (German law only permits a patient to receive an organ from a member of his immediate family). Here's an op-ed saying that should change, by Axel Ockenfels and Thomas Gutmann in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung:

Nierentausch in Zeiten des Mangels (kidney exchange in times of shortage)

Google translate makes it pretty clear.

Ethical issues concerning living donors: a European conference

ELPAT (it stands for Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Organ Transplantation) is organizing a conference on issues involving (chiefly) non-directed anonymous kidney donation in Brussels:

	ELPAT Specialty Update Symposium Living donor kidney exchange: Medical, Ethical, Legal, and Psychological Issues
Sunday, 13 September, 09:00 - 12:50
Moderated by: Annette Lennerling, Gothenburg, Sweden and Willem Weimar, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
	Antonia Cronin: "Is it unethical for doctors to encourage healthy adults to donate a kidney to a stranger" Antonia Cronin is Consultant Nephrologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the MRC Centre for Transplantation, King's College, London. She is chair of the British Transplantation Society Ethics Committee and appointed member of the UK Donation Ethics Committee. Her presentation will examine the legitimacy of allowing individuals to donate an organ to a stranger and explore the circumstances in which encouraging such a form of donation may be justified.
	Willij Zuidema: "Unspecified donors and domino-paired chains" Willij Zuidema is working at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. For years she is involved in the alternative living donation programs. Especially the program of the unspecified donors has her interest. The living donation program in Rotterdam is one of the largest in Europe with an expertise in unspecified donors and domino-paired chains. She will present the data and logistics of the unspecified donations and domino-paired transplants.
	Mihaela Frunza: "Acceptability of public solicitation, the role of social media" Mihaela Frunza is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. She will present a presentation where public solicitation of organs is critically assessed from a legal, moral, and practical perspective. Several recommendations are discussed that aim at maximizing the organ donor pool while safeguarding the interests of potential living donors.
	Leonie Lopp: "The legal debate on anonymous donation" Leonie Lopp studied law in Münster, Germany. Afterwards, she wrote her doctoral thesis with the title "Regulations regarding Living Organ Donation in Europe - Possibilities of Harmonisation". She will today present the results of comparing the legal regulations on living organ donation in Europe by focusing on anonymous living organ donation.
	Hannah Maple: "Psychological outcomes after unspecified donation" Hannah Maple is a trainee Renal Transplant surgeon in London, United Kingdom. She will present an overview of the psychosocial issues pertinent to unspecified donation. Additionally she will discuss the results of her UK based study into psychosocial outcomes after unspecified donation.
	Linda Wright: "Ethical and practical issues of breaking anonymity" Linda Wright conducts research on transplantation ethics with the Canadian National Transplant Research Programme in Toronto, Canada. She will discuss the experience of contact between anonymous living donors and their recipients and recommend a strategy to address this, in the absence of evidence to support best practice.

German kidney transplant surgeon on trial

Prosecutors in Germany have accused a transplant surgeon of attempted murder, for allegedly manipulating the waiting list to obtain organs for his patients, and thus victimizing those who should have been ahead of them in line to receive the organs in question

Google translate renders the headline as "He killed without being a murderer"

"The surgeon Ayman O. is on trial. He is said to have manipulated information to patients to transplant organs to them. The prosecution sees this as attempted murder, he had taken the death of the other into account. The process in Göttingen will make the system of organ allocation to the test."

HT: Rosemarie Nagel

Summer School on Matching Problems, Markets, and Mechanisms: going on now in Budapest

Summer School on Matching Problems, Markets, and Mechanisms:

(And don't miss the link to ruin pubs at the bottom...)

the first summer school of the COST project on Computational Social Choice

Monday, 24 June 2013

8:00-8:45 Registration

8:45-9:00 Opening

9:00-10:30 First tutorial of David Manlove

Hospitals / Residents problem and its variants

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 First tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Two-sided problems with choice functions, matroids and lattices

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 First tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

School choice - Theory

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 1

Marina Nunez: Introduction to assignment games

18:30-21:30 Poster session with welcome reception

In the main building of Corvinus University of Budapest. Address: Budapest, Fővám tér 8., main hall. 33 posters will be presented.

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Second tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Generalised stable roommates problems

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Second tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

Market design and recent issues in school choice

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Second tutorial of David Manlove

The House Allocation problem (with applications to reviewer assignment)

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 2

Tamás Solymosi: The nucleolus and other core allocations in assignment games

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Third tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

From design to evaluation to redesign

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Third tutorial of David Manlove

Kidney exchange

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Third tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Stable allocations and flows

16:00-18:00 Facultative social program

Hiking to the Citadella (top of Gellért hill), or going to Gellért bath. Meeting after at 18:00 at the fountain in front of hotel Gellért.

18:30- Conference dinner

Buffet dinner at Trófea Grill Restaurant Újbuda.

Thursday, 27 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Invited talk 3

Ildikó Schlotter: Parameterized complexity of some stable matching problems

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Invited talk 4

Katarína Cechlárová: Computational complexity of competitive equilibria in exchange markets

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Invited talk 5

Francis Bloch: Dynamic matching problems

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 6

Joana Pais: Experimental studies in matching markets

Friday, 28 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Invited talk 7

Szilvia Pápai: Matching with priorities

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Invited talk 8

Estelle Cantillon: Preference formation in matching mechanisms

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Invited talk 9

Lars Ehlers: Strategy-proofness in markets with indivisibilities

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 10

Dorothea Kuebler: University admissions in Germany: empirical and experimental evidence

Facultative social program

Visiting ruin pubs, meeting from 18:00 in Szimpla Kert

From repugnant, to legal, to mandatory?

The Telegraph reports on the intersection of prostitution law (it's now legal) and unemployment law (you can lose your benefits if you turn down a job) in Germany: 'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

"A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

"Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

 "The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

 "She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

 "Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

 "The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse."
...
"Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova."
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So we have here a situation in which a formerly repugnant transaction became legal and might, under some circumstances become mandatory (at least for those seeking unemployment benefits). This reminds me of one of the better arguments against legalizing kidney sales and other payments to organ donors: once they were legal, some future Congress might want to make unemployment benefits available only to people who had already utilized their kidney resources, for example… See my posts on the fraught debate about compensation for donors.

HT: Itay Fainmesser

Update from the comments: no women have been forced into prostitution by this potential legal technicality...http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp

Organ donation in Wales

Will Wales change from opt-in to opt-out on deceased organ donation? The discussion continues...

Presumed consent organ donation to be Welsh law by 2015
"The Welsh government says it plans to have a new law in place for presumed consent of organ donation by 2015.

"The legislation would require people to opt out of donating their organs when they die, rather than opting in by signing the donor register.
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"Opponents say they do not believe it will work and it will hit trust in the system but supporters claim it will save more lives.

"The Welsh government has told the BBC Wales Politics Show that it is planning a system of "soft" presumed consent where family members would still be consulted after a person's death."
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Drop organ law says Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan
"The Archbishop of Wales is urging the Welsh Government to ditch plans for presumed consent for organ donation."
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A call has been made for more research into presumed consent for organ donation as Wales is poised to become the first part of the UK to adopt it.
"A University of Ulster team has found Wales consistently supplies more donors and donations than other UK nations.

"But they say that laws on presumed consent across Europe show mixed results and need further research.

"Presumed consent campaigners say they have raised awareness of the issue, but opponents warn that it could backfire.

"The Ulster team analysed data from NHS Blood & Transplant for all four UK countries between 1990 to 2009, and compared data on registration and donation from other European countries.

The research found that Wales "consistently outperformed" its UK neighbours, both in terms of the percentage of people registered and its organ donation rate, which had been higher than the UK average for most of the past 20 years.

"The authors recommended more research on the issue of presumed consent, which would mean people would have to opt out of becoming donor, or their organs may be used.

The Welsh government is proposing to introduce the system with a proviso that family members should be consulted.

"The idea has the support of bodies like the Kidney Wales Foundation, but it has been criticised by some, such as the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, who said organs should be donated as a gift and not as an "asset of the state."

"Spain was found to have doubled organ donation rates with a such a system of "soft" presumed consent, but Sweden - which presumes consent - had a similar rate to Germany and Denmark where informed consent operates, as in the UK.

"Further exploration of underlying regional differences and temporal variations in organ donation, as well as organisational issues, practices and attitudes that may affect organ donation, needs to be undertaken before considering legislation to admit presumed consent," the report says.

"Comparison of EU nations, and particularly Spain, indicates that improvement of organ donation rates is unlikely to be achieved by introducing new legislation alone."