Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Peer review and markets for ideas, in law and science

›
Most scientific journals involve "peer review," where the peers in question are supposed to be experts on the subject of a particu...
Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Random allocation, preferences, and welfare: a fish story

›
Flying from Madrid to Boston on an Airbus with two aisles not long ago, two stewardesses proceeded in parallel down the aisles offering food...
Monday, January 18, 2010

Onur Kesten on discrete allocation

›
Onur Kesten of CMU has two recent papers that offer new views of old problems. Kesten, Onur , Why do popular mechanisms lack efficiency in r...
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Allocation of deceased donor livers

›
Ex-chief of transplant program indicted in cover-up of patient switch "On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted the former director ...
Saturday, January 16, 2010

blue guitar

›
Market design lyrics: "They said, 'You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.' The man replied, 'Things as...

Indian names for college sports teams

›
Some people find repugnant the once common use of Native American names for college sports teams, and the practice is in steep decline: Nati...
Friday, January 15, 2010

Ken Rogoff on grandmasters and growth

›
My colleague Ken Rogoff writes about two subjects he knows as well as anyone: Grandmasters and Global Growth . Drawing analogies from the gr...
2 comments:
Thursday, January 14, 2010

Ethics of test preparations--for kindergarten

›
Sharon Otterman in the NY Times reports: Tips for the Admissions Test ... to Kindergarten "Test preparation has long been a big busines...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Languages as marketplaces

›
Linguistics and Economics have something big in common, they both study things that human beings have built collectively. Like markets, lang...
2 comments:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Medical marijuana laws

›
Laws about marijuana give a different window on repugnant transactions. Jan 12: N.J. approves medical marijuana bill "The Legislature...
1 comment:

Same sex marriage; recent developments

›
Same sex marriage continues to provide a window on repugnant transactions , i.e. transactions some people think other people shouldn't ...
Monday, January 11, 2010

Mortgages, "strategic default," and repugnance

›
Steve Leider writes: I’ve noticed lately that a lot of people (both public intellectuals like Megan McCardle and Rod Dreher as well as [othe...
1 comment:

Money laundering

›
Illegal markets, like those for narcotics, can't so easily make use of all the financial services provided by banks and other intermedia...
Sunday, January 10, 2010

European job market for economists: the RES meetings are coming up

›
The ASSA meetings in Atlanta were held the first weekend of January, and while that was the main venue for preliminary interviews by North A...
1 comment:

A kidney exchange in Minnesota

›
Josephine Marcotty at the Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune continues to do a great job of reporting on kidney exchange . Here's her lat...
1 comment:
Saturday, January 9, 2010

Incentives for organ donors at MR and the WSJ

›
Alex Tabarrok writes at MR about Innovative Solutions to the Shortage of Transplant Organs , and at the WSJ: The Meat Market . He discusses ...

Critiques of higher education

›
Kevin Carey writes that colleges don't expose themselves to sufficient public scrutiny: That Old College Lie Noam Scheiber worries (toge...
Friday, January 8, 2010

Unraveling of primary elections

›
Further unraveling , that is. NH Seeks to Stay No. 1 in Presidential Primaries "New Hampshire lawmakers hope to erase any doubt that th...

Market for childbirth, when it comes with a passport

›
Quite a few places give citizenship to babies of (even) non-resident parents if they happen to be born there. The U.S. is one, and Hong Kong...
Thursday, January 7, 2010

Martha Nussbaum on same sex marriage

›
Martha Nussbaum expresses the view that opposition to same sex marriage is related to physical disgust, when interviewed in the Sunday NY Ti...
2 comments:
Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Polygamy in Malaysia

›
Malaysian Polygamy Club Draws Criticism "“Men are by nature polygamous,” said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other ...
Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Academic job market in a recession year

›
Inside Higher Ed has an article on the downturn in number of positions advertised through the Modern Language Association, the American Hist...
Monday, January 4, 2010

Spam newspaper

›
One of the odder features of the internet ad economy is that it is apparently profitable to create internet sites that draw some search traf...

Recruitment of male high school athletes by ... girls

›
Inside Higher Ed reports : "A string of scandals involving alcohol, sex and male high school sports stars -- and the National Collegiat...
1 comment:
Saturday, January 2, 2010

Matching and Market Design at the ASSA meetings in Atlanta

›
I'm not at the meetings in Atlanta, but if I were, I'd try to catch this session this morning: Matching and Market Design Presiding:...

Market for class notes, posted by students

›
There are lots of sites that sell study aids to college students, and there are lots of college courses whose notes are posted online (e.g. ...
Friday, January 1, 2010

It turns out I'm a Business professor

›
The same lecture can be described in subtly different ways to different audiences. I see this a lot, because I have a joint appointment betw...
Thursday, December 31, 2009

The year in market design

›
Kidney exchange : In fits and starts, kidney exchange is picking up. The biggest development this year has followed from Mike Rees' pion...
Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Airport security and privacy

›
Recent discussions of airport security in the post underpants-bomber era make it clear that privacy is a complex issue. For example, if an a...

Dan McFadden salutes Hurwicz and Laffont

›
Daniel McFadden, The human side of mechanism design: a tribute to Leo Hurwicz and Jean-Jacque Laffont , Rev. Econ. Design (2009) 13:77–100 (...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Scalping free ice skating at Fenway

›
The mayor is shocked, the Globe reports Scalpers cloud free skating at Fenway: City protests as rink tickets are hawked at high prices ...
Monday, December 28, 2009

Hiring in a recession: sorting through 500 applications for an entry level job

›
The NY Times has a story with some illuminating comments about how a trucking company handled the problem of sorting through 500 application...
Sunday, December 27, 2009

What is the capacity of a school?

›
A recent NY Times article describes the unusual way in which charter schools are welcomed by the city, and share space in public school buil...
Saturday, December 26, 2009

NSF survey of earned doctorates

›
The NSF reports on doctoral degrees granted by American universities: National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics....
Friday, December 25, 2009

Give cash next year?

›
Tim Harford, writing about Joel Waldfogel's famous work on the "deadweight loss" of Christmas gifts, writes "What to do? ...
1 comment:
Thursday, December 24, 2009

Mexico City Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

›
Here's the story: Mexico City Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage "Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America...
1 comment:
Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Doing a good deed for a price; Sally Satel's mailbox on kidney sales

›
" “For the right price, yes, I would give up one of my organs to save someone’s life,” read the e-mail message, one of three dozen I re...
Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Israel revamps its priority system for deceased donor organs

›
In an effort to increase the number of deceased organ donors, Israel has revamped its allocation system to give priority to those who have t...
1 comment:
Monday, December 21, 2009

Law and economics of repugnant markets

›
Kimberly Krawiec at The Faculty Lounge, some time ago followed up on one of my posts with an interesting one of her own: Selecting for Sex...
Sunday, December 20, 2009

Your computer as a marketplace for internet browsers

›
Microsoft Makes New Concessions to Settle Browser Case "Microsoft has agreed to reconfigure its Windows operating system in Europe to a...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 19, 2009

Indian marriage market for people in the same profession

›
Amol Agrawal blogs about an Indian Matrimony website for people in development sector . It's here: devnetmatrimony.org . The site is in ...
Thursday, December 17, 2009

Cousin marriage

›
The NY Times writes about marriage between first cousins, which is illegal in exactly half of the 50 States of the U.S.: Shaking Off the Sha...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Child marriage

›
Child brides' enduring plight: Problem illustrates hold of tribal doctrines "Yemen has no minimum age for marriage, and girls as yo...
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

More non-simultaneous kidney chains

›
A non-simultaneous chain with some interesting features is reported in Washington DC, followed by 3 non-simultaneous chains, starting with 3...
Monday, December 14, 2009

Kidney transplantation in China

›
In China Daily: Kidneys illegally sold online "Two major online forums www.02066.com.cn and www.as.2sun.cn, are operating for organ bro...
Sunday, December 13, 2009

The most selective colleges are getting more selective

›
That is the conclusion Caroline Hoxby reaches in " The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges " Here's the abstract (the pa...
Saturday, December 12, 2009

Matching and "undermatching" in college admissions

›
A recent commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes a new book on how (in)frequently students finish college in the canonica...