Auction of John Nash and Reinhard Selten Nobel medals and memorabilia at Christie's, Oct 25

Great scholars pass away, and their estates need to put their affairs in order.
The auction house Christie's has several lots for sale, including the Nobel medals of John Nash and Reinhard Selten, and some items of Nash's work.

Here's Christie's front page for these auctions:
A ‘beautiful mind’ and his Nobel Prize
As Christie’s offers the medal given to John Nash in 1994, his biographer Sylvia Nasar reveals how he was nearly denied the prize that arguably saved his life

Here are the particular lots for sale:
LOT61|Sold in part to Benefit the John C.M. Nash Trust
For his brilliant insight into human behavior
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 1994
Estimate
USD 500,000 - USD 800,000
"The Nobel Prize and diploma are together with the following items relating to the ceremony: Typed letter signed, 11 October 1994, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, notifying Nash of his award; Nash's copy of Les Prix Nobel 1994, Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, 1995; Nash's handwritten dimensions for his formal attire, signed ("John Forbes Nash"), one page, c.October 1994; and Nash's nametag ("Dr. John F. Nash, Economics") bearing the Nobel logo."

LOT62|Sold in part to Benefit Scholarships to the California Institute of Technology
For refining Nash's work
REINHARD SELTEN, 1994
Estimate
USD 200,000 - USD 300,000
"The Nobel Prize and diploma are together with a group of 11 photographs of Dr Selten, all 1990s-2000s, various sizes, including shots of him teaching as well as accepting his Nobel Prize.

Fifty percent of the net proceeds of this sale (after all seller’s costs) will be donated to be used as financial aid for gifted students in mathematics and information technology from Eastern Europe studying at the California Institute of Technology."

LOT60 |THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
Nash's doctoral thesis
NON-COOPERATIVE GAMES, 1951
Estimate
USD 3,000 - USD 5,000
"Octavo (258 x 173mm). Original orange stapled wrappers (some light soiling to covers, a little rusting to staples). Provenance: John Forbes Nash, Jr."


LOT59|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
Nash's first great contribution to Game Theory
FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 1950S
Estimate
USD 2,500 - USD 3,500
"A group of rare offprints from Nash's personal library, two of them annotated. "The Bargaining Problem" is annotated by Nash on the first page where he has commented "a bad choice of phrasing" next to the line "that they are equal in bargaining skill." Contributions to the Theory of Games, which includes Nash and Shapley's "A Simple Three-Person Poker Game" (for which an offprint is also present) has Nash's ownership signature on the first page."

LOT58|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
''I think you will really go places''
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., C.1940S
Estimate
USD 800 - USD 1,200
"A high school trigonometry paper replete with encouraging words from Nash's teacher, and retained by Nash for the rest of his life"

LOT64|THIS LOT IS SOLD IN PART TO BENEFIT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS
A handwritten history of Game Theory at Princeton
JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 2000S
Estimate
USD 2,000 - USD 3,000
"Nash's handwritten lecture on Game Theory at Princeton University. At the time of his death in 2015, Nash had been associated with Princeton for nearly 70 years, first as an ingenious doctoral student and for the final ten years of his life as a senior research mathematician. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1994, Nash entered a long period of renewed activity and confidence, and here he looks back on the field. His overview begins with the contributions of French mathematician and politician Emile Borel followed by Princeton colleagues John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (he notes that von Neumann "entered the picture" in 1928, the year of his own birth). Nash comments that "scientific concepts often are discovered in stages," and credits Antoine Augustin Cournot and Frederik Zeuthen's work ahead of his own, as well as Shizuo Kakutani's fixed-point theorem. He also touches on the work of Albert Tucker, Alvin Roth, David Gale, Robert Aumann, and Lloyd Shapley."
************
I hope to update these items.  In the meantime, some related previous posts, including previous auctions that didn't meet the reserve price:

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Sotheby's to Offer John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Tuesday, October 11, 2016 John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences medal and memorabilia: Auction at Sotheby's

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Hayek at auction at Sothebys

Thursday, October 27, 2016 Re-auction of Kenneth Wilson's, 1982 Nobel medal for Physics

Thursday, February 26, 2015 Kuznets' Nobel Prize medal auction

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Nobel medal and diploma of Francis Crick: available at auction

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 Crick's Nobel medal, and letter to his son describing DNA

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

Update:

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Auction results: Nobel medals of John Nash and Reinhard Selten

The auction is over, and (unlike in some previous auctions) all of the items sold.  The highest profile items, namely the Nobel medals and diplomas, went for $735,000 (Nash) and 225,000 (Selten).

 

Will IVF become more widely legal in France?

The Washington Post has the story:

Why an IVF bill is the next fault line for the French republic  By Camille Robcis

"Since 1994, France has banned surrogacy and restricted access to reproductive technologies to heterosexual couples who have been married or living together for more than two years, forcing single women and lesbian couples to travel to neighboring countries for fertility treatments, and gay men to resort to surrogates in countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, the French National Assembly is scheduled to vote on a bill that would finally allow access to assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, for unmarried women and lesbian couples. Under the proposed law, the treatments would be reimbursed by Social Security, and French doctors helping these women with fertility treatments would no longer face legal sanctions. Surrogacy, however, would remain illegal.
...
"After a month of fierce legislative debates that have resulted in more than 2,000 proposed amendments to the bill, an estimated 75,000 marchers took to the streets of Paris on Oct. 6 in opposition. "

NBER Market Design meeting, Cambridge, October 18-19

Market Design Working Group Meeting

Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak, Organizers

October 18-19, 2019

NBER
Feldstein Conference Room, 2nd Floor
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA


Conference Code of Conduct

Friday, October 18
8:30 am	Continental Breakfast
9:00 am	Christina Aperjis, Power Auctions LLC Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland Oleg V. Baranov, University of Colorado, Boulder Supply Reduction in the Broadcast Incentive Auction
9:45 am	Gianluca Brero, University of Zurich Benjamin Lubin, Boston University Sven Seuken, University of Zurich Machine Learning-Powered Iterative Combinatorial Auctions
10:30 am	Break
11:00 am	Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College M. Bumin Yenmez, Boston College Affirmative Action in India via Vertical and Horizontal Reservations
11:45 am	Joshua Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Roman Zarate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Choice and Consequence: Assessing Mismatch at Chicago Exam Schools
12:30 pm	Lunch
2:00 pm	Marek Pycia, University of Zurich Invariance and Matching Market Outcomes
2:45 pm	Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago Irene Y. Lo, Stanford University Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research Information Acquisition Costs in Matching Markets
3:30 pm	Break
4:00 pm	Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University Julien Combe, University College London Yinghua He, Rice University Victor Hiller, Université Paris 2 Robert Shimer, University of Chicago and NBER Olivier Tercieux, Paris School of Economics Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money
4:45 pm	Liran Einav, Stanford University and NBER Amy Finkelstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Yunan Ji, Harvard University Neale Mahoney, University of Chicago and NBER Voluntary Regulation: Evidence from Medicare Bundled Payments
5:30 pm	Adjourn
6:30 pm	Group Dinner at Bambara (across the street from the Royal Sonesta Hotel)
Saturday, October 19
8:30 am	Continental Breakfast
9:00 am	Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Microsoft Research Lior Kovalio, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Noam Nisan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Assaf Romm, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University Matching for the Israeli "Mechinot" Gap-Year Programs: Handling Rich Diversity Requirements
9:45 am	Amanda Y. Agan, Rutgers University and NBER Bo Cowgill, Columbia University Laura K. Gee, Tufts University Salary Disclosure and Hiring: Field Experimental Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit Study
10:30 am	Break
11:00 am	Nick Arnosti, Columbia University Peng Shi, University of Southern California Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation
11:45 am	Daniel C. Waldinger, New York University Targeting In-Kind Transfers Through Market Design: A Revealed Preference Analysis of Public Housing Allocation
12:30 pm	Adjourn
	FORMAT 35 mins presenter 10 mins discussion

Rates of organ donation in countries with presumed consent versus those with explicit consent

Here's an illuminating figure from the 2018 paper

Organ Donation and Transplantation in Canada   

Sonya Norris, Legal and Social Affairs Division, 2018-02-14

Figure 5 - Deceased Organ Donor Rates (per million population), Consent Regimes and Number of Donors in Selected Countries, 2015

Presumed consent (opt-out) countries are graphed in yellow, and explicit consent (opt in) countries in blue.  Given the confusing and often confused discussion of those two regimes, it's noteworthy that both regimes appear near both the top and the bottom of the graph, i.e. there are both high and low donation rate countries using each donation regime.

Kidney Exchange: an opportunity for cooperation in North America: Canadian Transplant Summit

I'll be speaking tomorrow  at the 2019 Canadian Transplant Summit, giving two talks.

In the morning, I'll speak at the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP) 6th Annual Scientific Meeting on "Computers and Kidney Exchange."

In the afternoon I'll speak on 
Kidney Exchange: An Opportunity for Cooperation in North America:

State-of-the-Art Opening Plenary Session - Modeling Organ Allocation in Transplantation

 Wed, October 16

 4:30 PM - 5:50 PM

 KC101+103

Session Chairs

Moderator
John Gill, University of British Columbia Division of Nephrology and Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences

Kenneth West, Dalhousie University

Presentations

Kidney Exchange: an opportunity for cooperation in North America

Alvin Roth, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate, Economics

---

Perspectives on organ transplantation as a donor family

Toby Boulet 

Congrats to Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty"

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 to

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer

“for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”

From the Nobel press release:

"In the mid-1990s, Michael Kremer and his colleagues demonstrated how powerful this approach can be, using field experiments to test a range of interventions that could improve school results in western Kenya.

"Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, often with Michael Kremer, soon performed similar studies of other issues and in other countries. Their experimental research methods now entirely dominate development economics."

A kidney exchange chain initiated by a deceased donor, in Italy

 Deceased Donor–initiated Chains
First Report of a Successful Deliberate Case and Its Ethical Implications
Furian, Lucrezia MD1; Cornelio, Cristina PhD2; Silvestre, Cristina MD, PhD1; Neri, Flavia MD1; Rossi, Francesca PhD2,3; Rigotti, Paolo MD1; Cozzi, Emanuele MD, PhD4; Nicolò, Antonio PhD

Transplantation: October 2019 - Volume 103 - Issue 10 - p 2196–2200
doi: 10.1097/TP.0000000000002645

Background. It has been suggested that deceased donor kidneys could be used to initiate chains of living donor kidney paired donation, but the potential gains of this practice need to be quantified and the ethical implications must be addressed before it can be implemented.

Methods. The gain of implementing deceased donor–initiated chains was measured with an algorithm, using retrospective data on the pool of incompatible donor/recipient pairs, at a single center. The allocation rules for chain-ending kidneys and the characteristics and quality of the chain-initiating kidney are described.

Results. The benefit quantification process showed that, with a pool of 69 kidneys from deceased donors and 16 pairs enrolled in the kidney paired donation program, it was possible to transplant 8 of 16 recipients (50%) over a period of 3 years. After obtaining the approval of the Veneto Regional Authority’s Bioethical Committee and the revision of the Italian National Transplant Center’s allocation policies, the first successful case was completed. For the recipient (male, aged 53 y), who entered the program for a chain-initiating kidney with a Kidney Donor Risk Index of 0.61 and a Kidney Donor Profile Index of 3%, the waiting time was 4 days. His willing donor (female, aged 53 y) with a Living Kidney Donor Profile Index of 2, donated 2 days later to a chain-ending recipient (male, aged 47 y) who had been on dialysis for 5 years.

Conclusions. This is the first report of a successfully completed, deliberate deceased donor–initiated chain, which was made possible after a thorough assessment of the ethical issues and the impact of allocation policies. This article includes a preliminary efficacy assessment and describes the development of a dedicated algorithm.
**********

See earlier post:

Monday, April 11, 2016

Using deceased donor kidneys to start living donor kidney exchange chains

Matching markets @ Simons Institute are multi-disciplinary

Two recent blog posts at the algorithmic game theory blog Turing's Invisible Hand remark on the multi-disciplinary nature of modern matching theory and market design, which involves economics, computer science, operations research and mathematics...


Matching Markets @ Simons: Driven by Theory, Driving the Economy by robertkleinberg

"A more notable aspect of matching theory in recent years has been its impact on the design of real-world marketplaces. Over the two workshops, a mix of speakers from academia and industry covered a host of markets, including payment routing, online advertising, kidney exchange, real-estate, public housing, ride-sharing, long-haul trucking, restaurant reviews, school choice, food-banks and many many others. A common theme that emerged was that online marketplaces, with the support of good algorithm and mechanism designers, are slowly taking over the economy."

and

Blind Folks and the Evolving Elephant – by Vijay Vazirani

"The “blind men’’ in this case are entire disciplines which can lay claim to the field of matching markets. Of course, the obvious one is economics – the founders of this field, namely Gale and Shapley, were mathematical economists and the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley for work on these markets.

A key enabler was researchers in systems and networking. Their scientific revolutions of the Internet and mobile computing put matching markets on an exciting, new journey and their systems run these centralized markets on powerful computers.

The discipline of algorithm design has had an umbilical connection to matching markets: At the birth of this field lies the highly sophisticated Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithm (1962), whose pivotal game-theoretic property of incentive compatibility follows as a free gift from polynomial time solvability — it was established two decades after the discovery of the algorithm! Yet most researchers, including those in theoretical computer science, are not aware that algorithm design is also a legitimate claimant to this field. Indeed, the very “engine’’ that runs almost each one of these markets is a sophisticated algorithm chosen from the “gold mine’’ of matching theory! Besides stable matching, this includes maximum matching and online matching and their numerous variants."

Medal of Honor

Some months ago I bookmarked a piece in the Wall Street Journal, about the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest combat award.  It talks about life after the medal, for the recipients of this very famous award.  They find they  have some obligations to represent the armed services, the medal itself and the others who have received it, in addition to their own colleagues left behind on the battlefield.  It's a much more complicated honor than other kinds of awards for extraordinary accomplishment, which are also often done in teams, such as scientific awards (which are for happier, less desperate accomplishments that are survived by all the participants).  The article speaks about how previous medal winners support new ones with advice and encouragement on what they should expect. At the time the story was published (in May 2019) there were 70 living recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Here's the WSJ story:

‘It’s a Lifelong Burden’: The Mixed Blessing of the Medal of Honor
America’s highest award for combat valor is both a gift and a constant reminder of what’s often the worst day of recipients’ lives  By Michael M. Phillips.

"For those who earn it, the medal is a loaded gift. It’s a source of instant celebrity, and an entree into a world of opportunity and adulation. It’s also a reminder of what is often the worst day of their lives. And it is a summons to a lifetime of service from those who did something so courageous as young men—so at odds with their own chances of survival—that it was beyond what duty demands."

Followup on Robert Kraft: disappearing sex trafficking in Florida

Vanity Fair has a followup on the widely publicized Florida investigation of sex trafficking that included the arrest of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.  The reporter points out that the trafficking charges have evaporated, and in general concludes that much of the concern with trafficking is in fact simply targeted at voluntary foreign sex workers:

“YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED”: THE WILD, DISTURBING SAGA OF ROBERT KRAFT’S VISIT TO A STRIP MALL SEX SPA
After the Patriots owner made two trips to Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where a half-hour “massage” costs $59, he was charged with soliciting a prostitute. What happened next was not what anyone expected.
BY MAY JEONG

"Human trafficking is a serious problem: The Department of Health and Human Services calls it the world’s “fastest-growing criminal industry.” But some anti-trafficking groups, in search of funding, routinely overstate the scale of the commercial sex trade. They frequently claim that 300,000 minors are “at risk” for being sold into sexual slavery in America each year—a number that has been debunked by researchers as wildly overinflated. (The Washington Post dismisses it as a “nonsense statistic.”) In 2018, the FBI confirmed a total of 649 trafficking cases in America, adults included.
...
"Florida’s new sex registry is the latest in a long line of similar laws. One of America’s first laws against prostitution, in fact, was the 1870 Act to Prevent the Kidnapping and Importing of Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese Females for Criminal or Demoralizing Purposes, intended to protect the public from “scandal and injury.” The law was a precursor to the Page Act of 1875, which aimed to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women,” which in turn was a precursor to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first law to bar all members of a specific ethnicity or nationality from immigrating.

"The raids on Orchids and other massage parlors in South Florida were conducted in the name of rescuing women from sex trafficking. But the only people put in jail were the women themselves. A few, like Lulu and Mandy, managed to post bail and were placed under house arrest. But others were transferred to the custody of ICE. Women who migrated to America in search of work—who chose the least bad option available to them—were being punished for what one of their lawyers calls “the crime of poverty.”
...
"Within weeks of the raids, the state’s case had evaporated. There was no $20 million trafficking ring, no women tricked into sex slavery. The things the state had mistaken as markers for human trafficking—long working hours, shared eating and living arrangements, suspicion of outside authorities, ties to New York and China—were, in fact, common organizing principles of many Chinese immigrant communities. As an assistant state attorney in Palm Beach told the court on April 12: “There is no human trafficking that arises out of this investigation.”
********

See earlier post:

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Prosecuting customers in the fight against sex trafficking of illegal immigrants in American massage parlors

2019 ESA North American Meetings

The 2019 Economic Science Association (ESA) North American meetings will be held in Los Angeles, California at the campus of Loyola Marymount University from Thursday evening, October 10th through Saturday evening, October 12th, 2019. 

Keynote Speakers:

• Yan Chen, University of Michigan
• Emily Oster, Brown University
• James Konow, Loyola Marymount University

Panel on Research Methods:

• Daniel Benjamin, University of Southern California
• Colin Camerer, California Institute of Technology
• Muriel Niederle, Stanford University

Here's the program.

There's a session on Market Design and Matching:

The Important of Cardinal Information in Matching Clayton Featherstone

Why Do Some Clearinghouses Yield Stable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence on Out-of-Equilibrium Truth-Telling Colin Sullivan

Competition with Indivisibilities and Few Traders Weiwei Zheng

Driving to the Beat Sotiris Georganas

Very quick questions and answers about market design and experimental economics--video

Two minutes of Q&A from my recent visit to Lancaster:

Transplantation rates for patients in non-profit versus for-profit dialysis centers

From JAMA,September 10, 2019  Volume 322, Number 10:
J::AMA
September 10, 2019 Volume 322, Number 10Association Between Dialysis Facility Ownership and Accessto Kidney Transplantation

Jennifer C. Gander, PhD; Xingyu Zhang, PhD; Katherine Ross, MPH; Adam S. Wilk, PhD; Laura McPherson, MPH; Teri Browne, PhD;Stephen O. Pastan, MD; Elizabeth Walker, MS; Zhensheng Wang, PhD; Rachel E. Patzer, PhD, MPH

"MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Access to kidney transplantation was defined as time from initiation of dialysis to placement on the deceased donor kidney transplantation waiting list,receipt of a living donor kidney transplant, or receipt of a deceased donor kidney transplant.Cumulative incidence differences and multivariable Cox models assessed the associationbetween dialysis facility ownership and each outcome.
RESULTS: Among 1 478 564 patients, the median age was 66 years (interquartile range, 55-76years), with 55.3% male, and 28.1% non-Hispanic black patients. Eighty-seven percent ofpatients received care at a for-profit dialysis facility. A total of 109 030 patients (7.4%)received care at 435 nonprofit small chain facilities; 78 287 (5.3%) at 324 nonprofitindependent facilities; 483 988 (32.7%) at 2239 facilities of large for-profit chain 1; 482 689(32.6%) at 2082 facilities of large for-profit chain 2; 225 890 (15.3%) at 997 for-profit smallchain facilities; and 98 680 (6.7%) at 434 for-profit independent facilities. During the studyperiod, 121 680 patients (8.2%) were placed on the deceased donor waiting list, 23 762 (1.6%)received a living donor kidney transplant, and 49 290 (3.3%) received a deceased donorkidney transplant. For-profit facilities had lower 5-year cumulative incidence differences foreach outcome vs nonprofit facilities (deceased donor waiting list: −13.2% [95% CI, −13.4% to−13.0%]; receipt of a living donor kidney transplant: −2.3% [95% CI, −2.4% to −2.3%]; andreceipt of a deceased donor kidney transplant: −4.3% [95% CI, −4.4% to −4.2%]). AdjustedCox analyses showed lower relative rates for each outcome among patients treated at allfor-profit vs all nonprofit dialysis facilities: deceased donor waiting list (hazard ratio [HR], 0.36[95% CI, 0.35 to 0.36]); receipt of a living donor kidney transplant (HR, 0.52 [95% CI, 0.51 to0.54]); and receipt of a deceased donor kidney transplant (HR, 0.44 [95% CI, 0.44 to 0.45]).
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Among US patients with end-stage kidney disease, receiving dialysis at for-profit facilities compared with nonprofit facilities was associated with a lower likelihood of accessing kidney transplantation. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms behind this association.

Here are the figures. "For-profit large chains" seem to give the slowest access to being put on the transplant waiting list, receiving a living donation, or receiving a deceased donation.

HT: Irene Wapnir

Different misconduct in sperm donation

One reason it is rewarding to study unregulated markets is that it gives you some idea of why some regulation might be desirable.  The growth in DNA registries has allowed many children of sperm donors to identify their biological father, and it also allows donors to identify their children, sometimes with unsettling results.

Here's a story from the Washington Post:

Sperm donor says fertility clinic ‘lied’ after discovering he fathered 17 kids ― most in the same area

"It was 1989 when he gave his sperm to the fertility clinic at Oregon Health & Science University, where he was a first-year medical student, believing his donation would help infertile couples and advance science. The facility promised that once his sperm had conceived five babies in mothers living on the East Coast, the rest would be used for research, Cleary said at a Wednesday news conference. He had assured his wife that the donor kids were far enough away that their own four children could never run into them in their Oregon town, or unwittingly befriend them or fall in love with them.

“So you can imagine his shock,” his attorney Chris Best said at the news conference, “when, after 30 years, Dr. Cleary recently [learned] that no less than 17 children have been born from his donations” ― all of whom were born in the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest."

Ride sharing and shared rides as public transportation: Via

The ride sharing company in the U.S. that is perhaps closest to a public transportation model is Via, which offers shared rides from near where you are to near where you are going. That is, it's a ride sharing service which has you walk to a nearby corner to be picked up, pooled with other riders who are headed the same way, and dropped off near your destination.

Via is also taking other steps towards deploying their technology in a public transportation way: here's their recent announcement of a contract with New York City schools to manage school buses:

Via Selected to Power New York City’s School Bus System

"August 21, 2019 (New York, NY) — Via, the leading provider and developer of on-demand public mobility, was selected by the New York City Department of Education to provide a revolutionary school bus management system for the nation’s largest school district. “Via for Schools” will be the first integrated, automated school bus routing, tracking, and communication platform in the world. Parents and students will have the ability to track, in real-time, their bus’ whereabouts and receive frequent and reliable communications in the event of service changes, improving safety and bringing important peace of mind to all users of the system. By utilizing Via’s best-in-class algorithms to optimize school bus routing, the Department of Education will be able to achieve operational efficiencies and reduce transportation costs.

“We are delighted to be partnering with the New York City Department of Education to set a new standard of excellence in school transportation,” said Daniel Ramot, co-founder and CEO of Via. “Via was founded in New York, where we are proud to operate the city’s most efficient on-demand shared ride service. We’re thrilled to have an opportunity to further serve the New York community by applying our technology to operate a world-class school bus system.” 

“Through our partnership with Via, we’ll soon have a state-of-the-art app for families to track buses and get real-time automatic updates,” said Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza. “We are grateful for the City Council’s advocacy, leadership and partnership. Safe and reliable transportation is critical for all families, and we’re committed to getting it right this year.”

As the largest school district in the nation, the NYC Department of Education (DOE) transports approximately 150,000 students on 9,000 bus routes each and every day to get students safely to and from school across the City. Via for Schools is purpose built to serve the city’s diverse student populations, including General Education, Special Education, Students in Temporary Housing, and others through one integrated school transportation system. The system will utilize a flexible algorithm, which allows for both stop-to-school and home-to-school pickups, accommodating students regardless of their learning style, mobility constraints, or place(s) of residence.

Via’s technology is already in use in more than 50 markets across the globe, by such leading public sector transportation providers as Los Angeles Metro, Transport for London, and Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG). For Via for Schools, the company’s intelligent routing system will optimize school buses’ daily, fixed routes to be as efficient as possible, while also providing the flexibility to respond dynamically to realities on the ground such as street closures and traffic. The system is expected to significantly improve operational efficiency and aims to ultimately reduce transportation costs for the NYC DOE. Parents and students will benefit from improved visibility and communications regarding system status and unexpected changes, including real-time bus locations, student boardings and alightings, route changes, and vehicle delays.

About Via

Via is re-engineering public transit, from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic and highly efficient on-demand network. Via’s technology is deployed in more than 20 countries worldwide through dozens of partner projects with public transportation agencies, private transit operators, taxi fleets, private companies, universities, and school systems, seamlessly integrating with public transit infrastructure to power cutting-edge on-demand public mobility.  First launched in New York City, the Via platform operates in the United States and in Europe through its joint venture with Mercedes-Benz Vans, ViaVan. For more information, visit ridewithvia.com."

Conversation on repugnant markets, in French: Quand la science économique sauve des vies, conversation avec Alvin Roth, prix Nobel d’économie 2012

An account of my brief interview with The Conversation is published in both English and French.  It mostly concerned repugnant markets.  Here it is in French:
Quand la science économique sauve des vies, conversation avec Alvin Roth, prix Nobel d’économie 2012
September 23, 2019
Google Translate: "When economics saves lives, talk with Alvin Roth, 2012 Nobel Prize for Economics"

The interview was conducted in English (at the ESA meeting in Dijon), and appears in French translation.  For some reason, Google Translate translates the English word "repugnant" from the  translated French "répugnante" sometimes as "disgusting" and sometimes as "repulsive," both of which make the GT English translation hard for me to read...

And here it is in English, easier for me to read (although for some reason the editors have inserted an odd statement about the legality of same sex marriage in the U.S., which is now in fact legal in all fifty states, following a Supreme Court ruling...)

How economics can help save lives: a conversation with Alvin Roth, 2012 Nobel Prize laureate
September 24, 2019

Auctions of poker and slot machine licenses in Victoria, by Plott, Cason, Gillen, Lee and Maron

The Design, Experimental Laboratory Testing and Implementation of a Large, Multi-Market, Policy Constrained, State Gaming Machines Auction
Charles R. Plott, California Institute of Technology
Timothy Cason, Purdue University
Benjamin Gillen, Claremont McKenna College
Hsingyang Lee, California Institute of Technology
Travis Maron, California Institute of Technology
(September 2019)

Abstract: The paper reports on the theory, design, laboratory experimental testing, field implementation and results of a large, multiple market and policy constrained auction. The auction involved the sale of 18,788 ten-year entitlements for the use of electronic gaming machines in 176 interconnected markets to 363 potential buyers representing licensed gaming establishments. The auction was conducted in one day and produced over $600M in revenue. The experiments and revealed dynamics of the multi-round auction provide evidence about basic principles of multiple market convergence found in classical theories of general equilibrium using new statistical tests of the abstract properties of tatonnement.

Eric Maskin on Rank Choice Voting (RCV) in Massachusetts and beyond

Eric Maskin, the Harvard University Professor and Nobel laureate in Economics, gave two talks at Stanford this week.  The first was the joint Economics/GSB economic theory seminar, in which he talked about his theoretical work on Condorcet voting and Borda count voting, two different voting systems in which voters record a ranking of candidates (rather than voting for a single candidate).  His work leads him to think that these two voting systems have some properties that recommend them to democracies.

His second talk was a political meeting, at the home of Susan Athey and Guido Imbens, in support of the Massachusetts Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative (2020)#.
He argues that, although in an ideal world he'd prefer Condorcet voting, he thinks that Ranked Choice Voting is a pretty good alternative, that has a greater chance of being adopted, and that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Voting is complicated, and Arrow's theorem assures us that no voting system is perfect, but I concluded the evening by making a modest contribution to the RCV initiative in Massachusetts, since RCV reduces the problems caused when multiple similar candidates split the vote in our current system of plurality voting.

Eric Maskin explains Rank Choice Voting

#the initiative:

This proposed law would implement a voting system known as “ranked-choice voting,” in which voters rank one or more candidates by order of preference. Ranked-choice voting would be used in primary and general elections for all Massachusetts statewide offices, state legislative offices, federal congressional offices, and certain other offices beginning in 2022. Ranked-choice voting would not be used in elections for president, county commissioner, or regional district school committee member. Under the proposed law, votes would be counted in a series of rounds. In the first round, if one candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, that candidate would be declared the winner and no other rounds would be necessary. If no candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, then the candidate or candidates who received the fewest first-place votes would be eliminated and, in the next round, each vote for an eliminated candidate would instead be counted toward the next highest-ranked candidate on that voter’s ballot. Depending on the number of candidates, additional rounds of counting could occur, with the last-place candidate or candidates in each round being eliminated and the votes for an eliminated candidate going to the voter’s next choice out of the remaining candidates. A tie for last place in any round would be broken by comparing the tied candidates’ support in earlier rounds. Ultimately, the candidate who was, out of the remaining candidates, the preference of a majority of voters would be declared the winner. Ranked-choice voting would be used only in races where a single candidate is to be declared the winner and not in races where more than one person is to be elected. Under the proposed law, if no candidate received more than 50 percent of first-place votes in the first round, the rounds of ballot-counting necessary for ranked-choice voting would be conducted at a central tabulation facility. At the facility, voters’ rankings would be entered into a computer, which would then be used to calculate the results of each round of the counting process. The proposed law provides that candidates in a statewide or district election would have at least three days to request a recount. The Secretary of State would be required to issue regulations to implement the proposed law and conduct a voter education campaign about the ranked-choice voting process. The proposed law would take effect on January 1, 2022.[3] ”

This proposed law would implement a voting system known as “ranked-choice voting,” in which voters rank one or more candidates by order of preference. Ranked-choice voting would be used in primary and general elections for all Massachusetts statewide offices, state legislative offices, federal congressional offices, and certain other offices beginning in 2022. Ranked-choice voting would not be used in elections for president, county commissioner, or regional district school committee member. Under the proposed law, votes would be counted in a series of rounds. In the first round, if one candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, that candidate would be declared the winner and no other rounds would be necessary. If no candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, then the candidate or candidates who received the fewest first-place votes would be eliminated and, in the next round, each vote for an eliminated candidate would instead be counted toward the next highest-ranked candidate on that voter’s ballot. Depending on the number of candidates, additional rounds of counting could occur, with the last-place candidate or candidates in each round being eliminated and the votes for an eliminated candidate going to the voter’s next choice out of the remaining candidates. A tie for last place in any round would be broken by comparing the tied candidates’ support in earlier rounds. Ultimately, the candidate who was, out of the remaining candidates, the preference of a majority of voters would be declared the winner. Ranked-choice voting would be used only in races where a single candidate is to be declared the winner and not in races where more than one person is to be elected. Under the proposed law, if no candidate received more than 50 percent of first-place votes in the first round, the rounds of ballot-counting necessary for ranked-choice voting would be conducted at a central tabulation facility. At the facility, voters’ rankings would be entered into a computer, which would then be used to calculate the results of each round of the counting process. The proposed law provides that candidates in a statewide or district election would have at least three days to request a recount. The Secretary of State would be required to issue regulations to implement the proposed law and conduct a voter education campaign about the ranked-choice voting process. The proposed law would take effect on January 1, 2022.[3]

”

This proposed law would implement a voting system known as “ranked-choice voting,” in which voters rank one or more candidates by order of preference. Ranked-choice voting would be used in primary and general elections for all Massachusetts statewide offices, state legislative offices, federal congressional offices, and certain other offices beginning in 2022. Ranked-choice voting would not be used in elections for president, county commissioner, or regional district school committee member.

Under the proposed law, votes would be counted in a series of rounds. In the first round, if one candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, that candidate would be declared the winner and no other rounds would be necessary. If no candidate received more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, then the candidate or candidates who received the fewest first-place votes would be eliminated and, in the next round, each vote for an eliminated candidate would instead be counted toward the next highest-ranked candidate on that voter’s ballot.

Depending on the number of candidates, additional rounds of counting could occur, with the last-place candidate or candidates in each round being eliminated and the votes for an eliminated candidate going to the voter’s next choice out of the remaining candidates. A tie for last place in any round would be broken by comparing the tied candidates’ support in earlier rounds. Ultimately, the candidate who was, out of the remaining candidates, the preference of a majority of voters would be declared the winner.

Ranked-choice voting would be used only in races where a single candidate is to be declared the winner and not in races where more than one person is to be elected. Under the proposed law, if no candidate received more than 50 percent of first-place votes in the first round, the rounds of ballot-counting necessary for ranked-choice voting would be conducted at a central tabulation facility. At the facility, voters’ rankings would be entered into a computer, which would then be used to calculate the results of each round of the counting process. The proposed law provides that candidates in a statewide or district election would have at least three days to request a recount.

The Secretary of State would be required to issue regulations to implement the proposed law and conduct a voter education campaign about the ranked-choice voting process. The proposed law would take effect on January 1, 2022.[3]

”

*********
See my earlier post:

Monday, September 30, 2019

Ranked-choice voting in Maine, and elsewhere

Parag Pathak celebrated in Science News

Science News advises us that Parag Pathak is worth watching...

Parag Pathak uses data and algorithms to make public education fairer
After designing school choice systems, he’s studying student performance

(https://www.sciencenews.org/article/parag-pathak-sn-10-scientists-to-watch)


"If he could be granted one wish, he says he would design a school system from scratch. How, he asks, would you set up that system to be as equitable as possible?"

Repeal of motorcycle helmet laws increases deceased donor transplants: Dickert-Conlin, Elder and Teltser in AEJ:Applied

I imagine that a law that anyone who dies while riding a motorcycle without a helmet is automatically considered to be registered as a willing deceased organ donor would increase the voluntary use of helmets.  Here's a paper that investigates the relationship between helmet laws and transplants under current laws, which vary by state and over time.

Allocating Scarce Organs: How a Change in Supply Affects Transplant Waiting Lists and Transplant Recipients
By Stacy  Dickert-Conlin, Todd Elder, and Keith Teltser
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2019, 11(4): 210–239 https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20170476

Abstract: "Vast  organ  shortages  motivated  recent  efforts  to  increase  the  sup-ply  of  transplantable  organs,  but  we  know  little  about  the  demand  side  of  the  market.  We  test  the  implications  of  a  model  of  organ  demand using the universe of US transplant data from 1987 to 2013. Exploiting variation in supply induced by state-level motorcycle helmet  laws,  we  demonstrate  that  each  organ  that  becomes  available  from a deceased donor in a particular region induces five transplant candidates to join that region’s transplant wait list, while crowding out    living-donor  transplants.  Even  with  the  corresponding  demand  increase,  positive  supply  shocks  increase    post-transplant  survival  rates."


"We find that transplant candidates respond strongly to local supply shocks, along two  dimensions.  First,  for  each  new  organ  that  becomes  available  in  a  market,  roughly five new candidates join the local wait list. With detailed zip code data, we demonstrate that candidates listed in multiple locations and candidates living out-side of the local market disproportionately drive demand responses. Second, kidney transplant recipients substitute away from  living-donor transplants. We estimate the largest crowd out of potential transplants from living donors who are neither blood relatives  nor  spouses,  suggesting  that  these  are  the  marginal  cases  in  which  the  relative  costs  of  living-donor  and    deceased-donor  transplants  are  most  influential.  Taken together, these findings show that increases in the supply of organs generate demand behavior that at least partially offsets a shock’s direct effects. Presumably as  a  result  of  this  offset,  the  average  waiting  time  for  an  organ  does  not  measurably  decrease  in  response  to  a  positive  supply  shock.  However,  for  livers,  hearts,  lungs, and pancreases, we find evidence that an increase in the supply of deceased organs increases the probability that a transplant is successful, defined as graft survival. Among kidney transplant recipients, we hypothesize that living donor crowd out mitigates any health outcome gains resulting from increases in  deceased-donor transplants.
...
"The  SRTR  data  show  that  multi-listing  is  not  common,  with  only  6  percent  of  all  candidates  choosing  to  do  so  at  a  point  in  time  (online Appendix A describes how we identify multi-listed candidates and spells in the data). However, those who multi-list are systematically different from those who do not, with higher probabili-ties of having attended some college (46 percent versus 36 percent), higher rates of employment (44 percent versus 33 percent), and lower rates of insurance coverage via Medicaid (5 percent versus 11.5 percent). Not surprisingly, they are also more likely to register outside their own or a bordering DSA (12 percent) than candidates with a single listing (4 percent).
...
"the  percentage  of  liver candidates who receive a transplant within 5 years of listing ranged from 30.5 percent in New York to 86.1 percent in Arkansas (Israni, et al. 2012, 70). Similarly, “a striking (but not new) observation is the tremendous difference ... in the percent-age  of    wait-listed  patients  who  undergo  deceased  donor  kidney  transplant  within  5  years,”  varying  from  roughly  25  percent  in  California  DSAs  to  67  percent  in  Wisconsin (Israni, et al. 2012, 13).
...
"in  the  early  1970s  most  states  had  universal  helmet  laws  because  the  federal  government  tied  state  highway  construction  funds  to  such  laws  (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) 2018). By the  mid-1970s, states successfully lob-bied  Congress  to  break  that  link,  and  states  began  repealing  their  universal  helmet  laws (IIHS 2018).
...
"Using    state-level  OPTN  data  from  1994  to  2007,    Dickert-Conlin,  Elder  and  Moore (2011)—henceforth, DCEM—uses 6  state-level repeals and 1 enactment of a universal helmet law to estimate that repealing universal helmet laws increases the supply of organ donors who die in motor vehicle accidents by roughly 10 percent."
*********
This paper is part of an exciting line of work that I've blogged about earlier:

Thursday, August 1, 2019  How much do Kidney Exchanges Improve Patient Outcomes? Keith Teltser in AEJ-Policy

College athletes can be paid for endorsements in California: an end to an American repugnance?

College sports in the U.S. has long been an anomaly--our overseas colleagues must run colleges for reasons other than sports, but in the U.S. college sports are a big deal. And being a big-time college athlete leads to lucrative professional careers for some, but while in college the powers that be have long ruled that athletes can't be paid.  That may now be changing.

The NY Times has the story:

California Governor Signs Plan to Let N.C.A.A. Athletes Be Paid
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to allow college athletes to hire agents and make money from endorsements. The measure, the first of its kind, threatens the business model of college sports.

"The governor’s signature opened a new front of legal pressure against the amateurism model that has been foundational to college sports but has restricted generations of students from earning money while on athletic rosters.

"If the law survives any court challenges, the business of sports would change within a few years for public and private universities in California, including some of the most celebrated brands in American sports. So, too, would the financial opportunities for thousands of student-athletes, who have long been forbidden from trading on their renown to promote products and companies.

“Every single student in the university can market their name, image and likeness; they can go and get a YouTube channel, and they can monetize that,” Newsom said in an interview with The New York Times. “The only group that can’t are athletes. Why is that?
...
"In a statement on Monday, the N.C.A.A., which had warned that it considered the measure “unconstitutional,” said that it would “consider next steps in California” and that “a patchwork of different laws from different states will make unattainable the goal of providing a fair and level playing field.”

The state’s rebuke of a system that generates billions of dollars each year went against powerful universities, including California, Stanford and Southern California. The schools said the law would put their athletes in danger of being barred from routine competitions and showcase events like the College Football Playoff and the men’s and women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, made-for-TV moments that help some universities log more than $100 million each in annual athletic revenue."