Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Kidney exchange in India: progress, then Covid

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  Here's a paper reporting, among other things, a long kidney exchange cycle in India.  But Covid has put a temporary halt to all that. ...
Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Kidney to Share

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 The  Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics is sponsoring a presentation tomorrow of a new book, Kidney to Share .  It's written largely...
Monday, May 17, 2021

The pandemic and the job market for economists

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  It's been a tough year on the academic job market. Here's hoping it recovers quickly. Committee chair John Cawley submitted the fo...
Sunday, May 16, 2021

The common app and the growth of applications to selective colleges, by Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff

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A pair of papers study the Common App, how it is used disproportionally by selective universities and liberal arts colleges, to which applic...
Saturday, May 15, 2021

The importance of very early education, by Gray-Lobe, Pathak, and Walters

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  There's more to education than exam scores.  Here's a recent paper on the effects of early preschool education on long term educat...
Friday, May 14, 2021

Clean needle exchange faces renewed opposition in Indiana and elsewhere

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Harm reduction measures in connection with intravenous drug abuse can remain repugnant even where they were successful. Statnews has the sto...
Thursday, May 13, 2021

INFORMS 3rd workshop on market design in July (submission deadline June 1)

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  Alex Teytelboym sends me the following announcement: The INFORMS  Section on Auctions and Market Design  is organizing its  3rd Workshop o...
Wednesday, May 12, 2021

A glimmer of hope for German kidney transplants: a discussion of kidney exchange

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 Axel Ockenfels (who, along with Dorothea Kubler has been at the forefront of advocating for kidney exchange in Germany) forwards me this an...
Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Keeping pilots in the Air Force, in the face of renewed, post-pandemic demand from airlines

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 I spent a good deal of time last year working on understanding the internal labor market of the Air Force, and how it interacts with the la...
Monday, May 10, 2021

The international market for fonts

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 There was a time when printing was a local business, and so fonts had local markets. And the buyers were printers, so even if the ultimate ...
Sunday, May 9, 2021

Texas electricity market design: replace ERCOT experts with political appointees

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  The Texas Tribune has the story: Overhaul of ERCOT board could replace experts with political appointees   By MITCHELL FERMAN "AUSTIN...
Saturday, May 8, 2021

Akhil Vohra and Mike Shi defend their dissertations

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  We're still locked out of the Economics building, but science progresses and dissertations are defended.  I've been remiss in cele...
Friday, May 7, 2021

How can medical residency candidates be evaluated more reliably?

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  Standardized tests as measures of physician aptitude are falling into disrepute and disuse.  Consequently the medical profession needs to ...
Thursday, May 6, 2021

Vaccine shortages are more about congested supply chains than about patent protection: Alex Tabarrok at MR

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  Alex Tabarrok has a nice post at Marginal Revolution about the actual problems in worldwide vaccine supply, involving congested supply cha...

Milgrom on Auctions, Theorems, and the practice of Market Design, in the AER

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 The latest issue of the AER publishes a version of Paul Milgrom's Nobel lecture: Auction Research Evolving: Theorems and Market Designs...
Wednesday, May 5, 2021

VEM FÅR VAD – OCH VARFÖR? Who Gets What--and Why in Swedish

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My 2015 book, Who Gets What and Why? has been translated into Swedish, and published by the Ohlin Institute , "Founded In The Spirit Of...
Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Daron Acemoglu receives the CME Group-MSRI Prize for Innovative Quantitative Applications

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  Congratulations to Daron Acemoglu , who joins a distinguished group of winners of the CME-MSRI prize. The ceremony is tomorrow. CME Group ...
Monday, May 3, 2021

Can heroin be used responsibly? Is the war on drugs worse than the crime?

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 The psychologist Carl Hart , who studies drug addiction, has a book in which he describes his own careful use of heroin, and suggests that ...
Sunday, May 2, 2021

Repugnance as paternalism: bans on flavored tobacco products

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 The NY Times has the story on the recent FDA policy: Biden Administration Plans to Propose Banning Menthol Cigarettes. The move has been lo...
Saturday, May 1, 2021

Repugnant language: "How the N-Word Became Unsayable" in the NY Times, by John McWhorter

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  The linguist  John McWhorter , author of the book Nine Nasty Words ,  may be familiar to some readers of this blog through his podcasts wi...
Friday, April 30, 2021

Not all excess mortality during the pandemic comes from infection: overdose deaths in Cook County

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 A recent paper in JAMA reminds us that not all excess mortality during the pandemic is due to infection with Covid-19: Mason M, Arukumar P,...
Thursday, April 29, 2021

NYC to stop prosecuting prostitutes (but will continue to prosecute their customers)

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 NYC will stop prosecuting prostitution, but will continue to prosecute the customers of prostitutes, and pimps. The NY Times has the story:...
Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Selective NYC high schools aren't as hard to get into as is sometimes reported: Sam Abrams in the Columbia Journalism Review

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  In the Columbia Journalism Review, Sam Abrams explains how data from NYC's deferred acceptance algorithm for assigning students to sc...
Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Cannabis in Canada

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It's not so easy for a heavily regulated legal market to compete with an unregulated black market.  The NY Times has the story: After ‘G...
Monday, April 26, 2021

Cross border sales of cannabis between Oregon (legal) and Idaho (illegal)

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  It's hard to effectively ban a transaction in one jurisdiction if it is legal just across the border.  The patchwork of marijuana laws...