Thursday, February 3, 2022

The market for hitmen

Why are laws against hitmen more effective in most of the world than laws against drug dealers?  Yesterday's post was about a paper that models this, but that paper didn't try to look empirically at hitmen.  

The model suggests that the different availability of hitmen and heroin dealers might have something to do with how you would react if I asked you where I could buy heroin or where I could hire a murderer. In both cases I would expect  you to tell me what a bad idea that was...but you might proceed differently after that.  I think it is unlikely that you would call the police to report that I asked about buying heroin, but you might well call the police if I asked about murder. (And the police would likely react differently to the two potential calls.)


Over the course of writing our paper, I collected news stories that featured  attempts to hire a hitman, many of  which went wrong from the very beginning. The search for a hitman often ends with finding an undercover policeman.  The rest of this post consists of those news stories. (This isn't meant to substitute for serious empirical work; it's just a rouges' gallery of news stories...)

Here's an example from the U.S., where the police were immediately brought in:

‘Help me kill my wife,’ Monroe man accidentally texts to his former boss

"A 42-year-old Monroe man apparently thought he was texting a hit man when he offered to split a $1.5 million life-insurance payout for killing his wife and young daughter, according to Snohomish County prosecutors.

But the text addressed to “Shayne” was actually sent to the man’s former boss, who called 911 Tuesday evening and showed the message to sheriff’s deputies, says a statement of probable cause outlining the case against the suspect."
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Here's another:  Woman charged in Craigslist plot to kill Israeli ex-husband

"The affidavit said a person who responded to the ad contacted the FBI after meeting with Layman at a coffee shop in May. The affidavit said Layman used a PowerPoint presentation called "Operation Insecticide" and that the person who responded to the ad provided the written instructions to the FBI."
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And here's another:
Woman sentenced to prison after allegedly trying to hire hitman
"A District woman who was charged this summer with trying to hire someone to kill her estranged husband was sentenced to a year in prison Friday after she later pleaded guilty to attempted assault with a dangerous weapon.

Prosecutors say 39-year-old Brandi Myles of the District agreed to pay a man about $25,000 to kill her estranged husband ...

"The unidentified man notified authorities of Myles’s plan. Detectives then orchestrated an undercover operation in which Myles allegedly agreed to pay the man to kill her husband last November. The killing never occurred."

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and another
Oklahoma Dentist Accused of Killing Mistress' Baby Now Charged with Ordering a Hit on Mother
"KOCO News 5 reported Franklin approached an inmate being held at Oklahoma County Jail about the possibility of killing a witness in the murder case against him. The inmate was an informant for police, unbeknownst to Franklin."
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On the other hand, there are places where there are a lot of murders. Colombia was once one, when Pablo Escobar paid a bounty on policemen. Mexican journalists are now particularly vulnerable, see this NY Times story:
In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’

The story makes clear that journalists who run afoul of either corrupt politicians or drug gangs are often murdered.
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And in Ukraine, as told to the WSJ:
Requiem for a Hit Man
A doomed hired gun unburdens himself in a jailhouse interview that sheds light on the shadow battle between Russia and Ukraine

"Ukraine has become a magnet for hired guns as Kiev tries to fight its former master Moscow’s bid to reassert control. With a stalemate on the battlefront between Russian-backed rebels and the government, Moscow and Kiev appear to have turned to contract killings to settle scores and winnow the ranks of commanders in the war, Western diplomats say.
...
"In Kiev, many of the triggermen appear to be freelancers, moonlighting from their jobs in the Ukrainian armed forces or police, say law-enforcement officials and Western diplomats.
...
"Mr. Makhauri came to Ukraine, he said, to hunt down the agents Moscow sent to eliminate opponents abroad. He said the killings ordered by Russia came from two distinct directions—from Moscow’s federal security services, as well as the Russian-backed Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

“I know who to look for and to stop them before they do anything,” he said from under a mop of long black hair, speaking politely in a vernacular Russian that earned him the nickname “Zone,” referring to someone from a penal colony. “There is a small number who do this kind of thing.”
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And from the NY Times:
Russia Ordered a Killing That Made No Sense. Then the Assassin Started Talking.

"Assassinations happen frequently enough in Ukraine that they are often just blips in the local news cycle. In 2006, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin signed a law legalizing targeted killings abroad, and Ukrainian officials say teams of Russian hit men operate freely inside the country.

“For the intelligence services, as bad as this sounds, murdering people is just part of the work flow,” said Oleksiy Arestovych, a retired officer in Ukraine’s military intelligence service. “They go to work, it’s their job. You have a work flow, you write articles. They have a workflow, they murder people.”
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It's not clear whether the hitmen are part of a for-hire marketplace, or if they are simply employees of the politicians and drug gangs.
Judging from cases in which organized crime hitmen turn state's evidence against their bosses, hitman is a job description for some American organized crime outfits as well. See e.g.
How An Infamous Mafia Hitman Rebuilt His Identity From Scratch
Heinous Boston mob killer became government informant
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And even if you find someone who says he's a hitman, there's a good chance you are talking to a policeman:

Ex-escort gets 16 years for trying to have husband killed
By TERRY SPENCER, ASSOCIATED PRESS WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Jul 21, 2017,
"Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley imposed the sentence on Dalia Dippolito, who was convicted last month of solicitation of first-degree murder. She was recorded on video and audio in 2009 as she plotted to have Michael Dippolito killed, telling an undercover detective she was "5,000 percent sure" she wanted her husband dead."

‘$500 and he’s a ghost’: Man accused of enlisting white supremacists to kill his black neighbor
"A South Carolina man tried to enlist a white supremacist group to kill his black neighbor and burn a cross in that person’s front yard, authorities say.

Federal investigators say they learned of Brandon Cory Lecroy’s plan in March after a confidential informant told them that the 25-year-old had reached out to a white supremacist organization and said he needed help to kill his neighbor, a federal complaint says. The following day, March 20, an undercover FBI agent spoke with Lecroy, who offered payment for the job."



Amateur hour (with low quality amateurs):  Florida mom killed in case of mistaken identity in murder-for-hire love triangle

"Lopez-Ramos, 35, is accused of hiring Alexis Ramos-Rivera, 23, and his girlfriend Glorianmarie Quinones-Montes, 22, to murder the woman.

On Jan. 7 and the early morning hours of Jan. 8, the suspects planned the robbery and murder, and mistook Zengotita-Torres for their intended victim when she left a store at a shopping center Sunday night.

The suspects then followed her home, kidnapped her and forced her into her own car before driving away, Gibson said. They then made Zengotita-Torres give them her ATM card and pin number and used it to withdraw money, he said.

During the incident, Lopez-Ramos and Ramos-Rivera “realized that they had mistakenly taken the wrong person,” he said."
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Doctor who ran a drug ring in collaboration with a motorcycle gang (and apparently succeeded in hiring a hitman from the gang)
Doctor accused of arranging wife’s killing to protect his drug ring is found dead in apparent suicide
"Kauffman, 68, of Linwood, a small town outside Atlantic City, was charged with first-degree murder this month, more than five years after his wife, local radio personality April Kauffman, was found dead inside their home. Ferdinand Augello, who prosecutors said was a co-conspirator, is also charged with first-degree murder.
...
"Prosecutors later outlined the prescription drug ring they said James Kauffman and Augello ran out of Kauffman’s office with the help of the Pagan Outlaw motorcycle gang.
...
"Augello was solicited by James Kauffman to kill his wife, and he found another man, Francis Mullholland, a cousin of a Pagan associate and a member of the drug enterprise, to do the deed, officials said.
...
"Prosecutors said they think Mullholland shot April Kauffman and was paid for the job.

"The drug enterprise, meanwhile, continued for years after the killing, until James Kauffman’s June arrest.

"Mullholland died after what officials say was an accidental overdose in 2013, NJ.com reported."
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Here's a case of successfully hiring a hitmen from former army colleagues:
Former Army Sniper, 2 Other Ex-Soldiers Accused of Becoming Hitmen
Published on Apr 3, 2018
"A former U.S. Army sniper and two other ex-soldiers have gone on trial in New York on charges they became contract killers for an international crime boss.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Eagan said in opening statements Tuesday that Joseph Hunter recruited the others for a cold-blooded hit on a real estate agent in the Philippines in 2012.

Defense attorneys said in their openings that evidence against them was too weak to convict them. All three have pleaded not guilty to murder conspiracy.

The case is expected to offer a window into the clandestine world of private mercenaries willing to kill for money. The trafficker has pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the government."

More from the NY Times
New York Trial Will Explore the Secret World of Mercenary Soldiers
By ALAN FEUERAPRIL 2, 2018

"Joseph Hunter, 52, a former United States Army sergeant with Special Forces training, stands at the center of the trial, accused of planning the murder of the Filipino woman, Catherine Lee, while serving as the chief of security for a globe-trotting criminal named Paul Le Roux.

 

U.S. Reveals Criminal Boss’s Role in Capturing a Mercenary FEB. 1, 2015

In Real Life, ‘Rambo’ Ends Up as a Soldier of Misfortune, Behind Bars DEC. 20, 2014

By Benjamin Weiser May 31, 2016
"In late 2012, as part of the sting operation, Mr. Hunter began assembling a security team for what he had been led to believe were Colombian narcotics traffickers but were actually confidential sources working under the direction of the D.E.A., the government has said. "
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Here's a case of a woman jailed for trying to hire her handyman to kill her husband (the handyman turned her in) now trying to hire a fellow inmate to kill the handyman:
Woman accused of hiring hit men to get out of her hit-man-related troubles
By Alex Horton March 11  (Washington Post)

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Here's the career of a prolific hitman, who seems to have been a contractor for rather than employee of drug cartels:
The Life Of One Of America’s Bloodiest Hitmen
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/martinez-hitman-cartel-black-hand-mano-negra-contract-killer
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Here's the story of a successful amateur hit
Texas teen, girlfriend hired gunman to kill man's jeweler father, police say
"Nicholas Shaughnessy allegedly asked multiple people whether they would be willing to get paid to kill someone in the months before the shooting, investigators said. "
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There are scam sites that advertise hitmen:
https://allthingsvice.com/2016/05/14/the-curious-case-of-besa-mafia/
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And here's a parody site that got some serious looking inquiries and forwarded them to law enforcement: https://rentahitman.com/ 
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Here's a story of a "successful" murder, but the hitmen were caught...
A veteran pulled over to help a stuck truck. Its driver was a hit man hired to kill him. Washington Post, Sept 7, 2018, By Taylor Telford

"McFoley was a “thug of thugs,” Chitwood said, with a lengthy criminal record that showed his capacity for violence. After the road-rage incident, McFoley was charged with aggravated assault and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. He was slated to go to trial in early December 2017. To avoid going back to prison, Capt. Brian Henderson said, McFoley hired someone to take Cruz-Echevarria out.

"That’s where Benjamin Bascom came in. The 24-year-old had a reputation as a killer, Henderson said, adding that investigators have tied him to open murder cases in Orange County, Fla. Bascom and McFoley were “criminal associates,“ investigators said, and McFoley reached out over the phone, offering Bascom money to silence Cruz-Echevarria."
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Hit Men and Power: South Africa’s Leaders Are Killing One Another, NY Times, September 30, 2018, By Norimitsu Onishi and Selam Gebrekidan

"Political assassinations are rising sharply in South Africa, threatening the stability of hard-hit parts of the country and imperiling Mr. Mandela’s dream of a unified, democratic nation.

"But unlike much of the political violence that upended the country in the 1990s, the recent killings are not being driven by vicious battles between rival political parties.

"Quite the opposite: In most cases, A.N.C. officials are killing one another, hiring professional hit men to eliminate fellow party members in an all-or-nothing fight over money, turf and power, A.N.C. officials say."
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Polish diplomat admits ordering hit on wealthy mother of his partner
Wojciech Janowski confesses to being behind killing of billionaire after years of denial
At a 2018 trial in France for a 2014 hit. There are 10 defendents, including the two accused hitmen and an intermediary.
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July 2019 Atlantic Magazine
People Who Pay People to Kill People
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The trial of the alleged Dan Markel gunman and bag woman begins.
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Guardian, Oct 22, 2019
The five reluctant hitmen of China: group jailed over botched contract killing
Court hears job was outsourced repeatedly before fifth hitman offered to stage the death and pocket the payment

200万雇凶杀人层层转包后成10万!“杀手”与被害人演戏……判了!
GT: "2 million hired murderers will be subcontracted into 100,000! The "killer" acted with the victim... sentenced!"

someone was trying to buy a hit for 2 million yuan, but after a chain of brokers, the killer only got paid for 100k. And the killer eventually thought it was not worth it and didn't carry out the crime. It is interesting that in the end, the original buyer was sentenced for the longest time, and the sentence decreased going down the chain. You may be able to read it yourself if you use google translate: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/87651845

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Washington Post Jan 22, 2020
Zookeeper who killed tigers and tried to have rival murdered is sentenced to 22 years in prison
"An Oklahoma City jury found him guilty of twice trying to hire hit men to kill the activist.
One of the men Maldonado-Passage tried to commission was an undercover agent for the FBI...
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2 Attorneys Arrested In Alleged Murder For Hire Plot
They're accused of hiring an undercover police officer to kill another attorney.
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Ex-Lesotho PM paid gang to murder his wife, police say
Thomas Thabane and his current wife allegedly agreed to pay hitmen $179,485 to carry out killing
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/11/ex-lesotho-pm-paid-gang-to-his-wife-police-say-thomas-thabane
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Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2021

A Louisiana man hired hit men to kill a woman accusing him of rape, police said. Instead, they allegedly killed his sister.    By Andrea Salcedo

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NY Times, Feb 5, 2021

N.Y.P.D. Officer Accused in Plot to Kill Husband Will Plead Guilty

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Washington Post, Feb 9, 2021

Journalists thwarted a murder-for-hire plot while reporting a story, prosecutors say

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People: (March 18, 2021): https://people.com/crime/father-ambushed-shot-9-times-knew-ex-wife-sent-hit-man/ 

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Washington Post May 10, 2021 :

A paroled murderer called himself a ‘good dude’ — before hiring a hit man to kill an ex, feds say  By 

Jaclyn Peiser

"Three months after he was released from prison on parole, Derrick D. Jackson parked his tan sedan on a residential street in Detroit and met with a man he hoped could solve a problem for him — Jackson wanted his ex-girlfriend dead, according to an affidavit.

“I just want head shots, just quick,” Jackson told the man, court documents said.

"Jackson, a convicted murderer, was looking for revenge on the woman, who lived in Ohio, claiming she stole money and drugs from him.

"He didn’t know it at the time, but the man Jackson was arranging to pay $11,000 for a murder-for-hire was an undercover special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"And the agent was wearing a wire."

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From Alex Chan:

There is this one newspaper article:

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/208854/straight-dope-how-many-people-get-killed-for-money-each/

that used some extrapolations with violations of "chapter 18, section 1958 of the U.S. code" (The "murder-for-hire" statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1958, was enacted as part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984) and claimed that there are approximately 416 hits done by hitman in the US.

and an analysis of online/dark web ads: https://cina.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/An-Assessment-of-Hitmen-and-Contracted-Violence-Providers-Operating-Online.pdf

Seems like there is a NYTIMES pieces commenting on it (this paper) too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/technology/can-you-hire-a-hit-man-online.html

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A Michigan woman tried to hire an assassin online at RentAHitman.com. Now, she’s going to prison. By Jonathan Edwards, Washington Post,  November 22, 2021  

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At Last, Girlfriend in House of Gucci Murder Drama Speaks Out. Sheree McLaughlin had a years-long affair with Maurizio Gucci, which gave him the courage to leave his marriage with Patrizia Reggiani. It was a decision that would get him killed.

"The story of Maurizio Gucci and his untimely death is infamous in Italy—and will soon be viewed by audiences around the world as it’s retold by director Ridley Scott in the film House of Gucci. Adam Driver plays Maurizio, and Lady Gaga portrays Patrizia, the glamorous wife who was eventually convicted of paying a hit man to have him killed. 

...

"Maurizio had been killed by a hit man as he walked up the steps of his office building in Milan. Two years later, Patrizia was arrested for hiring the killer, after a tipster went to the police. Judge Renato Samek, when issuing her sentence in November 1998 after a five-month trial, said that Maurizio had died not for who he was but for what he had: a formidable patrimony and an internationally recognized name. “Patrizia Reggiani did not intend to give these up,” said Samek, looking out over the courtroom. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison and released on parole after 18 years."

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If you got this far, you might also be interested in listening to this podcast:

Friday, February 4, 2022

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets

 Here's a paper that was just published early online. (Only now do I see that I left out the middle initial I always use, but I'm one of the coauthors...)  

The idea of the paper is to understand when a repugnant transaction can be effectively banned, versus when a ban will lack sufficient social support to succeed. We present a simple to state (but tricky to analyze) model of conditions in which banning a market is likely to lead to a difficult to extinguish black market.

Two prominent examples are narcotic drugs (big black market) and hired killers (not so much, at least in the U.S.).  So we could have called the paper Heroin and Hitmen. (Hitmen were little more than a metaphor in this paper, but I expect to say a bit more about the actual market for hitmen in tomorrow's post.)

 Chenlin Gu, Alvin Roth, Qingyun Wu (2022) Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets. Mathematics of Operations Research  Published online in Articles in Advance 28 Jan 2022  . https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2021.1236  (It's an open access article, so you can read the full paper: here's the pdf.)

 Abstract: "Repugnant transactions are sometimes banned, but legal bans sometimes give rise to active black markets that are difficult if not impossible to extinguish. We explore a model in which the probability of extinguishing a black market depends on the extent to which its transactions are regarded as repugnant, as measured by the proportion of the population that disapproves of them, and the intensity of that repugnance, as measured by willingness to punish. Sufficiently repugnant markets can be extinguished with even mild punishments, while others are insufficiently repugnant for this, and become exponentially more difficult to extinguish the larger they become, and the longer they survive."

Here are the first two paragraphs of the introduction:

"Why are drug dealers plentiful but hitmen scarce? That is, why is it relatively easy for a newcomer to the market to buy illegal drugs but hard to hire a killer? Both of those transactions come with harsh criminal penalties, vigorously enforced: in the United States, almost half of federal prisoners have drug convictions,1 and murder for hire2 is treated as a federal crime for both the buyer and the hitman.3

More generally, many transactions are repugnant, in the specific sense that they meet two criteria: some people want to engage in them, and others think that they should not be allowed to do so (Roth [48]). But only some repugnances become enacted into laws that criminalize those transactions, and only some of those banned markets give rise to active, illegal black markets. Only some of those black markets are so active yet so difficult to suppress that the laws banning them are eventually changed so as to allow the transactions that cannot be suppressed to be regulated. Laws that exact harsh punishments but are ineffective at curbing the transactions that they punish may come to be seen as causing harm themselves. Some well-known examples include Prohibition era laws against selling alcohol in the United States or laws in much of the world that once banned homosexual sex (and, in some places, still do)."


Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Shortages of blood, and breast milk

 The pandemic is putting strains on many supply chains, including those for donated (unpaid) medical supplies like blood and breast milk.  The pandemic is impacting both potential donors, and the ability of blood banks and milk banks to staff drives for additional supplies.

Here's a statement from the American Red Cross:

Red Cross: National blood crisis may put patients at risk

"The American Red Cross is facing a national blood crisis – its worst blood shortage in more than a decade. Dangerously low blood supply levels are posing a concerning risk to patient care and forcing doctors to make difficult decisions about who receives blood transfusions and who will need to wait until more products become available.

"Blood and platelet donations are critically needed to help prevent further delays in vital medical treatments, and donors of all blood types – especially type O − are urged to make an appointment now to give in the weeks ahead.

"In recent weeks, the Red Cross had less than a one-day supply of critical blood types and has had to limit blood product distributions to hospitals. At times, as much as one-quarter of hospital blood needs are not being met.

"Pandemic challenges

"The Red Cross continues to confront relentless challenges due to COVID-19, including about a 10% overall decline in the number of people donating blood as well as ongoing blood drive cancellations and staffing limitations. Additionally, the pandemic has contributed to a 62% drop in blood drives at schools and colleges.

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Here's a story on breast milk from the Guardian:

‘Now, now, now. We need help now’: US warning over breast milk shortage as donations plunge. Demand for breast milk has surged during the pandemic, but supply from milk banks has fallen as people head back to work.  by Melody Schreiber

"“​​Demand has been surging in hospitals, primarily,” said Lindsay Groff, the executive director for the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA). “At the same time, supply has dipped.”

"At all 31 milk banks in the US and Canada associated with HMBANA, milk donations are declining, down as much as 20% in some places.

"Milk bank directors say they’re not at a crisis point yet, but they will be if shortages continue.

“There’s no need to panic,” Groff said. But if “you feel compelled to help someone [by donating breast milk] – now is the time. Now, now, now, we need help now.”

"Donated breast milk can help medically fragile infants – those that are “too small and too soon and too sick”, as Kim Updegrove, executive director of Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin, puts it – to overcome a range of potentially devastating conditions, from prematurity complications to heart and stomach problems. Necrotizing enterocolitis, an inflammation of the intestines, is a leading cause of death for premature babies, but breast milk can help prevent it.

...

" the pandemic has increased the need for donor milk. Studies have shown that contracting Covid-19 during pregnancy when you’re not vaccinated increases the chance of having a premature baby, who might then benefit from donor milk. Parents who become very ill from Covid are often unable to care for their babies or to pump milk for them.

Monday, January 31, 2022

Icknomics: Would more corneas be transplanted if they were called "ocular donations" instead of "eye donations"?

 Here's an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics about framing and language associated with the deceased donation of eye tissue.

Arguments for ‘ocular donation’ as standardised terminology to reduce the ‘ick factor’ of ‘eye donation’ by Katrina A Bramstedt  http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5446-0123, 

Abstract: This brief report presents the global problem of the shortfall of donor corneal tissue for transplantation, a potential root cause (‘ick factor’ language), and a potential solution (modification of ‘ick factor’ language). Specifically, use of the term ‘eye donation’ is a potential hurdle to ocular tissue donation as it can stimulate the ‘ick factor.’ Verbiage such as ‘ocular (eye tissue)’ could be a method of providing terminology that is less emotive than ‘eye donor’ or ‘eye donation.’ The field of transplantation has experienced terminology shifts over time; for example, ‘cadaver’ has been replaced with ‘deceased donor,’ ‘harvest’ has been replaced with ‘recover,’ and ‘life support’ has been replaced with ‘ventilated.’ Notably, only a small number of regions worldwide are using ‘ocular’ terminology, yet it could be an important step to enhancing the informed consent process and improving donation rates, potentially increasing transplant and optimising patient quality of life for those with treatable blindness."

"While corneal transplants are the most common transplants worldwide, corneal blindness remains a significant health problem due to the lack of donor corneal tissue. Globally, there is only 1 cornea available for 70 that are needed, leaving nearly 13 million patients awaiting transplant.1 In 45% of countries which provide corneal tissue donation services, the system requires explicit consent from the donor and/or their family (opt-in).1 Several studies worldwide have reported high rates of consent refusal2 3 with concern about the ‘ick factor’ (repulsion/disgust response) of ‘eye donation.’2 4

...

"the field of transplantation has experienced terminology shifts over time; for example, ‘cadaver’ has been replaced with ‘deceased donor,’ ‘harvest’ has been replaced with ‘recover,’ and ‘life support’ has been replaced with ‘ventilated.’11 ‘Ocular’ (of the eyes or vision) is a concise term that could be used for both eye tissue and whole eyes..."

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Chemistry is replacing agriculture in the supply of black market drugs

 The war on drugs is getting more complicated, as chemistry replaces agriculture as a primary source.  This calls for changes in both law enforcement and harm reduction.

Here's a balanced view from the WSJ:

The Once and Future Drug War. During the 50 years the U.S. has battled the narcotics trade, illegal drugs have become more available and potent. But that’s no reason to give up. Governments must adapt and find answers beyond law enforcement  By James Marson, Julie Wernau  and David Luhnow 

"America’s longest war isn’t the 20-year fight in Afghanistan. That struggle is dwarfed by the War on Drugs, started by President Richard Nixon more than 50 years ago and still raging.

"The drug war—which has relied on both law enforcement and the military, at a cost of untold lives and hundreds of billions of dollars—has fared little better than the Afghan campaign. Since Nixon’s declaration of war in 1971, drug use has soared in the U.S. and globally, the range and potency of available drugs has expanded and the power of criminal narcotics gangs has exploded.

...

"The global spread of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, fentanyl and synthetic opioids is complicating interdiction—the core of America’s strategy for 50 years.

...

"Fentanyl has now killed far more Americans than all U.S. conflicts since World War II combined. In the past decade, it has claimed more than a half million lives, a toll that is growing swiftly. The nation was reporting fewer than 50,000 fatal overdoses as recently as 2014. 

...

"The Biden administration is the first to name “harm reduction” a priority. The White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, which was often run in the past by former generals and law-enforcement officials, is now led, for the first time, by a physician, Dr. Rahul Gupta.

...

"Europe is also pursuing harm reduction. The U.K., the Netherlands, Austria and others have offered drug testing, often at music events, to reduce the risk of overdosing or poisoning. Switzerland, the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands prescribe heroin to dependent users to cut fatal overdoses and needle sharing.

"Portugal has gone further. It decriminalized all drugs in 2001 amid a surge in heroin use and drug-dependent prisoners. Anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug is sent to a local commission that includes a doctor, lawyer and social worker for treatment. Overdose deaths have fallen from about 360 a year to 63 in 2019.

...

"Growing social and legal tolerance of drugs dismays people like Mike Vigil, who had a 31-year career in the DEA, including chief of international operations. He acknowledges that interdiction and law enforcement have not solved the problem. But he says that the U.S. has failed to develop a comprehensive strategy, including investing in down-and-out communities where drug use flourishes and trying to reduce future demand through massive, sustained education programs.

...

“We aren’t going to be able to arrest our way out of this,” says Mr. Vigil. His frustration is widely shared. “The U.S. has never taken the demand side of things seriously,” says former Mexican President Felipe Calderón."

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Erotic movies versus porn -- times and terms are changing

In a 1964 case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Supreme Court Justice  Potter Stewart famously declared that it was difficult to define pornography, but that "I know it when I see it " (Less well known is how he continued that sentence: "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

But "porn" has now become such a big category that it isn't even clear that the word retains its original repugnance.  A New York Times story that considers its redeeming features is about a film director whose website characterizes her this way: "Female provocateur and porn film director Erika Lust is creating a new world of indie adult cinema" (It turns out that Lust isn't her original family name...)

 Here's the story from the NY Times:

‘There’s Not Just One Type of Porn’: Erika Lust’s Alternative Vision. The Swedish moviemaker thinks pornography can create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters.  By Mary Katharine Tramontana

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And here's another story, which features the megasite Pornhub, in Vanity Fair:

XXX-Files: Who Torched the Pornhub Palace?  BY ADAM GOLLNER

"Pornhub, with its undulating ocean of explicit content, is often ranked among the 10 most viewed websites in the world. More Americans use it than use Twitter, Netflix, or Instagram.

...

"starting in December, a series of legal and P.R. scandals slammed the company. First, a New York Times exposé accused the firm of knowingly hosting child sex abuse materials (CSAM). Antoon denied the charges: “Any suggestion that we allow or encourage illegal content is completely untrue and defies rational reason, from both a moral and business standpoint,” he told me. Still, Canadian senators and MPs called for a criminal investigation. In the uproar, credit card processors suspended payments on the site.

...

"Forty years ago, debates about porn focused on the idea that the sex industry was inherently dehumanizing and rife with abuse. Activist Andrea Dworkin famously argued that porn was detrimental to women, full stop. But not all second-wave feminists agreed. A vocal faction argued for an erotic-positive approach to rejecting sexual repression. The phrase “pornography is violence against women,” wrote Ellen Willis, an influential pro-sex feminist, “was code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.”

"The argument remains as contentious as it is unresolved. This fall, the Times published an op-ed by Michelle Goldberg—“Why Sex-Positive Feminism Is Falling Out of Fashion”—citing a TikTok-based “Cancel Porn” movement. Then again, Cosmo contended that “As we all know, women enjoy porn just as much as guys do.” In fact, an estimated one third of Pornhub’s users are women. And the current feminist perspective on the porn debate might best be summarized by Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan in her new book, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the 21st Century: “If a woman says she enjoys working in porn, or being paid to have sex with men, or engaging in rape fantasies, or wearing stilettos—and even that she doesn’t just enjoy these things but finds them emancipatory, part of her feminist praxis—then we are required, many feminists think, to trust her. 

...

"The most seismic attack on the company came a year ago—in the form of a Nicholas Kristof New York Times op-ed stating that Pornhub was “infested with rape videos. 

...

"Soon, a merry-go-round of lawsuits started being filed on behalf of underage or nonconsenting victims: an Alabama case invoked the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act

...

"When Pornhub released an app last summer directing museumgoers to classic nude paintings, legal action was threatened by the Louvre and the Uffizi. As one Montreal source put it: “They’re in trouble all over the world.”

...

"The new crusaders aim to outlaw the commercial sex industry altogether, regardless of how that might affect sex workers, already a marginalized group. The main outcome of credit card bans on Pornhub—which Mickelwait considers an important victory—was that content creators stopped getting paid. The fallout extended to OnlyFans, the booming subscription-based platform that connects users directly with content creators. In August, OnlyFans threatened to remove all “sexually explicit” content, which would have had a chilling effect on free speech, open expression, and private digital commerce. Under pressure, the company reversed that decision

...

"While the internet continues its Wild West resistance to law and order, porn keeps getting ever more mainstream. (When Facebook and Instagram both went down one day last fall, for instance, Pornhub saw a 10.5 percent traffic spike.) Meanwhile, making porn has become America’s “side hustle,” Ruby told me, describing an expanding movement of makers selling their sexuality online. “People figured out that they could just document that part of their lives and earn an extra two or three thousand dollars a month and feed their families.” Pornhub, OnlyFans, and other digital portals played an integral part in that phenomenon."

Friday, January 28, 2022

Kidnapping and ransom in Nigeria

 Paying ransom is a repugnant transaction that looks different ex ante and ex post.  In Nigeria, where kidnapping is rampant, the government's view is increasingly that ransom payments should be prohibited, to make kidnapping unprofitable.  But after family members have been kidnapped, families are reluctant to let them be murdered, and are consequently eager to negotiate a ransom.

The WSJ has the story

A Kidnapping Negotiator Gets His Biggest Test: Saving His Own Wife. Abdullahi Tumburkai volunteers to help bargain with kidnappers in what has become a crisis of abductions in Nigeria.  By Joe Parkinson 

"Mr. Tumburkai estimates he has helped free more than 80 people across Nigeria’s northwest over the past year, in what has become one of the world’s worst kidnapping crises. Kidnapping for ransom has become a brutally profitable business across the country by heavily armed criminal gangs exploiting the government’s weak security presence. Gangs abducted an estimated tens of thousands of Nigerians in 2021, including more than 1,200 children seized from their schools.
...
"If they don’t haggle a ransom the victims can afford, hostages could be killed. If they succeed, these brokers make themselves a target among those who oppose any negotiations with kidnappers. The work embodies a moral argument that divides governments across the world: Should you pay to secure the return of hostages?

"Nigeria’s government and many community leaders say freelancers like Mr. Tumburkai are making the problem worse by creating a pathway for payments that finance terrorism and encouraging more kidnappings.

"Garba Shehu, Nigeria’s presidential spokesman, said that negotiating with kidnappers was “totally unacceptable” and that the government frowns at ransom payments. “It’s the responsibility of the police to advise persons whose relatives were kidnapped on what to do,” he said.
...
"On Wednesday, Nigeria’s attorney general said the groups responsible for the kidnappings would be formally listed as terrorists, and as a result anyone negotiating with kidnappers could be charged with financing terror groups."

Thursday, January 27, 2022

A brief history of deceased organ donation in one career--Howard Nathan retires

Organ donation and transplantation is still new enough that significant parts of its history can have been experienced in one career.  The WSJ reports on Howard Nathan's retirement from the Gift of Life Organ Procurement Organization, which he joined in 1978:

Howard Nathan Spent Decades ‘On Call’ for Organ Transplants. The CEO of the Gift of Life Donor Program is stepping down after a long career connecting organ donors with patients in need.  By Emily Bobrow

"When Mr. Nathan, 68, first joined the nonprofit that would become Gift of Life, he was one of three employees. Working around the clock, he traveled to hospitals in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey for hard conversations with grieving families and then made calls to surgeons in the hope of matching a donated organ with a waiting patient. “We would be driving on the Turnpike with a kidney in the car at three in the morning,” Mr. Nathan recalls on a video call from Gift of Life headquarters in central Philadelphia. “In the early days we had to make it up as we went along.”

"In 1994 he helped to draft Pennsylvania’s landmark organ donation law, which mandated that hospitals call organ-procurement organizations whenever a patient died. “Hospitals used to call when they wanted to. We were like Maytag repairmen waiting by the phone,” Mr. Nathan remembers. The law, which included funds for public-awareness campaigns and gave people a chance to register as organ donors when getting or renewing a driver’s license, increased donations by 43% in three years, he says. It became the model for a federal law in 1998.

...

"Brain death was a fairly new concept when Mr. Nathan first worked as an organ-donation coordinator—a job held by maybe 200 people around the country at the time. “We really had to teach and train people in the medical and legal aspects of donation,” he says.

...

"When Mr. Nathan entered the field, the success rate for transplants hovered at 30-35%. With the discovery in the early 1980s of immunosuppressant drugs, which curb the body’s natural rejection of foreign body parts, success rates have climbed above 90%."


HT: Frank McCormick

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Matching and market design in the January issue of Theoretical Economics

 The current issue has three papers on the market design of matching markets.

Theoretical Economics, Volume 17, Number 1 (January 2022): Table of Contents

Here are the market design articles that caught my eye:

Rank-optimal assignments in uniform markets  by Afshin Nikzad

"We prove that in a market where agents rank objects independently and uniformly at random, there exists an assignment of objects to agents with a constant average rank (i.e., an average rank independent of the market size). The proof builds on techniques from random graph theory and the FKG inequality (Fortuin et al. (1971)). When the agents’ rankings are their private information, no Dominant Strategy Incentive Compatible mechanism can implement the assignment with the smallest average rank; however, we show that there exists a Bayesian Incentive Compatible mechanism that does so. Together with the fact that the average rank under the Random Serial Dictatorship (RSD) mechanism grows infinitely large with the market size, our findings indicate that the average rank under RSD can take a heavy toll compared to the first-best, and highlight the possibility of using other assignment methods in scenarios where average rank is a relevant objective.

*******

Family ties: school assignment with siblings by Umut Dur, Thayer Morrill, and William Phan

"We introduce a generalization of the school choice problem motivated by the following observations: students are assigned to grades within schools, many students have siblings who are applying as well, and school districts commonly guarantee that siblings will attend the same school. This last condition disqualifies the standard approach of considering grades independently as it may separate siblings. We argue that the central criterion in school choice—elimination of justified envy—is now inadequate as it does not consider siblings. We propose a new solution concept, suitability, that addresses this concern, and we introduce a new family of strategy-proof mechanisms where each satisfies it. Using data from the Wake County magnet school assignment, we demonstrate the impact on families of our proposed mechanism versus the “naive” assignment where sibling constraints are not taken into account."

**********

Optimal organ allocation policy under blood-type barriers with the donor-priority rule by Jaehong Kim and Mengling Li

"Shortages in organs for transplantation have resulted in a renewed interest in designing incentive policies to promote organ supply. The donor-priority rule, which grants priority for transplantation based on deceased organ donor registration status, has proven to be effective in both theory and practice. This study investigates the implications of the donor-priority rule for optimal deceased organ allocation policy design under a general formulation of blood-type barriers. We find that for any blood typing and organ matching technology, reserving type X organs for only type X patients maximizes the aggregate donation rate under regular distributions, which also ensures equity in organ sharing. Moreover, this is the unique optimal allocation policy if and only if the directed compatibility graph that corresponds to a given organ matching technology is acyclic."

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Multiple offer mechanisms in school choice, when information gathering is costly

 When it's costly to gather information needed to inform yourself about your own preferences, having a guaranteed offer in hand may justify the effort to gather necessary information.  Here's a paper that considers that as a first order issue:

The Case for Dynamic Multi-offer Mechanisms, by Julien Grenet YingHua He Dorothea Kübler

January 2022, (Forthcoming: The Journal of Political Economy)

Abstract: We document quasi-experimental evidence against the common assumption in the matching literature that agents have full information on their own preferences. In Germany’s university admissions, the first stages of the Gale-Shapley algorithm are implemented in real time, allowing for multiple offers per student. We demonstrate that non-exploding early offers are accepted more often than later offers, despite not being more desirable. These results, together with survey evidence and a theoretical model, are consistent with students’ costly discovery of preferences. A novel dynamic multi-offer mechanism that batches early offers improves matching efficiency by informing students of offer availability before preference discovery.

**********

Update: the paper appears as

Grenet, Julien, YingHua He, and Dorothea Kübler. "Preference Discovery in University Admissions: The Case for Dynamic Multi-offer Mechanisms." Journal of Political Economy, volume 130, number 6, June 2022, 1427-1476,  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/718983


Monday, January 24, 2022

23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’22)--call for papers (by Feb 10)

 The deadline is 11:59pm EDT on Feb 10, but I'm guessing that papers have a good chance of being received as late as midnight.

23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’22): Call for Contributions

"TL;DR for Seasoned Authors:

Papers submitted to EC’22 must select one of four methodological tracks and up to two content areas. The list of tracks and content areas can be found below.

EC’22 is continuing the forward-to-journal option as in previous years.

EC’22 is currently planned as a primarily in-person event, with some components (e.g., poster sessions and tutorials) to be held either virtually or in a hybrid format. Presenters of accepted papers who cannot (or do not feel comfortable to) travel to EC’22 will have the option to present their paper virtually.

...

Timetable for Authors

February 10, 2022 (11:59 pm EST): Paper submission deadline

April 11, 2022 (11:59pm EDT): Reviews sent to authors for feedback

April 14, 2022 (11:59pm EDT): Author responses due

May 8, 2022: Paper accept/reject notifications

May 18, 2022 (11:59pm EDT): Camera-ready versions of accepted papers due

July 11-15, 2022: Conference technical program"

...

Program Chairs:

Sven Seuken (University of Zurich and ETH AI Center)

Ilya Segal (Stanford University)

Contact the PC chairs at ec22chairs@gmail.com 

Track Chairs:

Theory: Robert Kleinberg (Cornell University) and Aaron Roth (University of Pennsylvania)

Applied Modeling: Gabriel Weintraub (Stanford University)

Empirics: Georgios Zervas (Boston University)

AI: Kevin Leyton-Brown (University of British Columbia)


EC’22 will use the following areas:

Mechanism design

Auctions and pricing

Market design and matching markets

Contract design

Online platforms and applications

Econometrics, ML, and data science

Equilibria, learning, and dynamics in games

Social choice and voting theory

Social networks and social learning

Fair division

Market equilibria

Crowdsourcing and information elicitation

Privacy, algorithmic fairness, social good, and ethics

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies

Behavioral economics and bounded rationality


Area Chairs: Nick Arnosti (University of Minnesota)  Haris Aziz (University of New South Wales)  Moshe Babaioff (Microsoft Research)  Yakov Babichenko (Technion)  Bruno Biais (Toulouse School of Economics)  Martin Bichler (Technical University of Munich)  Larry Blume (Cornell University)  Liad Blumrosen (Hebrew University)  Benjamin Brooks (University of Chicago) Yang Cai (Yale University)  Agostino Capponi (Columbia University)  Yeon-Koo Che (Columbia University)  Rachel Cummings (Columbia University)  Nikhil Devanur (Amazon)  John Dickerson (University of Maryland)  Laura Doval (Columbia University)  Paul Duetting (Google Research)  Michal Feldman (Tel Aviv University)  Ashish Goel (Stanford University)  Hanna Halaburda (New York University Stern School of Business)  Hoda Heidari (Carnegie Mellon University)  Martin Hoefer (Goethe University Frankfurt)  Ian Kash (University of Illinois at Chicago)  Fuhito Kojima (University of Tokyo)  Nicolas Lambert (MIT)  Jacob Leshno (The University of Chicago Booth School of Business)  Shengwu Li (Harvard University)  Annie Liang (University of Pennsylvania)  Brendan Lucier (Microsoft Research)  Mohammad Mahdian (Google Research)  Azarakhsh Malekian (University of Toronto)  R. Preston McAfee  Reshef Meir (Technion)  Jamie Morgenstern (University of Washington)  Thayer Morril (North Carolina State University)  Denis Nekipelov (University of Virginia)  Sigal Oren (Ben-Gurion University)  Michael Ostrovsky (Stanford University)  Rafael Pass (Cornell University)  Ariel Procaccia (Harvard University)  Marek Pycia (University of Zurich)  Marzena Rostek (University of Wisconsin-Madison)  Jay Sethuraman (Columbia University)  Nisarg Shah (University of Toronto)  Peng Shi (University of Southern California)  Alex Slivkins (Microsoft Research)  Eric Sodomka  Nicolas Stier-Moses (Facebook)  Siddharth Suri (Microsoft Research)  Steve Tadelis (Berkeley–Haas)  Inbal Talgam-Cohen (Technion)  Alexander Teytelboym (University of Oxford)  Utku Unver (Boston College)  Vijay Vazirani (University of California, Irvine)  Jens Witkowski (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management)  James Wright (University of Alberta)  Lirong Xia (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)  Bumin Yenmez (Boston College)  Yair Zick (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)  Aviv Zohar (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Paired kidney donation performed in Germany--a guest post by Ágnes Cseh

 Below is a post written by Ágnes Cseh, about a kidney exchange conducted legally in Germany, in October, after being identified outside of the medical establishment. (The links she supplies are all worth looking into, and Google translate works well enough.)

"The legal basis for a living organ donation in Germany is a relationship or close personal connection between donor and recipient. This well-meant rule implicitly forbids paired kidney donation, because even though recipient and donor are closely related in each of the two pairs participating in a paired donation, the physical graft a patient receives technically comes from the relative of the other recipient.

A cumbersome, but legal way around the regulation is to establish a close personal connection between all four persons involved in a paired donation. Then, an ethical committee might approve of the two transplants separately. This constellation even inspired filmmakers to shoot a fictional movie about such a venture -- the genre is supposed to be comedy. In reality, paired transplants have been performed very sporadically in the past years in Germany.

A new initiative offers a centralized platform for paired kidney donations. It is run by Susanne Reitmaier, an activist fighting for the complete legalization of paired donations and Ágnes Cseh, a researcher specialized in matching theory. They maintain a database of the voluntarily submitted medical data of incompatible recipient-donor pairs. If a possible match among these pairs is found, then the two pairs are put into contact with each other so that they can establish the personal connection required by the law.

The first match in this program was identified in July 2020. After a long journey (see the detailed report in English here and in German here), the transplants were finally performed in October 2021 in Berlin. The ethical committee first rejected their claim, but then approved of the two transplants as one paired donation, not as two separate donations. This might be a milestone in the practice and potentially lead to more standardized procedures in the future.

As time goes by and word gets around, more and more incompatible pairs enter their data into the database. A handful of already identified pairs for paired donations are currently in different stages of the medical and legal process. The first step taken by Charité Berlin encouraged other hospitals to show interest in conducting paired transplants.

Despite of this recent progress, an efficient kidney exchange program would clearly require a law change in Germany. It would be sufficient to modify the current regulation marginally, by stating that the close personal connection is meant for the pairs entering the pool together and not for the matched pairs."

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

Here's a link to (and translation of) an op-ed I published in a German newspaper in 2016 urging that the law be amended to allow regular kidney exchange:

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


And here are all my posts on kidney exchange in Germany.


Saturday, January 22, 2022

Matchup 2022: matching and market design in Vienna, August 25-2

 Here's the announcement and call for papers

Matchup 2022 

MATCH-UP 2022 is the 6th workshop in an interdisciplinary and international workshop series on matching under preferences . It will take place on 25-26 August 2022, hosted by TU Vienna and co-located with MFCS 2022 (47th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science).

Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that individuals have preferences over the possible outcomes and the task is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal with respect to these preferences. There has been a resurgence of activity in this area in recent years, with online and mobile computing opening up new avenues of research and novel, path-breaking applications.

The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design, and economics. Thus, a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas. Another important aim is to convey the excitement of recent research and new application areas, exposing participants to new ideas, new techniques, and new problems.

List of Topics

The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:

  • Two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g., college admissions, medical resident allocation, job markets, and school choice)

  • Two-sided matchings involving agents and objects (e.g., house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, and school choice)

  • One-sided matchings (e.g., roommate problems, coalition formation games, and kidney exchange)

  • Multi-dimensional matchings (e.g., 3D stable matching problems)

  • Matching with payments (e.g., assignment game)

  • Online and stochastic matching models (e.g., Google Ads, ride sharing, Match.com)

  • Other recent applications (e.g., refugee resettlement, food banks, social housing, and daycare)

Invited Speakers

Friday, January 21, 2022

Black market marijuana coexists with legal marijuana in Oregon, and competes with it in California

In a growing number of U.S. states, it is legal to grow and sell marijuana. But the price remains highest in the states where it is illegal, and so black markets persist alongside legal markets. 

Politico has the story:

‘Talk About Clusterf---’: Why Legal Weed Didn’t Kill Oregon’s Black Market. Legalization was supposed to take care of the black market. It hasn’t worked out that way.  By NATALIE FERTIG

"Over the last two years, there’s been such an influx of outlaw farmers that southern Oregon now rivals California’s notorious Emerald Triangle as a national center of illegal weed cultivation. Even though marijuana cultivation has been legal in Oregon since 2014, Jackson County Sheriff Nate Sickler says there could be up to 1,000 illegal operations in a region of more than 4,000 square miles. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which oversees the state’s $1.2 billion legal cannabis industry, estimates the number of illicit operations is double that.

...

"What is happening in the woods of the southern Oregon represents one of the most confounding paradoxes of the legalized marijuana movement: States with some of the largest legal markets are also dealing with rampant illegal production — and the problem is getting worse. Oklahoma, where licenses to cultivate medical marijuana are some of the easiest to get in the nation, has conducted more than five dozen raids on illicit grows since last April. In California, meanwhile, most of the state continues to purchase cannabis from unlicensed sources — straining legal operators already struggling with the state’s high taxes and fees.

...

"One of the underlying promises for legalizing cannabis was that legalization would make the illegal drug trade, with all its attendant problems of violent crime and money laundering, disappear. But 25 years into the legalization movement, as 36 states have adopted some form of legalized marijuana, the black market is booming across the country. Legal states such as Oregon and California — which have been supplying the nation for nigh on 60 years — are still furnishing the majority of America’s illegal weed.

...

"Oregon’s weed is some of the cheapest in the nation, and Oregonians predominantly purchase weed from licensed dispensaries. Economist Beau Whitney estimates that 80-85 percent of the state’s demand is met by the legal market. But most of the illicit weed grown in southern Oregon is leaving the state, heading to places where legal weed is still not available for purchase such as New York or Pennsylvania — or where the legal price is still very high, like Chicago and Los Angeles. In Illinois, which legalized medical marijuana in 2013, only about a third of the demand for cannabis is satisfied by legal dispensaries, according to Whitney. Differences in tax rate and regulations plays the major role in differences from state to state, Whitney explains.

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

And in California it appears that high taxes on the legal market allow the black market to exist alongside. NBC has the story:

Craft cannabis industry in California is 'on the brink of collapse,' advocates say. Small cannabis growers and operators say the state's hefty taxes are shutting them out despite promises to expand the industry and make it more inclusive.  By Alicia Victoria Lozano

"Last month, marijuana companies warned Newsom in a letter that immediate tax cuts and a rapid expansion of retail outlets were needed to steady an increasingly unstable marketplace shaken by illicit dealers and growers.

"More than two dozen cannabis executives and legalization advocates signed the letter after years of complaints that the heavily taxed industry is unable to compete with the widespread illegal economy, which offers far lower consumer prices and has double or triple the sales of the legal market."


Thursday, January 20, 2022

Vacancy chains in urban housing

 Vacancy chains occur not just in labor markets, but also in housing markets. (Earlier this week I wrote about housing chains for hermit crabs that result from evictions.)  A vacancy chain in a housing market can be thought of as a moving chain: someone moves into a vacant house or apartment (perhaps a newly constructed one), and someone else moves into the home they vacated, and so on, until the chain ends when a person who was in some different market (e.g. in rental housing, or in a distant location) moves into the last identifiable home in the chain.

Here are two papers that explore what happens when newly constructed housing is relatively expensive. They find that the chain often reaches much more moderately priced housing, i.e. adding to the stock of expensive housing also makes more affordable, existing housing available to new occupants.

The first paper draws on data from a dozen American cities (from Atlanta to San Francisco):

The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market, by Evan Mast, Journal of Urban Economics, Available online 27 July 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2021.103383

Abstract: I illustrate how new market-rate construction loosens the market for lower-quality housing through a series of moves. First, I use address history data to identify 52,000 residents of new multifamily buildings in large cities, their previous address, the current residents of those addresses, and so on for six rounds. The sequence quickly reaches units in below-median income neighborhoods, which account for nearly 40 percent of the sixth round, and similar patterns appear for neighborhoods in the bottom quintile of income or percent white. Next, I use a simple simulation model to roughly quantify these migratory connections under a range of assumptions. Constructing a new market-rate building that houses 100 people ultimately leads 45 to 70 people to move out of below-median income neighborhoods, with most of the effect occurring within three years. These results suggest that the migration ripple effects of new housing will affect a wide spectrum of neighborhoods and loosen the low-income housing market.

%%%%%%%%%%%

A more recent working paper draws on data from metropolitan Helsinki and reaches similar conclusions:

Bratu, Cristina and Harjunen, Oskari and Saarimaa, Tuukka, City-wide Effects of New Housing Supply: Evidence from Moving Chains (August 31, 2021). VATT Institute for Economic Research Working Papers 146, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3929243 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3929243

Abstract: We study the city-wide effects of new, centrally-located market-rate supply using geo-coded total population register data from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The supply of new market rate units triggers moving chains that quickly reach middle- and low-income neighborhoods and individuals. Thus, new market-rate construction loosens the housing market in middle- and low-income areas even in the short run. Market-rate supply is likely to improve affordability outside the sub-markets where new construction occurs and to benefit low-income people.

**********

Earlier:

Vacancy chains in housing for hermit crabs   

Blum, Y., A.E. Roth, and U.G. Rothblum "Vacancy Chains and Equilibration in Senior-Level Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, 76, 2, October 1997, 362-411.

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Dialysis provider DaVita enters the transplant space

 Here's the press release:

DaVita Acquires MedSleuth, Deepens Efforts to Improve Transplant Experience. Transplant software company helps DaVita bolster its presence along the kidney care journey

" DaVita Inc. today announced its acquisition of transplant software company MedSleuth. Working with transplant centers across the U.S., MedSleuth aims to create greater connectivity among transplant candidates, transplant centers, physicians and care teams to help improve the experience and outcomes for kidney and liver transplant patients.

"With this acquisition, DaVita deepens its efforts to fuel transplant innovation, underscoring its commitment to improve care at every stage and setting along a patient's kidney care journey.

"Kidney transplantation is a life-changing option for most people with kidney failure, one that's limited today by supply and complexity," said Javier Rodriguez, CEO for DaVita. "MedSleuth has built a powerful platform that can help increase patients' access to transplantation. We're looking forward to supporting the team to accelerate innovation and help streamline the transplant process for transplant candidates, transplant centers, physicians and care teams."

"From lack of supply to meet the demand to understanding and staying on top of the complex process from workup to wait list to transplant, the U.S. transplant system can be complicated to navigate.

"MedSleuth's innovative software can help not only streamline the process of evaluating candidates and keep them active on the waitlist but may also help increase the rate of transplantation through living donation. The software can also make it easier for transplant candidates' doctors and care teams to help support them along the transplant journey.

"BREEZE™, MedSleuth's flagship product, helps remove certain barriers for potential kidney and liver donors and recipients by remotely gathering relevant clinical and demographic information and sharing it with participating transplant centers—effectively streamlining the transplant process, from candidate evaluation through donor and recipient follow-up.

"MATCHGRID™, MedSleuth's paired exchange platform, uses optimization algorithms to find chains for paired donation. This helps transplant center clinicians rapidly match living organ donors with recipients who have willing, healthy but incompatible donors."


HT; Martha Gershun

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Evictions and coalitions in the housing market of hermit crabs--shell trafficking in the wild

 I've previously blogged about the observation that hermit crabs, who live in the shells of other animals and have to get new shells as they grow, sometimes engage in chains of exchange, that resemble kidney exchange chains, or vacancy chains in labor markets.

In particular, they resemble kidney exchange chains initiated by a deceased donor, in this case initiated by an empty shell.

 Here's a new article about hermit crabs which reports that they also engage in something that looks like organ trafficking, with a hermit crab being forcibly removed from its shell by two smaller crabs acting in concert, so that one of them may occupy the now vacant shell while the other moves into the shell of its partner in crime.

Laidre, Mark E. "The Architecture of Cooperation Among Non-kin: Coalitions to Move Up in Nature’s Housing Market." Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2021): 928.

"Coalitions typically involve two individuals (a pair), with a third individual being the target that the two-member coalition seeks to evict from its shell (Figure 1). Both members of the coalition have shells of their own, but these individuals and their shells are virtually always smaller than that of the target individual and its shell. Sometimes, based on the commotion and struggle generated during an attempted eviction, additional individuals—beyond the target and the core two-member coalition—are attracted to the area. These additional individuals—referred to as “third parties” or “bystanders”—are not part of the actual coalition, since they do not help at all to evict the target. Generally, third parties simply wait in the vicinity and sometimes position themselves in a social chain, which emanates from the back of the shell of one or both of the coalition members (Figure 2). This positioning in a social chain enables third parties to indirectly benefit, since in the event an eviction succeeds, it can catalyze a succession of back-to-back shell swaps (see Laidre, 2019a). Third parties are thus, in effect, “free riders” (Sigmund, 2010), since their positioning around the coalition offers no advantage whatsoever to the coalition itself as it works to evict the target. Indeed, whether third parties are positioned in a chain or not, they merely wait, performing no pulling actions and never adding any strength or providing any help to the two-member coalition. Interestingly, based on precisely where third parties position themselves, some may potentially even undermine the coalition (see below), effectively acting not merely as “free riders” but as “cheaters” (Sigmund, 2010). Finally, if too many bystanders accumulate, it can lead to chaotic jockeying and repositioning, with the original coalition separating.

"Whether with third parties present or not, the two members of the coalition attempt to physically evict the target. The target remains flipped on its back (i.e., with the dorsal side of its shell on the ground) and the opening of the target’s shell faces upward, allowing both coalition members to use their claws and legs to grab at and pull the anterior portion of the target’s body. As the coalition forcibly pulls, the target attempts to resist by clinging inside its shell. Typically, the two coalition members both pull simultaneously; though at times the two may alternate attempts at pulling, each doing so sequentially as one or the other member briefly rests. Both members of a coalition appear strongly involved, in terms of time and effort. Yet coalitions are not always successful. In some cases, one or both coalition members may give up; or the target individual may manage to flip itself over, escape from being pinned down, and run away. If a coalition is successful at evicting the target, the time till eviction occurs can vary widely, from just minutes up to hours (Laidre, personal observation). Once a coalition is successful and the target individual is evicted from its shell, then the evictee is pushed to the side and remains naked and shell-less as one of the coalition members moves into its now empty shell."

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Earlier:

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Monday, January 17, 2022

Honoring Milgrom and Wilson at the ASSA meetings in January (video)

 The video is at the link, there are four ten minute discussions, followed by brief responses by Paul and Bob. 

My discussion of Bob Wilson begins at around 27:20, and my final words to him were "Bob: you saw and demonstrated the future of game theory in economics, earlier and more clearly than anyone else.  We’re all lucky to know you."

AEA Nobel Laureate Address Honoring the 2020 Nobel Laureates Paul R. Milgrom (Stanford University) and Robert B. Wilson (Stanford University)
January 8, 2022 at 2:30 PM ET
View Recording


Presiding: Christina D. Romer, University of California-Berkeley


Susan Athey
Stanford University
Topic: Honoring Paul R. Milgrom
Bengt Holmstrom
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Topic: Honoring Paul R. Milgrom
Alvin Roth
Stanford University
Topic: Honoring Robert B. Wilson
Srihari Govindan
University of Rochester
Topic: Honoring Robert B. Wilson

Sunday, January 16, 2022

Centralized Student Choice and Assignment Systems around the world

 Christopher Neilson at Princeton has launched a web site aimed at organizing information on school choice around the world. The site opens with an ambitious world map, and it looks like there is still plenty of room for contributions from people with information on school choice systems wherever they are.

Centralized Student Choice and Assignment Systems

"Centralized Choice and Assignment Systems have been implemented in many countries and different settings, in an adoption trend that is likely to continue.

"With support from the Industrial Relations Sector at the Economics Faculty of Princeton University, this project aims to document the adoption trend and the large heterogeneity in implementation practices, with the objective of fostering further research into the different systems and identifying best practices for different contexts.

"The team has worked intensively in collecting and organizing the data. Nonetheless, the project is very ambitious and information about the different systems can be improved and needs to be updated. Therefore, with this challenge in mind, this webpage has been created to be able to share the data with the research and policy making communities around the world, and to invite everyone to contribute to the effort, suggesting edits and additional information that will improve upon the data collected."



Saturday, January 15, 2022

Neighborhoods matter in school choice

 Here's a working paper that observes that assignments of places to pre-kindergarten students remains strongly influenced by where the children live, even in the presence of a school choice system.  I.e. many pre-kindergarten students go to neighborhood schools.

Distance to Schools and Equal Access in School Choice Systems, by Mariana Laverde

 Abstract: This paper studies the limits of school choice policies in the presence of residential segregation. Using data from the Boston Public Schools choice system, I show that white prekindergarteners are assigned to higher-achieving schools than minority students, and that cross-race school achievement gaps under choice are no lower than would be generated by a neighborhood assignment rule. To understand why choicebased assignments do not reduce gaps in school achievement, I use data on applicants’ rank-order choices to estimate preferences over schools, and consider a series of counterfactual assignments. I find that half of the gap in school achievement between white and Black or Hispanic students is explained by minorities’ longer travel distance to high-performing schools. Differences in demand parameters explain a smaller fraction of the gap, while algorithm rules have no effect."

From the conclusions:

"The salience of travel costs shows a first-order channel for why neighborhoods matter, highlighting how the effective provision of public goods can be affected by geography at very granular levels. In some way these results are not surprising. Most, if not all, of the papers that study school demand agree that distance is a key factor in parental choices. This paper takes this observation one step further and quantifies how much this cost limits the effectiveness of school choice policies in equalizing access to high-achieving schools. The results show that even in a generous choice environment where parents face minimal restrictions to their choices and free transportation is provided, distance can contribute greatly to inequity and that the design of the assignment algorithm can do little to break structural place-based inequities. This finding is not only relevant for the pre-kindergarten population. Not only we know that early investments can have lasting impacts on adult outcomes, but also, choice systems are typically designed to grandfather students into subsequent grades within a school. Then, even if travel costs are lower for older children, early assignments are held for several years after. In consequence, inequities in pre-kindergarten extend well after that period."

Friday, January 14, 2022

Experimental Economics in the Tradition of John Kagel (video)

 In October there was an in-person celebration of John Kagel, which I was delighted to participate in, in Tucson, Arizona. (It was my first in-person conference since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, during a brief window of optimism.) Now it's been posted on YouTube by the hosts, at the Economic Science Lab of the University of Arizona:

Keynote lecture of Professor Alvin Roth at the Workshop in Honor of John Kagel, Tucson, Arizona, October 2021


My talk was called Experimental Economics in the Tradition of John Kagel, and I began by explaining this photograph, which has John in the middle.


I eventually focused on how the following experiment helped shape a good deal of practical market design:

Kagel, John H. and A.E. Roth, "The dynamics of reorganization in matching markets: A laboratory experiment motivated by a natural experiment," Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 2000, 201-235.

And I concluded by giving John some unnecessary advice as he embarks on his tenth decade.
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You can see more from the 2021 North-American Economic Science Association Conference (including the above video) here.