The Golden Goose awards are given each year to "recognize the tremendous human and economic benefits of federally funded research by highlighting examples of seemingly obscure studies that have led to major breakthroughs and resulted in significant societal impact."
This year they recognize three streams of work, that have led to the recovery of an endangered woodpecker species, to the more effective counting of penguins, and to the invention of neural nets on which the current artificial intelligence industry is based.
Here's the first paragraph of the description of this third award (last but not least:)
"Decades before artificial intelligence emerged as the platform for innovation that it is today, David Rumelhart, James McClelland, and Geoffrey Hinton were exploring a new model to explain human cognition. Dissatisfied with the prevailing symbolic theory of cognition, David Rumelhart began to articulate the need for a new approach to modeling cognition in the mid-1970s, teaming up with McClelland with support from the National Science Foundation to create a model of human perception that employed a new set of foundational ideas. At around the same time, Don Norman, an early leader in the field of cognitive science, obtained funding from the Sloan Foundation to bring together an interdisciplinary group of junior scientists, including Hinton, with backgrounds in computer science, physics, and neuroscience. Rumelhart, McClelland, and Hinton led the development of the parallel distributed processing framework, also known as PDP, in the early-1980s, focusing on how networks of simple processing units, inspired by the properties of neurons in the brain, could give rise to human cognitive abilities. While many had dismissed the use of neural networks as a basis for building models of cognition in the 1960s and 1970s, the PDP group revived interest in the approach. Skeptics critiqued the new models too, and had only limited success in enabling effective artificially intelligent systems until the 2010s, when massive increases in the amount of available data and computer power enabled Hinton and others to achieve breakthroughs leading to an explosion of new technological advancements and applications."
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Prior awards included market design in 2013 and 2014.
Jacob Leshno points out this NYT story. He writes "The gist of it is that Citi bike pays to deliver bikes to stations with shortages, and someone figured they could make money by creating artificial shortages."
The Hustlers Who Make $6,000 a Month by Gaming Citi Bikes. The bike-sharing program rewards users who help redistribute bikes around New York City. A few riders have figured out how to turn that into profit. By Christopher Maag (Christopher Maag spent several days in Midtown Manhattan running behind Bike Angels.)
"By monitoring a map of stations on Lyft’s app, they noticed that the algorithm awards points on a sliding scale based on need. Removing a bike from a completely full station: up to four points. Docking at an empty station? That’s worth up to another four. People who move at least four bikes in a 24-hour period get all their points multiplied by a factor of three.
"Lyft pays 20 cents per point. Each ride generates a maximum of 24 points. In perfect conditions, a person on a 3X streak who relocates a bike from a full dock to a completely empty one can earn as much as $4.80 for a single ride.
...
"At 10 a.m. on a Tuesday last month, seven Bike Angels descended on the docking station at Broadway and 53rd Street, across from the Ed Sullivan Theater. Each rider used his own special blue key — a reward from Citi Bike — to unlock a bike. He rode it one block east, to Seventh Avenue. He docked, ran back to Broadway, unlocked another bike and made the trip again.
"By 10:14, the crew had created an algorithmically perfect situation: One station 100 percent full, a short block from another station 100 percent empty. The timing was crucial, because every 15 minutes, Lyft’s algorithm resets, assigning new point values to every bike move.
"The clock struck 10:15. The algorithm, mistaking this manufactured setup for a true emergency, offered the maximum incentive: $4.80 for every bike returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater. The men switched direction, running east and pedaling west."
Paul Milgrom forwards me this account of his testimony as an expert for the defense in the DOJ v Google trial on display ads. Expert testimony is partly theater, and parts of the article read like a theater review.
"Tuesday was dominated by the testimony of Google expert Dr. Paul Milgrom, Professor at Stanford University and the Chairman of “Auctionomics.”
"Dr. Milgrom is Google’s counterweight to the government’s Dr. Ravi.
"As soon as his testimony began, I realized he would be a formidable witness, not just because of his outstanding intellect and subject matter expertise, but because he is the kind of witness that is simply challenging for a counterparty to deal with. An older gentleman, he was equal parts charming, intelligent, poised, unflagging while enduring hours on the stand, and spoke with the quiet confidence and humility of the wisdom of his years.
...
"By presenting with charisma, charm, wit, and as one person described to me during a break, “grandpa vibes,” an outside observer who hails from most of the world’s cultures intrinsically wants to like Prof. Milgrom"
##########
Yesterday's post also touched on expert witnesses for the defense, from the DOJ's perspective:
"Are the world’s most powerful corporations buying the brains of economists and legal scholars? It certainly sounds that way if you listen to the chief antitrust enforcer at the Department of Justice.
...
"Kanter didn’t exactly say anything about buying brains. That’s my flourish. What he did say was that “all over the world, money earmarked specifically to discourage antitrust and competition law enforcement is finding its way into the expert community upon which we all depend.
”He even said: “Conflicts of interest and capture have become so rampant and commonplace that it is increasingly rare to encounter a truly neutral academic expert.”
...
"Part of the problem is inadequate disclosure, he said. “If a paper was shadow-funded or influenced by corporate money, it can pass that influence and whatever flaws or biases it introduced into the papers that build on it,” he said. “This insidious ripple effect is difficult — if not nearly impossible — to detect.”
#########
I'm not sure how big a problem this is, but here's the American Economic Association's code of professional conduct
AEA Code of Professional Conduct
Adopted April 20, 2018
The American Economic Association holds that principles of professional conduct should guide economists in academia, government, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.
The AEA's founding purpose of "the encouragement of economic research" requires intellectual and professional integrity. Integrity demands honesty, care, and transparency in conducting and presenting research; disinterested assessment of ideas; acknowledgement of limits of expertise; and disclosure of real and perceived conflicts of interest.
The AEA encourages the "perfect freedom of economic discussion." This goal requires an environment where all can freely participate and where each idea is considered on its own merits. Economists have a professional obligation to conduct civil and respectful discourse in all forums, including those that allow confidential or anonymous participation.
The AEA seeks to create a professional environment with equal opportunity and fair treatment for all economists, regardless of age, sex, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, health condition, marital status, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, professional status, or personal connections.
Economists have both an individual responsibility for their own conduct, and a collective responsibility to promote professional conduct. These responsibilities include developing institutional arrangements and a professional environment that promote free expression concerning economics. These responsibilities also include supporting participation and advancement in the economics profession by individuals from all backgrounds, including particularly those that have been historically underrepresented.
The AEA strives to promote these principles through its activities.
About the AEA Code of Professional Conduct
In October 2017, then-AEA President Alvin E. Roth formed an Ad Hoc Committee to Consider a Code of Professional Conduct, and charged it with evaluating various aspects of professional conduct, including those which stifle diversity in Economics. The ad hoc committee, composed of John Campbell (chair), Marianne Bertrand, Pascaline Dupas, Benjamin Edelman, and Matthew D. Shapiro discussed an interim report and draft code with the AEA Executive Committee at its meeting on January 4, 2018, and provided an update to the AEA membership at the Annual Business Meeting on January 5 in Philadelphia. The interim report and draft code were circulated to the membership in January 2018 with an invitation to submit comments. The draft code was revised in response to more than 200 comments received, and the AEA Executive Committee voted on April 20 to adopt the revised Code. The committee thanks all members who offered feedback on the initial draft and would like to emphasize that it read and considered carefully every comment that was submitted.
To review the interim report from the ad hoc committee, click here.
Here's a review article on matching for medical residents, with particular attention to neurosurgery, in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science. In specialties that (like neurosurgery) allow applicants to send many signals, many applicants signal to and match with programs with which they have some prior connection.
Abstract: Postgraduate residency training has long been the cornerstone of academic medicine in the United States. The Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS), managed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), is the central residency application platform in the United States for most clinical specialties, with the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) being the algorithm for matching residency programs with applicants. However, the determination of the best fit between ERAS applicants and programs has been increasingly challenged by the rising number of applicants per residency spot. This application overburdening across competitive specialties led to several adverse downstream effects, which affected all stakeholders. While several changes and proposals were made to rectify the issue of application overburdening, the 2020-2021 ERAS Match Cycle finally saw several competitive specialties, including otolaryngology and urology, utilize a new system of supplemental residency application based on preference signals/tokens. These tokens permit applicants to electronically signal a select number of programs in a specialty of choice, with the program reviewing the application now cognizant that they have been signaled, i.e., the applicant has chosen to use up a limited set of signals for their program. Initial results from otolaryngology and urology, as described in this article, indicated the value of this new system to both applicants and educators. Given the favorable outcomes and broader uptake of the system among other specialties, the field of neurosurgery adopted the utilization of the ERAS-based program signaling and geographic preference for the first time for the 2022-2023 Residency Application Cycle and later opted to continue them for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 cycles. For the 2024-2025 Match Cycle, neurosurgery applicants have 25 signals, i.e., a "high-signal" approach, where non-signaled programs have a low interview conversion rate. This literature review discusses the rationale behind the change, the outcomes of other competitive specialties from prior cycles, the evolving nature of the change, and the potential impact on applicants and programs. As we describe in this review, signaling may potentially represent a surrogate form of an application cap. Other considerations relate to cost savings for both applicants and programs from a high-signal approach in neurosurgery. These modifications represent a foundational attempt to alleviate the application overburdening and non-holistic review in the residency application process, including for neurosurgery. While these changes have been a welcomed addition for all stakeholders in residency match cycles so far, further prospectively directed surveys along with qualitative research studies are warranted to better delineate the downstream impact of these changes and guide further optimization of the application system.
Here's an interview of Mohammad Akbarpour, as part of Scott Cunningham's growing series of interviews of interesting economists. (Even the picture of the two of them looks interesting, and it gets better:)
Scott writes:
"Welcome to the Mixtape with
Scott! Sometimes the shortest distance between point A and point B is a
straight line, but other times the shortest distance is a winding path. This
week’s guest, Mohammad
Akbarpour from Stanford University, is perhaps an example of the
latter. Mohammad is a micro theorist at Stanford who specializes in networks,
mechanism and design and two sided matching. Mohammad is an emerging young
theorist at Stanford, student of such luminaries as Matt Jackson and Al Roth,
whose background in engineering, mathematics and computer science has given him
a fresh approach to topics that I associate with Stanford’s theory people as a
whole — policy oriented, applied work, mechanism design, networks and matching.
He got into economics “the long way” — growing up in Iran, majoring in
engineering, and then moving into Stanford’s operations research PhD program.
In this interview, he generously shares a snippet of the arc of his life, and
it’s a remarkable story, and one I really enjoyed hearing. I think you will
too."
This past weekend I streamed a preview of a new movie about living organ donors, kidneys (mostly) and some livers. It's called Abundant, and early in the project it described itself as "a documentary about the human experience of giving."
The movie consists mostly of the stories of donors, the experiences they had, and how they felt and feel about the lives they saved, and their connection to other donors, who are able to share the profound satisfaction that donation has given them. The stories are interspersed with commentary from various kinds of experts. (I was on the preview list since I get a good 60 seconds of commentary:)
The movie is also about chains, starting with kidney exchange chains, since many of the donors are nondirected donors who started chains.
At a more metaphorical level, the movie talks about chains of connections. One of the people they interview is Stephen Dubner, the host of the podcast Freakonomics. He interviewed me on Freakonomics about kidney exchange, that podcast was heard by Ned Brooks, who was moved to donate a kidney (which started a chain) and then to start the National Kidney Donor Organization (NKDO). Dubner interviewed him on Freakonomics too, and those Freakonomics interviews contributed more links to the chain.
This movie is destined to be a link in that chain too.
With more than half a million people on dialysis in the U.S., almost everyone knows or knows of someone who needs a kidney transplant. This is the movie for all of them, with stories that may help them find a donor. And who knows how many people will create new links in that chain.
It's a movie about how generosity creates abundance.
Science (and math) can be self-correcting, sometimes slowly. Here's an article that corrects the first proof that the top trading cycles algorithm is group strategy proof. That's a true result, with multiple subsequent proofs. But apparently the first proof presented wasn't the best one. That's good to know.
One reason this may have taken a long time to spot is that the result is correct, and that there are subsequent proofs that connect the result to properties of other mechanisms.
Will Sandholtz and Andrew Tai, the authors, did this work as Ph.D. students at UC Berkeley. (good for them!)
• Bird (1984), first to show top trading cycles is group strategy-proof, has errors.
•We present corrected results and proofs.
•We present a novel proof of strong group strategy-proofness without non-bossiness.
"Abstract: We note that the proofs of Bird (1984), the first to show group strategy-proofness of top trading cycles (TTC), require correction. We provide a counterexample to a critical claim and present corrected proofs in the spirit of the originals. We also present a novel proof of strong group strategy-proofness using the corrected results."
"An "opt-out" law was introduced in Wales in 2015, followed by England in 2020, Scotland in 2021 and Northern Ireland in 2023.
"It means all adults are considered to have agreed to be potential organ donors when they die, unless they have recorded a decision not to donate or are in an excluded group.
"The change in law was designed to increase the number of organs available for donation.
"But ultimately families have the final say and the consent rate fell to 61% in the 12 months to April, from 69% four years ago."
"English fox hunters have tried, for years, to push back against a nearly 20-year-oldbanon their beloved sport.
"The centuries-old tradition of using packs of dogs to chase and kill foxes — or any wild mammals — became illegal in England in 2005, after a long parliamentary struggle driven by campaigners and lawmakers who opposed it on animal welfare grounds.
"So far, the law has stood, and fox hunting remains hugely unpopular among the general public: 80 percent of people in Britain think it should remain illegal, according to YouGov, a polling company.
"Now, a pro-hunting activist has a new plan of attack.
"Ed Swales, the activist, founded Hunting Kind, a lobby group that aims to protect hunting with dogs and other forms of hunting, in early 2022. He wants to use Britain’s Equality Act — which protects people from discrimination because of their age, race, sexuality or religion, among other things — to classify a pro-hunting stance as a protected belief.
...
“We’ve been doing this for millennia,” he said. Hunting is “literally part of our cultural heritage.”
"Hunting itself is not illegal in England. Shooting deer, rabbits, duck and some other animals is allowed during hunting seasons, with permission from the landowner and a gun license.
...
"Last year, Chief Superintendent Matt Longman, England’s police lead on fox hunting, said that illegal hunting was “still common practice,” with trail hunts frequently taking place in natural fox habitats.
...
"In 2007, a belief in fox hunting was explicitly denied protection in Scotland’s courts, where a judge found that “a person’s belief in his right to engage in an activity which he carries on for pleasure or recreation, however fervent or passionate,” did not compare to protected beliefs or religion, and therefore would not be covered under human rights law.
"And in 2009, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that the ban on fox hunting with dogs did not violate human rights."
As part of the Administration’s efforts,
for the first time in the program’s nearly 40-year history, HRSA has awarded
separate contracts to reform the organ procurement and transplant network.
Multiple vendors will support improving quality and patient safety, modernizing
IT, bolstering communications with patients, and more
Today, the Health Resources and
Services Administration (HRSA) at the Department of Health and Hunan Services
(HHS) announced the first ever multi-vendor contract awards to modernize the
nation’s organ transplant system to improve transparency, performance,
governance, and efficiency of the organ donation and transplantation system for
the more than 100,000 people on the organ transplant waitlist.
The Organ Procurement and
Transplantation Network (OPTN) has long faced critiques about lack of
transparency, potential for conflicts of interest, IT reliability issues and
other structural challenges. As part of the Administration’s transformation of
the OPTN, for the first time in 40 years, multiple contractors will provide
their expertise and proven experience to improve the national organ transplant
system. This transition from a single vendor to multiple vendors to support
OPTN operations is a critical step in advancing innovation in the transplant
system to better serve patients and their families and implements the
bipartisan Securing the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Act
signed by the President in September 2023.
“With the life of more than
100,000 Americans at stake, no organ donated for transplantation should go to
waste,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “For too long, our organ
transplant system has fallen short, mired in monopoly. The Biden-Harris
Administration has reformed OPTN to require accountability in the operation of
organ procurement that our transplant patients and their families demand.”
“One person is added to the
waitlist every 10 minutes. Each one relies on and deserves the best care
possible,” said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson. “Today’s action marks a
significant advancement in the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to
doing what it takes to make sure the nation’s organ matching system works for
patients, donors, and the families who depend on the OPTN for that life-saving
call.”
HRSA is announcing multiple OPTN
modernization awards to support critical actions, including:
Improving
Patient Safety - Arbor Research
Collaborative for Health will provide support on patient safety and the
policy compliance systems and processes overseen by the OPTN Board of
Directors and the Membership and Professional Standards Committee to
improve oversight of the multiple entities in the OPTN.
Supporting
OPTN IT Modernization - General Dynamic Information
Technology (GDIT) will focus on the opportunities to improve the OPTN
organ matching IT system and inform HRSA’s Next Generation IT procurement
and development work.
Increasing
Transparency and Public Engagement in OPTN Policy Development - Maximus Federal will advance opportunities to improve public
visibility and engagement in the OPTN policy making process, including
improving transparency around OPTN policy making committees’ deliberations
and actions.
Strengthening
Patient-Centered Communications -
Deloitte will focus on improvements in communications from the OPTN,
within the OPTN and, importantly, with patients and families.
Improving
OPTN Financial Management - Guidehouse Digital will
address improvements for OPTN’s budget development and management systems
and processes.
In August 2024, HRSA announced
that the OPTN Board of Directors—the governing board that develops national
organ allocation policy—is now separately incorporated and independent from the
Board of longtime OPTN contractor, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
HRSA awarded an OPTN Board Support contract to a new vendor, American
Institutes for Research, to support the newly incorporated OPTN Board of
Directors.
HRSA launched the OPTN
Modernization Initiative in March 2023, including making proposals to reform
the decades old OPTN statute and increase funding for the program to better
serve patients and families. Within a year, HRSA worked closely with bipartisan
leaders in Congress to secure passage of the Securing the U.S. OPTN Act and
substantially boost funding to support modernization efforts. Today’s awards
represent a key step forward in this work.
The total ceiling for Domain 1 is $30M, Domain 2 is $145M, Domain 3 is $235M, and Domain 4 is $40M. The following awardee information is provided for the HRSA procurement:
1. ABT GLOBAL
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 1 – $30M
2. ARBOR RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE FOR HEALTH
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 1 – $30M
3. GUIDEHOUSE DIGITAL LLC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 1, 2, 4 – $215M
4. MAXIMUS FEDERAL SERVICES
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 1, 2 – $175M
5. RAND CORPORATION
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 1 – $30M
6. CUSTOMER VALUE PARTNERS
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 2, 4 – $185M
7. GENERAL DYNAMICS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 2, 3 – $380M
8. KPMG LLP
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 2 – $145M
9. UNITED NETWORK FOR ORGAN SHARING
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 2 – $145M
10. ACCENTURE FEDERAL SERVICES LLC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 3 – $235M
11. LEIDOS INC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 3 – $235M
12. SAPIENT GOVERNMENT SERVICES INC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 3 – $235M
13. DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 4 – $40M
14. HIGHLIGHT TECHNOLOGIES INC
Total IDIQ Maximum Not to Exceed/Ceiling: Domain 4 – $40M
The IDIQs include a base ordering period of one year staring on 9/25/2024 and 4 option periods.
Frank McCormick, and Martha Gershon point me to two articles about increasing kidney transplants.
The first one is by Dylan Matthews in Vox Future Perfect. Here are its first paragraphs and last sentence (the middle is well worth reading too if you're new to this debate..)
"Its method is simple: a federal tax credit worth $10,000 a year for five years, paid to anyone who donates a kidney to a stranger. It’s the kind of thing that would’ve helped a lotwhen I donated a kidney back in 2016. Elaine Perlman, a fellow kidney donor who leads theCoalition to Modify NOTA, which is advocating for the act, estimates the measure will save 100,000 lives over the first decade it’s enacted, based on conversations with transplant centers on how many surgeries they can perform with their current resources. Polling has shown this kind of measure has overwhelming public support, withat least 64 percent of Americans supporting a systemwhere a government agency compensates donors.
And here's an article in Healthcare Brew, by Caroline Catherman:
From pigs to payouts, weighing solutions for the US kidney shortage. About one out of every 20 people waiting for a kidney transplant die each year, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Scientists, policymakers, and other experts are scrambling to find a solution.
It also talks about the End Kidney Deaths Act, and pig kidneys and more effective deceased donation as well.
Here's some further description of how kidney exchange is conducted in India without authorization* to use nondirected donors (so that all exchanges are conducted in cycles, i.e. in the absence of chains of exchange).
Vivek B. Kute, Himanshu V Patel, Subho Banerjee,Divyesh P Engineer, Ruchir B Dave, Nauka Shah, Sanshriti Chauhan ,Harishankar Meshram , Priyash Tambi , Akash Shah, Khushboo Saxena,Manish Balwani , Vishal Parmar, Shivam Shah, Ved Prakash ,Sudeep Patel, Dev Patel, Sudeep Desai, Jamal Rizvi , Harsh Patel, Beena Parikh, Kamal Kanodia, Shruti Gandhi, Michael A Rees, Alvin E Roth, Pranjal Modi “Impact of single centre kidney-exchange transplantation to increase living donor pool in India: A cohort study involving non-anonymous allocation,”Nephrology, September 2024, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nep.14380
"In India, 85% of organ donations are from living donors and 15% are from deceased donors. One-third of living donors were rejected because of ABO or HLA incompatibility. Kidney exchange transplantation (KET) is a cost-effective and legal strategy to increase living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) by 25%–35%.
"3.3 Non-anonymous allocation
"The THOA*, which regulates KET in India, is silent on the need for anonymity, so there is no legal requirement for anonymity in India, as compared with other countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden. Our experience was that 90% of iDRP [incompatible Donor-Recipient Pairs] requested the opportunity to meet their matched donor and recipient pair (mDRP) and 10% asked the treating physician to decide if they should meet. None of the iDRP requested anonymity. Therefore, we have practiced absolute non-anonymity, meaning that all mDRPs meet and share medical reports after a potential exchange is identified, but before the formal allocation of pairs. If an iDRP requests anonymity, we would be willing to accommodate them, but to date, none have done so.
"Upon meeting with their mDRP, the iDRP can refuse the proposed exchange option without reason and continue to be on the waitlist and active in the KET pool. iDRPs must complete transplant fitness and legal documents required for transplant permission from the health authority before they are given the opportunity to meet their mDRP. A meeting between mDRPs occurs in the presence of a transplant physician, who can help solve any query before the proposed match is accepted by the involved pairs. iDRP are introduced to their mDRP prior to scheduling transplants to avoid chain collapse due to iDRP refusal of the mDRP. The mDRP shares medical reports of donors with each other, can also discuss with their other family members, and consults with their family physician/nephrologist before deciding whether to proceed. Living kidney donors are fully informed of perioperative and long-term risks before making their decision to donate. In India, donor age group matching is most commonly expected for all iDRP in the KAS."
"Vahideh Manshadi, who investigates the operations of online and matching platforms, and studies algorithmic fairness and inclusion has been named the Michael H. Jordan Professor of Operations, effective immediately.
...
"She has pioneered the study of emerging systems and platforms with societal impact, including crowdsourced food recovery, volunteer crowdsourcing, refugee resettlement, and organ allocation. She has collaborated with nationwide platform-based nonprofits, including Feeding America, Food Rescue US, VolunteerMatch, and national kidney exchange programs, and often impacted the practice of these organizations.
...
"She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where she also received M.S. degrees in statistics and electrical engineering. Before joining Yale, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the MIT Operations Research Center."
It's been very interesting for me to watch the growth of preference signaling to combat congestion in applications and interviews, from its beginnings in the job market for new Ph.D. economists, to its spread through the medical specialty job markets hosted by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), and on to medical specialties that run their own matches, such as urology.
So, if you want to be a urologist, take note of the signaling deadline today:
Applicant Preference Signaling Deadline is today, September 16, 2024
The SAU has a good deal of supporting material on their site.
Here's a summary of their interview and offer procedures: Interview Offer Summary (which includes an appropriately named Flush Day for finalizing interviews).
The SAU invites applicants to send up to 30 signals, and encourages them to include programs that know them well on their signaling list. So (as I've remarked in previous posts) I think this is likely to work as a soft cap on applications.
All but one of the presentations are in Japanese (summarized below by Fuhito):
1. Introduction (Fuhito)
2. Our interview (in English)
3. More explanation of the stable matching problem and its
application to personnel assignment (Shunya Noda)
4. Application of stable matching algorithm in
personnel allocation in a firm: My team helped our partner firm, Sysmex,
introduce the DA algorithm (in fact, a modified "flexible" deferred
acceptance algorithm proposed by Kamada and Kojima 2015 AER) in the assignment
of new employees to different divisions of the firm. The firm has been using
matching algorithm for 4 years now. Our partner from the firm talks about their
experience.
5. Application to daycare assignments: My team is
collaborating with a major government contractor for municipal governments IT
system, CyberAgent. The project studies daycare-related data provided by
municipal governments and helps those government introduce and
improve their matching algorithms of daycare seats to children. Our partner
from the firm talks about our team's effort, e.g., how we convinced one city
change algorithm from Boston-like mechanism to DA, and how we helped fine-tune
their priority design to cope with problems in which kids with siblings were
not matched as well as single kids.
6. Application to auction: Shunya and his team helped an
auction platform firm to introduce an auction mechanism for selling used
electronic devices. His partner company, Aucnet, shares their experience.
"You have been writing the blog Market Design since 2008, and since then you have written almost every day a post. What motivated you to start this blog and what role does it play in your professional life?
Alvin Roth: I started it for my class. I wanted the students to know that the way to think of ideas for market design is not just to read papers in economics journals but to read the newspaper and follow why markets weren’t working well. Many of my blog posts are short comments on a newspaper article about something in the world. Since I started, it’s also proved to be a useful tool for me to remember things. So, it’s a kind of intellectual diary, as well. I’m currently working on a book on controversial markets and I look at my blog posts for each chapter. Market Design blog is my memory for everything related to market design."
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