Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Bob Wilson wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has been granted in this eighth edition to Robert B. Wilson for “pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and different information about their environment.” In the view of the jury, “his research on auctions, electricity pricing, reputation and dynamic interactions under such informational circumstances was groundbreaking and pervades economic analysis to this day.” 

ROBERT WILSON

Robert Wilson carnet
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has been granted in this eighth edition to Robert B. Wilson for “pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and different information about their environment.” In the view of the jury, “his research on auctions, electricity pricing, reputation and dynamic interactions under such informational circumstances was groundbreaking and pervades economic analysis to this day.”

For example, one of the big questions in economics is how to convince market participants to cooperate in the presence of asymmetric information, i.e., when some have access to information that others lack. Robert Wilson has spent his career studying how economic interactions unfold in circumstances of informational inequality, and has come up with a solution – that agents aim towards a reputation which facilitates cooperation.

Wilson provides tools and strategies to build reputation under varying scenarios. In two of his best known papers, he explores environments requiring different types of reputation: whereas a monopolist tries to convey an image of toughness to defend its market position and fend off unwanted competition, in situations of multilateral conflict like the “repeated prisoners’ dilemma”, the goal is to pursue a reputation for “cooperative” behavior.

Until the 1960s, the standard wisdom was that market pricing corresponded to a cooperative model in which all players shared the same information. Wilson, however, was among the first to realize that perfect information could not be assumed, and the insights of noncooperative theory must be brought into play.

Robert B. Wilson (Geneva, Nebraska, 1937) graduated in mathematics from the University of Harvard. He went on to complete a master’s degree at Harvard Business School (1961), where he also obtained his PhD with a thesis on sequential quadratic programming (1963).
In 1964 he joined the faculty at Stanford Business School, where he remains to this day. Wilson has applied his mathematical skills and game theory expertise to auction designs and competitive bidding strategies in the oil, communication, and power industries. His book Nonlinear Pricing is a referent in tariff design for public utilities from energy to transport.

Economic engineering

It was in the field known as economic engineering that Wilson put game-theoretic tools to use in improving market mechanisms, devoting most of his energies to public auctions. Among his projects in this area, we can cite the bidding for offshore oil leases along the California coast, as well as others to do with electrical power exchange and pricing.

He was accompanied in his work on auction design by one of his disciples, Paul Milgrom, winner of a BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2012 for his contributions in this and other domains.

In the mid-1990s, California telecom company Pacific Bell was preparing to bid in an auction called by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Wilson and Milgrom pointed out errors in the auction design that produced a worse outcome for both organizers and bidders and proposed an alternative method which the FCC agreed to try. Their innovation, known as the simultaneous multiple round auction (SMR), replaced the traditional sealed envelope with an open bidding format, in which each company could observe what the rest were offering, supplemented by rules to prevent monopoly pricing. The auction – of electromagnetic spectrum for what was then the new generation of cell phones and other wireless communication devices – raised the record sum of over seven billion dollars, and testified in the most practical way possible to the value of game theory in strategic decision-making.

Wilson, meantime, was exploring other kinds of economic interaction. And soon concluded that reputation was among the most powerful spurs to cooperation. “Reputation effects are most prominent in bargaining,” he remarked yesterday after hearing of the award. “For example, in labor negotiations when a firm incurs the costs of a strike in order to convince the union that the marginal productivity of labor is not higher than it actually is, it is sending out a credible signal that sustains its reputation.”

Still in the frame of game theory, Wilson, along with David Kreps, came up with the concept of sequential equilibrium, which describes the anticipated sequence of reactions of market participants on discovering that others have deviated from the original plan. “It provides each player with hypotheses about how others will act as events unfold,” he explains. This concept has given rise to a wide range of applications. In industrial organization, for instance, it has enabled more accurate modeling of price wars.

Wilson is still engaged in research at Stanford University. He is currently studying “repeated interactions between two parties who can benefit from sustained cooperation,” a situation, he notes, that may be short-lived, since “not every kind of incentive encourages cooperation on a lasting basis.” 

Author of over a hundred articles in international journals, he has consistently combined the construction of a robust theoretical framework with the search for practical solutions: “The value of theory is its usefulness in addressing practical problems, while, for the theorist, the problems encountered by practitioners provide a wealth of topics.”

This combination is a constant in his professional life, where he has alternated the presidency of the Econometric Society and associate editorship of journals like Economic Theory with advisory work for the United States Department of the Interior, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Federal Communications Commission, the Canadian Competition Bureau and sundry private corporations.

International jury

The jury in this category was chaired by Eric S. Maskin, Adams University Professor at Harvard University (United States) and 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, with Manuel Arellano, Professor of Econometrics in the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI) of Banco de EspaƱa (Spain), acting as secretary. Remaining members were Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Economics at Yale University (United States); Andreu Mas-Colell, Professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University (Spain) and 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Laureate in Economics; Jean Tirole, Chairman of the Foundation Jean-Jacques Laffont at Toulouse School of Economics (France), 2008 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Laureate in Economics and 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics; and Fabrizio Zilibotti, Chair of Macroeconomics and Political Economy in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich (Switzerland).
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And here are the BBVA laureates in other subjects.

Ph.D. admissions committees: a look under the hood at the graduate school matching market

Inside Higher Ed reviews "Inside Graduate Admissions." Here are the first few paragraphs of their review (and a link to the whole thing).

What goes on behind closed doors when professors decide who should get chance to earn a Ph.D.? Author of new book was allowed to watch. She saw elitism, a heavy focus on the GRE and some troubling conversations.
January 6, 2016
Ph.D. programs are one of the few parts of higher education where admissions decisions are made without admissions professionals. Small groups of faculty members meet, department by department, to decide whom to admit. And their decisions effectively determine the future makeup of the faculty in higher education. Politicians, judges, journalists, parents and prospective students subject the admissions policies of undergraduate colleges and professional schools to considerable scrutiny, with much public debate over appropriate criteria. But the question of who gets into Ph.D. programs has by comparison escaped much discussion.
That may change with the publication ofInside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity and Faculty Gatekeeping, out this month from Harvard University Press. Julie R. Posselt (right), the author and an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Michigan, obtained permission from 6 highly ranked departments at three research universities to watch their reviews of candidates, and she interviewed faculty members at four others. All the departments were ranked as among the top programs in their disciplines. To obtain this kind of access (not to mention institutional review board approval), Posselt had to offer complete anonymity. While her book identifies comments as coming from people in particularly disciplines, she reveals nothing about where the departments are, and she also hides most details about the applicants they reviewed.
To judge from the book, the faculty members she observed did not present her with a scripted and idealistic view of admissions. They were frank about things that they are unlikely to have shared in public.
For instance, those whose programs were not at the very top of the rankings frequently talked about not wanting to offer a spot to someone they believed would go to a higher-ranked program. They didn't want their department to be the graduate equivalent of what high school students applying to college term a safety school. In this sense many of these departments turned down superior candidates, some of whom might have enrolled.
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And here's a conversation with the author in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Inside the Graduate-Admissions Process
A study finds the pervasive misuse of test scores and too much homophily

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Real estate symposium

I participate today in a conference on an unusual (for me) subject:

REAL Symposium
SPIRE AND THE REAL PROPERTY LAW SECTION HOST
THE FIFTH ANNUAL REAL SYMPOSIUM


Fifth Annual Real Estate and Law Symposium

Tuesday, February 16, 2016
1 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
555 Salvatierra Walk
Paul Brest Hall (Law School)
Stanford University
Earn 2.5 hours of MCLE credit. 
Keynote Speakers:
  • Angela Kleiman, CFO and Executive Vice President, Essex Property Trust, Inc.
  • Alvin Roth, Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences; Professor of Economics, Stanford University
Panel topics include:
  • Space on Demand
  • Risk and Resiliency in Financial and Real Estate Markets
Register Now
Early Bird Pricing:
SPIRE/RPLS Members: $125
Non-Members: $175
Young Professionals:  $95
Stanford

Stanford Professionals
 In Real Estate (SPIRE)

The Real Property Law Section
of The State Bar of California  

Real Property Law Section Skyline Logo

About the Real Estate and Law (REAL) Symposium

The 2016 REAL Symposium will cover several legal topics such as the legal implications of the evolving use and management real estate in the new sharing economy in the areas of land use, financing, enforcement of existing regulations, and the potential for litigation.  New financing products and trends in the real estate financing markets will be discussed as well as legal issues facing transactional and financing lawyers.In addition, the lead deal maker for the largest West Coast multi-family REIT will give an inside look at the largest merger in recent history and its implications on future transactions.

Program Schedule and Speakers

EventTime

Registration

12 noon - 1 p.m.

Welcoming Remarks

1 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.

Featured Panel 1: Space On Demand

Tech innovations and the new sharing economy are changing how we work, travel and play. We are increasingly demanding accessible, fluid and fungible physical space. However, there are significant legal and financial ramifications to creating space on demand. This panel will discuss a variety of topics related to the sharing economy.
ModeratorCurtis Smolar,  Partner, Browne George Ross LLP
                                             
Panelists:
  • Scott Weiner, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
  • Diana Rothschild, CEO & President, NextSpace
  • Deborah Boyer, Executive VP & Director of Asset Management, The Swig Company
  • Fourth panelist to be announced
1:15 p.m. - 2:20 p.m.

 Keynote Speaker: Alvin Roth

Nobel Laureate 2012, Economic Sciences; Professor of Economics, Stanford University
Professor Roth has made significant contributions to the fields of game theory, market design, and market matching, and is known for his emphasis on applying economic theory to “real-world” problems. Under the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design, he uses mathematical algorithms to assign people or things to stable matches. Professor Roth’s work, which spans decades, culminated in him being awarded a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. Professor Roth is currently the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and he is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. Professor Roth received his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and his master’s and doctorate from Stanford University.
2:20 p.m. - 2:55 p.m.

Break

3 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.

Keynote Speaker: Angela Kleiman

Essex Property Trust, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President
Essex Property Trust, Inc. is a fully integrated REIT that acquires, develops, redevelops, and manages apartment communities located in highly desirable, supply-constrained markets.  Ms. Kleiman led the overall transaction management of Essex’s merger with BRE Properties at the end of last year, creating the largest West Coast multi-family REIT. Ms. Kleiman oversees the Private Equity, Capital Markets, Economic Research, Accounting, Financial Planning and Investor Relations departments. She joined Essex in 2009 to manage the company’s Private Equity Platform and grew it to $3 billion in gross assets. Prior to joining Essex, Ms. Kleiman served as Senior Equity Analyst and Vice President at Security Capital and as Vice President with J. P. Morgan Real Estate and Lodging Investment Banking Group. Ms. Kleiman received her Bachelor’s from Northwestern University and her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
3:20 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.

Featured Panel 2:  Risk and Resiliency in Financial and Real Estate Markets

The US economy has rebounded from the real estate and market crashes in 2007 and there continues to be abundant opportunity for real estate investors, developers and entrepreneurs.   At the same time real estate professionals are faced with new and not-so-new challenges in the rapidly changing real estate/financial industries and world economies.   This panel will discuss how real estate entrepreneurs, investors and financiers identify and manage opportunity and risk in the evolving economy.
ModeratorJeff Weber, Senior Managing Director, Eastdil Secured
Panelists:
  • Bill Hosler, COO, Catellus
  • Mark Myers, Executive VP & Group Head of Commercial Real Estate, Wells Fargo
  • Sam Hooker, Principal, Embarcadero Partners LLC

Monday, February 15, 2016

Dynamic matching when what you get now may determine your future priorities

Dynamic Matching Markets and the Deferred Acceptance Mechanism

John Kennes (jkennes@econ.au.dk), Daniel Monde and Norovsambuu Tumennasan (ntumennasan@econ.au.dk)
Additional contact information
Abstract: In many dynamic matching markets, priorities depend on previous allocations. In such environments, agents on the proposing side can manipulate the period-by-period deferred acceptance (DA) mechanism. We show that the fraction of agents with incentives to manipulate the DA mechanism approaches zero as the market size increases. In addition, we provide a novel al- gorithm to calculate the percentage of markets that can be manipulated. Based on randomly generated data, we find that the DA becomes approximately non-manipulable when the schools capacity reaches 20. Our theoretical and simulation results together justify the implementation of the period-by-period DA mechanism in dynamic markets.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

How can you tell you're an economist? Valentine's day economics

How can you tell you're an economist?  Maybe if Valentine's Day makes you think of dating sites as congested matching markets.  Here are two views from The Economist about thickness and congestion in dating markets:
Optimising romance: To find true love, it helps to understand the economic principles underpinning the search

Valentine’s day economics--Would a dating app just for economists work?

A Valentine's day salute to Gale and Shapley and the deferred acceptance algorithm

The University of California celebrates David Gale and Lloyd Shapley with an article appropriate to Valentine's Day:

How a matchmaking algorithm saved lives
Long before dating sites, a pair of economists delved into the question of matchmaking, and hit upon a formula with applications far beyond romance.

The article has Jane Austen characters in the explanation of the deferred acceptance algorithm, and pictures, including these:



They also link to this animated, interactive Berkeley mathsite exhibit on the stable marriage problem. (It is part of a larger MathSite interactive mathematics exhibit supported by the David Gale Fund for Interactive Mathematics.)
*********************

Valentine's day reminds me of a post from a few years ago:

What has G-d been doing since the Creation? (Matchmaking, of course...))


Happy Valentine's day to all, from Philadelphia:)

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Twitter followers for sale

I'm too verbose to be tempted by twitter, but if you need some twitter followers, one of the commenters on my blog turns out to sell them: you could buy 10,000 followers for 35 pounds sterling at his site...and 400,000 followers for 600 pounds.

Twitter Followers

£9.97£599.97

Premium quality twitter followers delivered directly to your account within 24 hours of your purchase. We do not require your password or any other login details at any point during the process.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Federico Echenique and Juan Pereyra on unraveling of matching markets

 Strategic complementarities and unravelingin matching markets 
by Federico Echenique  and  Juan SebastiĆ”n Pereyra, Theoretical Economics 11 (2016), 1–39

 Abstract: We present a theoretical explanation of inefficient early matching in matching markets. Our explanation is based on strategic complementarities and strategic unraveling. We identify a negative externality imposed on the rest of the market by agents who make early offers. As a consequence, an agent may make an early offer because she is concerned that others are making early offers. Yet other agents make early offers because they are concerned that others worry about early offers, and so on and so forth. The end result is that any given agent is more likely to make an early offer than a late offer.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Using deceased donor kidneys to start some kidney exchange chains

It would save some lives... here's a link to the abstract of a forthcoming paper (more like an editorial, really).

 Abstract

Abstract

We propose that some deceased donor kidneys be allocated to initiate non-simultaneous extended altruistic donor chains of living donor kidney transplants to address in part the huge disparity between patients on the deceased donor kidney waitlist and available donors. The use of deceased donor kidneys for this purpose would benefit waitlisted candidates in that most patients enrolled in kidney paired donation systems are also waitlisted for a deceased donor kidney transplant and receiving a kidney through the mechanism of kidney paired donation will decrease pressure on the deceased donor pool. In addition, a living donor kidney usually provides survival potential equal or superior to that of deceased donor kidneys. If kidney paired donation chains that are initiated by a deceased donor can end in a donation of a living donor kidney to a candidate on the deceased donor waitlist, the quality of the kidney allocated to waitlisted patient is likely to be improved. We hypothesize that a pilot program would show a positive impact on patients of all ethnicities and blood types.

**********

I've recently updated my game theory, experimental economics and market design page, and you can find some updated papers on kidney exchange at http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/alroth.html#KidneyExchange , and on deceased organ donation at http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/alroth.html#Otherorgan 

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Public comments at the SEC about IEX's exchange application: a seminar on the politics of market design

There's an exciting (if confusing) practical seminar on market design going on on the SEC's webpage these days, where they are posting comments on IEX's application to become an exchange.

First, here are some background news stories:

Matt Levine at Bloomberg, in December: The 'Flash Boys' Exchange Is Still Controversial

Robin Wigglesworth at the FT, this month: ‘Flash Boys’ trading venue application triggers backlash
"The Investors’ Exchange, a trading venue made famous by Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys book on high-frequency trading, has applied for full stock market status. But the application has triggered a deluge of responses and fanned the debate about the very nature of the US equity markets...."

And here is the SEC's comment page, a sort of flash mob exchange about markets and market design.

Guide to the perplexed: I like Eric Budish's comment, here: #371 … http://www.sec.gov/comments/10-222/10222-371.pdf.

About how to go through the many other comments, Eric writes: 
"For pro-IEX letters, the best place to start is the detailed letters from IEX itself. The letter from Healthy Markets is also very good on details. The letters from Southeastern Asset Management (co-signed by many other asset managers) and from Norges Bank (Norway’s sovereign wealth fund) are a bit shorter but give a sense of how pro-IEX asset managers see the debate.
For negative letters, the letters from trading firms Citadel and Hudson River Trading are quite detailed. The letter from NYSE has the distinction of being both detailed and comparing IEX to the fraudulent frozen-yogurt shop on Seinfeld.
Also recommended is the letter from Goldman Sachs, which, like my letter, supports IEX’s application but mostly talks about deeper structural issues."


You can search the comments, e.g. for "IEX"  or "Goldman Sachs," etc. to find them... 

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Military draft registration, now for women as well as men?

The recent discussions of draft registration for women have invited us to recall the discussions about conscription versus a volunteer army. This, from the Sunday NY Times:
Economists Against the Draft By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMFEB. 6, 2016

One argument that I hadn't recalled being made in just this way is that the wealthy manage to avoid drafts better than the poor, so that even a conscripted army tends to be manned (if that's still the right word) disproportionately by poorer people, but that at least the financial costs of a volunteer army fall on the taxpayers, while the financial costs of a conscripted army fall on the conscripts and their families.

The discussion about conscription versus a volunteer army brings up some issues that also arise in discussions about whether organ donors may be compensated.

Monday, February 8, 2016

A WSJ reporter prepares for Valentines Day by interviewing economists about dating sites

Here's a WSJ interview that mentions, among other things, Soo Lee and Muriel Niederle's experiment with virtual roses:

How Economists Would Fix Online Dating
A ‘thick’ market and cost-benefit analysis help avoid ‘romantic unemployment’

"One recent experiment in improving online dating sites through signaling mechanisms, conducted by economists Soohyung Lee and Muriel Niederle, gave members of a Korean dating site a limited number of virtual roses, meant to indicate special interest in a person, to include with their messages to potential matches. The result was that people were more likely to respond to those who sent them a rose..."

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Mishaps while flying transplant organs

This news story stopped with the plane, and doesn't say what happened to the organ...
No one hurt when jet scheduled to pick up donor organ slides off runway in Wheeling

Repugnance for money: The Other Paris, by Luc Sante

Paris is romanticized as the opposite of NY, and poverty as freedom from money, in this review in The Guardian of The Other Paris by Luc Sante

"“My book is a kind of love letter to the city as it was and before it got overtaken by money. Money, for me, may not immediately kill people in the way terrorism does, but it does certainly change the fabric of daily life in much deeper and more insidious ways. The terrorist may be defeated in 50 or 20 or 10 years, but money is going to be much harder to defeat.”

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Repugnant transactions in zoos

The NY Times ran the following story a little while ago:
Zoo’s Public Dissection of Lion Makes Denmark Again a Target of Outrage

"On Thursday, staff members at a zoo in Odense, the country’s third-largest city, publicly dissected the corpse of a 9-month-old lion in front of an audience including children. The lion, a healthy female, was put to death in February after the zoo sought in vain to find her another home.

"The move comes more than a year after another Danish zoo, in Copenhagen, generated global outrage when it killed a healthy 2-year-old giraffe named Marius, ostensibly to reduce the risk of inbreeding, before dissecting him and feeding him to lions.
...
"Ms. Christensen said the lion was put down to prevent inbreeding, since she was living in the same enclosure as her father and the two would have been likely to mate. The lion had since been kept in a freezer.

"She noted that while it was a preference in some countries, like the United States, to use contraception to keep zoo populations under control and prevent inbreeding, many zoos in Denmark and across Europe considered it better for animal welfare officers to let animals breed and express their natural instincts, even if that meant culling some of the offspring, as a last resort, for reasons of conservation."

Friday, February 5, 2016

The high end marijuana market in New York City

Jacob Leshno draws my attention to this article on how the legalization of marijuana in some U.S. locations (like Colorado, where I am this morning) is changing the black market in NYC:

Step inside New York City's marijuana black market in the era of legalization
Marijuana is a $2 billion-a-year industry in NYC. Like other small businesses, the city's dealers are adjusting to changing tastes and shrinking margins

"The city is full of high-end pot-delivery services in addition to solo dealers who make house calls. But with its gourmet edibles and pharmacy-like range of products, Zach’s business illustrates what the legalization wave nationwide is doing to the black market in New York.

"Zach collaborates with a professional pastry chef on the edibles but gets most of his inventory from California, where a lax medical-­marijuana program going back two decades has fueled a bustling gray market. Colorado, which has legalized recreational use, is another source. A network of local wholesalers saves him the trip out West."
*************

And NYC now will have medical marijuana dispensaries as well...
First Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in New York Open
By JESSE McKINLEY and ELI ROSENBERG JAN. 7, 2016

"Permitted under a 2014 law signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s entry into the medical marijuana marketplace comes after years of lobbying by lawmakers on behalf of patients, including children, for whom the drug is a palliative to debilitating illnesses. Yet even after the law’s adoption, some supporters of the concept criticized its stringent regulations, including that only a limited number of conditions qualify for medical use of marijuana and that it is sold in only 20 locations statewide. The drug also may not be smoked in New York, a stipulation of Mr. Cuomo’s approval, and must be processed into other forms by the companies that grow it.
...
"A late adopter to a trend that is now 20 years old, New York, in allowing medical marijuana, joins states as varied as conservative Montana and liberal California, which in 1996 became the first state to legalize the drug’s use as medicine. Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia also allow the drug’s recreational use."

Thursday, February 4, 2016

W.P. Carey Lecture: Who Gets What and Why at Colorado College today

W.P. Carey Lecture:Who Gets What and Why 


with Nobel Laureate in Economics Alvin Roth


February 4, 2016



W.P. Carey Lecture: Who Gets What and Why with Nobel Laureate in Economics Alvin Roth 
Event Summary:Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw professor of economics at Stanford University and the Gund professor of economics and business administration emeritus at Harvard University. Professor Roth has made significant contributions to the fields of game theory, market design and experimental economics, and is known for his emphasis on applying economic theory to solutions for "real-world" problems. In 2012, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design. The topic of Professor Roth's lecture will be "Who Gets What and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design," also the topic of his most recent book. Books will be available for sale after the lecture. Reception following.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Repugnant transaction watch: IIT pupil tries to sell kidney to repay loan, but no takers for 'dalit organ'

Here's a story that is disturbing on several levels: IIT pupil tries to sell kidney to repay loan, but no takers for 'dalit organ'

"Short of options, Mahesh even began a search for a buyer for one of his kidneys.But he later told some friends that in the thriving black market for kidneys, people first asked a donor's caste.
Mahesh added, "I visited around five hospitals in Varanasi and Alwar. The doctors there informed me that no one would take my kidney as I am a dalit."

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Barcelona GSE summerforum and BESLAB workshop on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra. June 16-17, 2016.

Rosemarie Nagel sends the following announcment:

Conference: Barcelona GSE summerforum and BESLAB workshop on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra. June 16-17, 2016. Keynote speakers are:  In-Koo Cho (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Albert Marcet (ICREA-IAE and Barcelona GSE). The conference organizers are: John Duffy, University of Pittsburgh, Frank Heinemann, Technical University of Berlin, Rosemarie Nagel , ICREA-BGSE and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Shyam Sunder, Yale University. Deadline for submissions is MondayFebruary 29, 2016

Summer school:  9th Barcelona BESLab Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra, June 13-19, 2016. The summer school organizers and lecturers are: John Duffy, University of Pittsburgh Frank Heinemann, Technical University of Berlin, Rosemarie Nagel, ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Shyam Sunder, Yale University, and guest lecturer Gabriele Camera (Chapman University, WWZ). The deadline for applications is Friday, April 8 2016.  

Maladaptive interviewing culture in some residency matches

Here's a paper that describes the high-pressure interviewing that goes on before the resident match for Radiation Oncology (and proposes that residency directors should behave better):

Taking “the Game” Out of The Match: A Simple Proposal
by Abraham J. Wu MD, Neha Vapiwala MD, Steven J. Chmura MD, PhD, Prajnan Das MD, MS, MPH, Roy H. Decker MD, PhD, Stephanie A. Terezakis MD and Anthony L. Zietman MD
in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, 2015-12-01, Volume 93, Issue 5, Pages 945-948

"Holliday et al  (3)  conducted an anonymous survey in which medical students applying in Radiation Oncology reported experiencing “behaviors that conflict with written NRMP policies, either during or after interviews”  (3)  . Of those who responded, alarmingly high percentages perceived that the system can be “gamed” through actions ranging from a wink and a nod, embellished thank you notes and advocacy phone calls, all the way to overt promises and declarations of interest (the potentially disingenuous nature of which is disturbing in itself). Radiation Oncology is fortunate to attract Ć¼ber-competitive “top-seed” candidates with credentials that confer prestige and promise to our specialty's future  (4)  , but, it being such a competitive field, most candidates are applying to dozens of programs. Both programs and candidates have sought a way through the morass by essentially “prearranging” matches ahead of the Match deadline. Programs seek affirmation that the applicant will rank them first, and applicants, with the stress of an overwhelming process, are tying themselves into knots trying to let all the programs at which they interview feel that they will be ranking them number one. Many candidates have complicated decisions to make about their lives and genuinely do not know their program ranking until the last minute, but the pressure is on to “show their hand”  (5)  . First-year residents, when asked what it was that they found most stressful about the process, describe the subtle pressure that programs put them under “to declare” them as top of the list. The anxiety when applicants are obligated to “play the game” is immense, even cruel. An implicit requirement to declare a first-choice program may have significant practical consequences: an excellent applicant who declared a “first choice,” yet narrowly failed to match at that program, may have plummeted down the rank list of other programs unwilling to “waste” a high slot on him or her. Applicants may not be truthful in their post-interview communications (for example, telling multiple programs they are the first choice)—behavior that can never be condoned, but which the new norms incentivize. The report by Holliday et al confirms what we knew in our hearts: that the pendulum has indeed, insidiously, swung in this direction and that these behaviors are now regarded as the new normal rather than in any way deviant.
...
"From the perspective of the applicants, Jena et al  (10)  surveyed senior medical students at 7 US medical schools regarding post-interview communications with programs and uncovered that more than 85% of respondents reported communicating with programs, with nearly 60% notifying more than one program that they would rank it highly. Furthermore, students reported that programs indicated that they would be “ranked to match,” “ranked highly” (52.8%), or other similar suggestive euphemisms. Most worrisome is that nearly a quarter of applicants admitted that they altered their rank order list on the basis of these programmatic communications, and 1 in 5 who ranked programs according to these promises did not match at that program, despite ranking it first. 

Monday, February 1, 2016

Conference in Lund in June: Social choice (and matching)

Tommy Andersson writes:

The 13th Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare will take place in Lund, Sweden, from June 28 to July 1, 2016. The Meeting is hosted by the Department of Economics at Lund University.  The conference website is http://www.nek.lu.se/en/scw16. In addition to submitted papers, there will be four plenary sessions:

·         Arrow Lecture: Hans Peters (Maastricht University)
·         Condorcet Lecture: Gabrielle Demange (Paris School of Economics)
·         Presidential Address: Claude d'Aspremont (Universite Catholique de Louvain)
·         Social Choice and Welfare Prize: Fuhito Kojima (Stanford University) and Parag Pathak (MIT)

The Program Chair is Tommy Andersson from the Department of Economics, Lund university. Submissions is open from December 1, 2015, and the deadline for submissions is February 15, 2016. NOTE that the deadline will not be extended. Papers can only be submitted electronically through Conference Maker at:


For any further enquiries please contact Tommy Andersson at tommy.andersson@nek.lu.se.

There will also be a mini-course the day before the conference starts (June 27). This mini-course is organized by The Arne Ryde Foundation. Invited speakers are:

·         Federico Echenique, Caltech
·         Lars Ehlers, University of Montreal
·         William Thomson, University of Rochester

For further information about the mini-course, please contact Bo Larsson at Bo.Larsson@nek.lu.se or visit the website of the mini-course:


I hope to see many of you in Lund this summer!
Best regards,

Tommy Andersson on behalf of the Program Committee

Collectible cards used to sell razor blades in the 1930's: Al Roth, boxer born in 1913

Before search word advertising, there were collectible cards...
1938 Famous Prize Fighters : Al Roth #32, series of 50 boxing cards.