Video from the AEA meetings (including my presidential address)

If you missed the AEA/ASSA meetings that just finished in Philadelphia, you can still hear some of the talks.

Here's mine (it's about an hour, but afterwards you'll know everything I know):
AEA Presidential Address - Marketplaces, Markets and Market Design
Alvin E. Roth, introduced by Olivier Blanchard
View Webcast

Update: it turns out the AEA website included this picture...

And here are the other videos:

2018 AEA Annual Meeting Webcasts of Selected Sessions

View Webcasts of selected sessions from the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on January 5-7, 2018! (compliments of the AEA):

January 5, 2018

Climate Policy and Trade
Presiding: Mar ReguantRegulating Mismeasured Pollution: Implications of Firm Heterogeneity for Environmental Policy Eva Lyubich, Joseph Shapiro, and Reed Walker
How Trade-sensitive are Energy-intensive Sectors? Carolyn Fischer and Alan Fox
Measuring Leakage Risk Meredith Fowlie and Mar Reguant
Discussants: Matilde Bombardini, Thibault Fally, and Teresa Fort
View Webcast

TrumpEconomics: a First Year Evaluation
Presiding: Dominick Salvatore
The Effects of Policy Uncertainty Olivier BlanchardThe Impact of the Trump Tax Reforms Martin FeldsteinWhat's Lacking in Trumpean Economic Policy Edmund PhelpsTrump and Globalization Joseph E. StiglitzContinuing Relevance of Secular Stagnation Lawrence H. SummersDiscussant: Dominick Salvatore
View Webcast

AEA/AFA Joint Luncheon - Liquidity and LeveragreRaghuram Rajan, introduced by David Scharfstein
View Webcast

New Measures of the EconomyPresiding: Betsey Stevenson
Estimating Changes in Well-being Using Massive Online Choice Experiments Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers, and Avinash Gannamaneni
Measuring Social Progress: Evidence from Advanced Economies Daniel Fehder, Scott Stern, and Michael E. Porter
Using Online Prices to Measure Standards of Living Across Countries Alberto Cavallo, W. Erwin Diewert, Robert Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel Timmer
Internet Rising, Prices Falling: The Era of e-Commerce and its Macroeconomic Implications Austan Goolsbee and Pete Klenow
Discussants: Carol Corrado, Betsey Stevenson, Dennis Fixler, and Leonard Nakamura
View Webcast

AEA Richard T. Ely Lecture: Competition, Equilibrium, Freedom, and PaternalismDavid Laibson
View Webcast

January 6, 2017

Central Bank Communications
Presiding: Andrew HaldaneFuture of Monetary Policy Communications Alan Blinder
Central Bank Forward Guidance and the Signal Value of Market Prices Hyun Song Shin and Stephen MorrisCentral Bank Communications and the General Public Michael McMahon and Andrew HaldaneDiscussants: Ricardo Reis, Michael Ehrmann, and Refet Gurkaynak
View Webcast

Global Inequality and Policy
Presiding: Emmanuel SaezThe Elephant Curve of Global Inequality and Growth Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman
From Communism to Capitalism: Private Versus Public Property and Inequality in China and Russia Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, and Gabriel Zucman
Applying Generalized Pareto Curves to Inequality Analysis Thomas Blanchet, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, and Clara Martinez-Toledano
Extreme Inequality: Evidence from Brazil, India, the Middle-East, and South Africa Facundo Alvaredo, Lydia Assouad, Lucas Chancel, and Marc Morgan
Discussants: Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez, and Li Yang
View Webcast

AEA Nobel Laureate Luncheon Honoring the 2016 Nobel Laureates in Economics: Oliver Hart (Harvard University) and Bengt R. Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Presiding: Olivier Blanchard
Luigi Zingales 
Daron Acemoglu
View Webcast

Economic Consequences of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Presiding: Erik Brynjolfsson
Demographics and Robots Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo
What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for the Occupations and Industries? Erik Brynjolfsson, Tom Mitchell, and Daniel Rock
Linking Advances in Artificial Intelligence to Skills, Occupation, and Industries Rob Seamans and Edward W. Felten
Human Judgement and A.I. Pricing Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb, and Ajay AgrawalDiscussants: Benjamin Jones, Shane Greenstein, Susan Helper, and J. Miguel Villa-Boas
View Webcast

AEA Awards Ceremony
Presiding: Olivier Blanchard
View Webcast

Medical school admissions in Germany

Sven Seuken and Stephanie Wang point me to these stories:

Germany: Selection process for medical students deemed partly unconstitutional
Germany's top court has ruled that the current method universities use to allocate places for medical studies violates equal opportunity laws. The federal government is to regulate the criteria used for offering places.

"Under the current system, German universities are able to apply what was known as the 20-20-60 rule for prospective medical students. Twenty percent of places are allocated to students with the very best overall marks in the final school exams, a selection process generally referred to as the numerus clausus. Often students with marks as high as 1.2 (the equivalent of a 3.9 GPA in the US) would not be guaranteed a place.

"A further 20 percent of places go to students who had been previously been placed on a waiting list.

"The remaining 60 percent are chosen based on various criteria determined by the individual universities — a system the judges found to be unfair.

"Three universities — Aachen, Bonn and Düsseldorf — base their selection only on the average school grades, while a number of other institutions make prospective students have an interview. Lawmakers must now work to lift these discrepancies.

"Applicants who are not accepted in the first selection round can be put on a waiting list for up to seven years, according to some estimates. The court also ordered officials to work on shortening those waiting times.


"The claim was taken to court by two applicants who had achieved a grade of 2.0 and 2.6, but hadn't been admitted to medical school after being on the waiting list for eight and six years respectively. "
**************

Here's a more detailed article in German
Medizin-NC vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht
Sie können doch nicht warten, bis alle grau sind
(G Translate: Medical NC in the Federal Constitutional Court
You can not wait until all are gray)

Sven Seuken writes:
"The judges criticized, in particular:
@1: even if your GPA is high enough to get into some school, because of the limitation to a list length of 6 (where you rank universities), you might get unlucky and get into no school. That's unfair.

@2: If you get into a school "by waiting long enough", your waiting time to get a spot at a university might be 7.5 years. That is considered "dysfunctional". However, I have no idea if they have a better system in mind.

@3: Some universities only use the GPA as their selection criterion for category 3. The judges criticized this, and said that at least one more criterion must be used."

More on the repugnance of selling art, if you're an art museum

In Philadelphia:
La Salle plan to sell museum masterpieces stuns art community

"La Salle University, which has struggled to plug a projected deficit in recent years, plans to sell 46 pieces of art from its prized museum collection to help fund teaching and learning initiatives in its new strategic plan, officials said Tuesday...

Approved by the school’s board of trustees and announced by university president Colleen M. Hanycz, the decision “is a strategic and good use of our assets,” university spokeswoman Jaine Lucas said. “We are doing what we feel is in the  interest of our students.”

It follows similar steps by other universities around the country in recent years to help stem financial woes — although some schools that have sold or attempted to sell art have faced challenges.

At Brandeis University in Massachusetts, a plan to close its museum and sell its art was reversed after backlash from students and faculty and legal action. Randolph College in Virginia was roundly criticized for its decision to sell a George Bellows painting worth more than $25 million.

The same controversy could follow the decision at La Salle, a 3,200-student Catholic university in Philadelphia’s Logan section, whose collection composes one of the most highly regarded university museums in the region. Just hours after the announcement, members of the local art community began questioning the decision."

From the NY Times: Art Owned by La Salle University Headed for Auction at Christie’s

"The process of selling art, known as deaccessioning, is a fraught one for museums; major professional organizations like the American Alliance of Museums condemn the sale of art to pay for expansions, physical repairs or ongoing expenses, as opposed to using the proceeds for the acquisition of other works or, perhaps, the care of a collection.

At times, government agencies that oversee nonprofit institutions have intervened to halt sales.

In 2009, for instance, the attorney general’s office in Massachusetts conducted a detailed review of Brandeis University’s unexpected announcement that it would shore up its struggling finances by selling all of the works––including those by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein––held by its Rose Art Museum, one of the most important collections of postwar art in New England.

Later four of the museum’s benefactors sued to stop any art sales.

That lawsuit and the attorney general’s investigation were both resolved in 2011, with Brandeis announcing that it had “no aim, plan, design, strategy or intention to sell any artwork donated to or purchased by” the school for the museum and that the Rose museum will remain a “university art museum open to the public.”

The open culture of academic economics

I'll be delivering the Presidential Address at the American Economic Association meetings in Philadelphia today, with a paper to follow later this year. I plan to talk and write about marketplaces, which I think are understudied parts of markets. And I think that market design has a bright future, both as a kind of engineering economics that can help people in very concrete ways, and as a way to shed new light on markets and how they work.

But I'm also finding this a moment to take a look backward as well as forward. Personally, looking backward fills me with feelings of gratitude: not only to my family and to my teachers and advisers, to my wonderful students and coauthors; but also to the profession of economics and all of you economists who made me welcome, although economics isn’t a subject in which I ever received any degree.

During my professional career I have participated in at least three academic insurrections, which brought game theory into economics, and experimental and behavioral economics, and most recently market design.  There have been other revolutions as well, in econometrics and computation and access to large linked data sets among others. And these revolutions have come about largely because economists are on the whole enthusiastic about finding new ways to explore the large swath of human behavior that makes up economics.

I hasten to add that this welcoming of new ideas isn't magical, or even immediately apparent. Like raising children, it's a slow process while it's going on, but it becomes clear in retrospect how fast it actually is. Paper by paper (referee report by referee report) academic economics can feel pretty conservative and resistant to change. But when you look at things at the time scale of decades, economics has opened up to new ideas very fast.

We've also been welcoming to intellectual immigrants: to people as well as ideas. I'm hardly alone among economists of my generation who don't have degrees in economics. A bunch of us rode in on the wave that brought game theory into economics. Not every discipline is as open to new ideas or new people.  This openness is something to treasure, gratefully and vigilantly.

Looking ahead, I hope we can continue to nurture this openness to both ideas and people.  Exciting things are happening in other disciplines (computer science, biology...), and there's plenty of room for cross fertilization between disciplines, as well among the diverse points of view and diverse people already "inside" economics.

Economics is still an early-stage science, so it's an exciting time to be an economist. There's lots of progress we still need to make, it's important for the world that we do so, and there are some indications of fruitful paths to follow.  I'm looking forward with substantial optimism.

Black markets in guns without serial numbers

The WSJ has the story:

The Rise of Untraceable ‘Ghost Guns’
An emerging black-market gun-making industry lets buyers bypass background checks and gun regulations, authorities say

"The number of these weapons in the U.S. is unknown. Because the guns bear no serial numbers, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is unable to track them. Serial numbers and gun registration play a key role in police and government investigations, allowing officers to trace a weapon’s history and owners.

"Ghost guns appear to be most prevalent in California, where there are restrictions on assault weapons that make it difficult to buy guns that are available in other states. But the firearms have been seized in criminal investigations in other states, including Arizona, Maryland, New York and Texas.
...
"“It went from being a niche group of people that were into the gun culture that were the ones making them for themselves,” said Mr. Barlowe. “Now, they’ve become so commonplace we’re buying them from 17-year-old gang-members on the street.”

"The starting point for building a ghost gun is an “unfinished receiver,” a metal or polymer piece that houses the firing mechanism. It can be purchased online without a background check, because the ATF doesn’t classify the part as a firearm.
...
"“There is a loophole under federal law that allows an individual to make a firearm,” said  Justin Lee, a federal prosecutor in Sacramento who has handled several ghost gun cases. “That loophole only extends to that person. The person breaks the law as soon as they are transferring that firearm.”
...
"The prevalence of online retailers and YouTube instructional videos has given ghost guns a boost, according to Mr. Barlowe. He said illicit gun dealers can buy parts for an AR-15 style rifle for about $700, put in a few hours of sweat equity, and sell it on the street for $1,000 to $2,000.
...
"Gun-owners distrustful of registering their firearms with the government also are customers. “Unserialized, Unregistered” is the slogan for GhostGuns.com, which sells handgun kits, unfinished receivers, and other items. Kyle Martin, president of Ghost America LLC, which runs the site, said customers “want to enjoy their complete freedom as American citizens.”

Some ASSA sessions I would go to if I could, and some I'll certainly attend

I'm going to be a busy boy at the AEA/ASSA meetings, since as president of the AEA I'll preside over many champagne receptions and a few other things.  But the conference looks like fun. Here are just a few of the sessions that particularly caught my eye, even though I have conflicts with some of them...

Econometric Society Presidential Address

Session/Event

 Thursday, Jan. 4, 2018   5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Liberty Ballroom

Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY

Econometric Society Presidential Address
Drew Fudenberg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Speaker(s)

Drew Fudenberg

,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Topic: Learning, Experimentation, and Equilibrium Refinements

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

Economic Applications of Machine Learning

Paper Session

 Friday, Jan. 5, 2018   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Liberty Ballroom Salon A

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Daniel Björkegren, Brown University

A Large Scale Model of Travel Time and User Choice Behavior

Susan Athey

,

Stanford University

Robert Donnelly

,

Stanford University

•  View Abstract

Behavior Revealed in Mobile Phone Usage Predicts Loan Repayment

Daniel Björkegren

,

Brown University

Darrell Grissen

,

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab

•  View Abstract

Estimating Poverty and Wealth From Mobile Phone Data

Joshua Blumenstock

,

University of California-Berkeley

Gabriel Cadamuro

,

University of Washington

Robert On

,

University of California-Berkeley

•  View Abstract

Forecasting Economic Activity With Yelp Data

Edward Glaeser

,

Harvard University

Hyunjin Kim

,

Harvard Business School

Michael Luca

,

Harvard Business School

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Michael Luca

,

Harvard Business School

Marshall Burke

,

Stanford University

Greg Lewis

,

Microsoft Research

Shane Greenstein

,

Harvard Business School

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

Like Everybody Else: Experimental Economics of Conformity, Image, and Identity

Paper Session

 Friday, Jan. 5, 2018   2:30 PM - 4:30 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Meeting Room 305

Hosted By: ECONOMIC SCIENCE ASSOCIATION

• Chair: James Andreoni, University of California-San Diego

Identity and Impact in Public Goods Contributions: A Field Experiment on Wikipedia

Yan Chen

,

University of Michigan

Rosta Farzan

,

University of Pittsburgh

Robert Kraut

,

Carnegie Mellon University

Iman YeckehZarre

,

University of Michigan

Ark Fangzhou Zhang

,

University of Michigan

•  View Abstract

Status Goods: Experimental Evidence From Platinum Credit Cards

Leonardo Bursztyn

,

University of Chicago and NBER

Bruno Ferman

,

Getulio Vargas Foundation

Stefano Fiorin

,

University of California-San Diego

Martin Kanz

,

World Bank

Gautam Rao

,

Harvard University and NBER

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 402.50 KB)

Preference Endogeneity and Conformity

Douglas Bernheim

,

Stanford University

Christine Exley

,

Harvard Business School

•  View Abstract

The Conformity Trap: Adaptation and Stagnation of Social Norms in a Changing World

James Andreoni

,

University of California-San Diego

Nikos Nikiforakis

,

New York University Abu Dhabi

Simon Siegenthaler

,

University of Texas-Dallas

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Alain Cohn

,

University of Michigan

Desmond Ang

,

University of California-San Diego

Florian Ederer

,

Yale University

Ariel Rubinstein

,

New York University

*********

Large Matching Markets

Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Meeting Room 406

Hosted By: ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY

• Chair: SangMok Lee, University of Pennsylvania

Stable Matching in Large Economies​

Yeon-Koo Che

,

Columbia University

Jinwoo Kim

,

Seoul National University

Fuhito Kojima

,

Stanford University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 1.06 MB)

The Cutoff Structure of Top Trading Cycles in School Choice

Jacob D. Leshno

,

Columbia University

Irene Lo

,

Columbia University

•  View Abstract

Need Versus Merit: The Large Core of College Admissions Markets

Avinatan Hassidim

,

Bar-Ilan University

Assaf Romm

,

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ran I. Shorrer

,

Pennsylvania State University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 401.95 KB)

Top Trading Cycles in Two-Sided Matching Markets: An Irrelevance of Priorities in Large Matching Markets

Yeon-Koo Che

,

Columbia University

Olivier Tercieux

,

Paris School of Economics

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Eduardo Azevedo

,

University of Pennsylvania

Utku Unver

,

Boston College

Scott Duke Kominers

,

Harvard University

Atila Abdulkadiroglu

,

Duke University

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

Inner Workings of Organ Markets and Organ Allocation

Paper Session

 Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018   2:30 PM - 4:30 PM

 Pennsylvania Convention Center, 201-C

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Eric Budish, University of Chicago

The Inner Workings of Kidney Exchange Markets

Nikhil Agarwal

,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Itai Ashlagi

,

Stanford University

Eduardo Azevedo

,

University of Pennsylvania

Clayton Featherstone

,

University of Pennsylvania

Omer Karaduman

,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

•  View Abstract

A Regulated Market for Kidneys

Mohammad Akbarpour

,

Stanford University

•  View Abstract

Strategic Behavior in the Kidney Waitlist

Nikhil Agarwal

,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Itai Ashlagi

,

Stanford University

Paulo J. Somaini

,

Stanford University

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Utku Unver

,

Boston College

Glen Weyl

,

Microsoft Research

Benjamin R. Handel

,

University of California-Berkeley

******

Here are some sessions I'm looking forward to attending ex officio:

AEA/AFA Joint Luncheon - Fee Event

 Friday, Jan. 5, 2018   12:30 PM - 2:15 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Grand Ballroom Salon G & H

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION & AMERICAN FINANCE ASSOCIATION

• Chair: David Scharfstein, Harvard Business School

Presiding: David Scharfstein, Harvard Business School
Speaker: Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago

Speaker(s)

Raghuram Rajan

,

University of Chicago

Topic: Liquidity and Leverage

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

AEA Richard T. Ely Lecture

Session/Event

 Friday, Jan. 5, 2018   4:45 PM - 5:45 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Grand Ballroom Salon G & H

Hosted By: American Economic Association

Speaker: David Laibson, Harvard University
*************




AEA Nobel Laureate Luncheon-Fee Event
Session/Event
 Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018   12:30 PM - 2:15 PM
 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Grand Ballroom Salon G & H
Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• Chair: Olivier Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Nobel Laureate Luncheon Honoring the 2016 Nobel Laureates in Economics: Oliver Hart, Harvard University and Bengt R. Holmstrom, Massachusetts Institute of Technology--Fee Event--
Presiding: Olivier Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics--
Speakers: Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago
**********

AEA Awards Ceremony and Presidential Address

Session/Event

 Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018   4:30 PM - 5:45 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Grand Ballroom Salon G & H

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Olivier Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Awards Ceremony & Presidential Address
Presiding: Olivier Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Speaker: Alvin E. Roth, Stanford University
Topic: Markets and Marketplaces
****************

New Insights on Classic Questions in Matching Theory

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM

 Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Liberty Ballroom Salon A

Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

• Chair: Alvin E. Roth, Stanford University

The Lattice of Envy-free Matchings

Qingyun Wu

,


Stanford University

Alvin E. Roth

,


Stanford University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 297.93 KB)
•  Download PowerPoint (PDF, 208.47 KB)

Deferred Acceptance with Compensation Chains

Piotr Dworczak

,


Stanford University

•  View Abstract

Virtual Demand and Stable Mechanisms

Jan Christoph Schlegel

,


University of Lausanne

•  View Abstract

Lone Wolves in Competitive Equilibria

Ravi Jagadeesan

,


Harvard University

Scott Duke Kominers

,


Harvard University

Ross Rheingans-Yoo

,


Harvard University

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Alexander Teytelboym

,


University of Oxford