Kurt Sweat defends his dissertation

Kurt Sweat defended his dissertation this week. As you can see in the picture below, we celebrated with the traditional toast, but instead of champagne we're drinking  In-N-Out milk shakes.

 

He and I are flanked by the other members of his committee: Itai Ashlagi, Paolo Somaini, Frank Wolak and Han Hong.  He was also advised by Dr. Chris Almond.

  His job market paper, and the other papers in his dissertation, all concern heart transplants.

Endogenous Priority in Centralized Matching Markets: The Design of the Heart Transplant Waitlist (Job Market Paper) 

[Link to current draft]

"Centralized matching markets that prioritize specific participants to achieve certain policy goals are common in practice, but priority is often assigned using endogenous characteristics of participants. In the heart transplant waitlist in the United States, the treatment that a patient receives is used to assign waitlist priority. Policymakers recently changed the prioritization in an attempt to reduce waitlist mortality by assigning higher priority to patients receiving specific treatments previously associated with high waitlist mortality. First, I document a significant response to waitlist incentives in treatments given and transplants that take place. Then, I develop and estimate a structural model of treatment and transplant choices to evaluate the effect of the policy change on patients' outcomes and doctors' decisions. I find three main results from my model. First, there is little change in aggregate survival, and the effect of the change has been mainly redistributive. Second, the change has effectively targeted patients with lower untransplanted survival, with these patients receiving higher expected survival under the current design. Third, the effect on survival is largely driven by changes in the decision to accept/decline offers for transplants rather than directly due to a change in treatment decisions. The policy implications suggest that future designs of the waitlist should disincentivize declining offers for transplants."

Welcome to the club, Kurt.

The Matching Society by Melchior Simioni and Philippe Steiner

"If we put on the glasses of economic sociology, it appears ... that matching corresponds to a specific form of coordination close but distinct from both planning and the market."

That's a sentence that caught my eye (using Google translate) from the recent book by the French sociologists Melchior Simioni and Philippe Steiner

La société du matching (The Matching Society) 

Here's how the publisher's web page introduces it:

"The upheavals brought about by the irruption of matching technology, in all its dimensions, are updating major challenges in our societies. The matching society is not the future of our modern societies, it is its present. The ambition of this essay is to to understand what it changes in our lives.  

"At several decisive stages of our lives, we entrust our fate to algorithms that sort individuals according to a very singular pattern: we choose and we are chosen at the same time. Access to resources as essential as training (with Parcoursup or Affelnet), a romantic partner (Tinder, Meetic and so many others), certain care or a job depends on this technology.

"Unlike the market relationship, where paying is enough, or social benefits, which are paid as a matter of right, matching presupposes a new social relationship: we express our wishes according to the information at our disposal and it is on the basis of the data we provide that the selection is made.

"This principle profoundly changes our relationship with the collective. Because it forces us to tell the truth about ourselves, our hopes, our desires, it accelerates the advent of a singularist society."

########

I've had occasion to blog about the work of Professor Steiner before:

Friday, August 12, 2022

Are sociology and economics coming closer together? Philippe Steiner in Acta Oeconomica

Monday, November 30, 2020

Philippe Steiner on matching and romance, and transplants

New members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

 Each year, new members are elected to  join Benjamin Franklin in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Here is the announcement of the New Academy Members Elected in 2024

Congratulations to all!

Here are the new Economists:

Section 2 – Economics

1. Pol Antràs,  Harvard University
2. Nathaniel Hendren,  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Erik Hurst,  University of Chicago Booth School of Business; University of Chicago
4. Anna Mikusheva,  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5. Serena Ng,  Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research
6. Muriel Niederle,  Stanford University
7. Amir Sufi,  University of Chicago Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research

The Ethical Limits of Markets by Kim Krawiec

 Here's a new summary by one of the leading scholars of "taboo trades."

Kimberly D. Krawiec, "The Ethical Limits of Markets: Market Inalienability," Forthcoming, The Research Handbook On The Philosophy of Contract Law (edited by Mindy Chen-Wishart and Prince Saprai)   3 Apr 2024

Abstract: Although ethical critiques of markets are longstanding, modern academic debates about the “moral limits of markets” (MLM) tend to be fairly limited in scope. These disputes center, not on the dangers of markets per se, but on the dangers of exchanging particular items and activities through the marketplace. Proponents of MLM theories thus do not want to eliminate markets entirely, but instead seek to identify the moral and ethical boundaries of the marketplace by considering which goods and services are inappropriate for market trading. This chapter summarizes and categorizes some of the more important arguments within this debate, with a focus on recent research, controversies, and applications. The goal is to provide an overview of these debates, highlighting some of the topics that have generated robust discussion, particularly when relatively recent empirical or theoretical work may shed new light on a topic. Specifically, I focus on crowding out, corruption, leaving a space for altruism, equality, and a trio of related debates regarding paternalism (coercion, unjust inducement, and exploitation).

Here's her opening paragraph:

"Markets have limits—even the staunchest libertarian agrees with that idea.1 But the consensus ends there. There is no agreement on what those limits should be or why, as demonstrated by the vast variation in legal regimes around the world. For example, markets in sex are legal in much of the world and illegal in most of the United States.2 Markets in gametes and surrogacy services are legal and thriving in most of the United States and illegal in much of the rest of the world.3 Most of the world prohibits payments to plasma donors and, as a result, are forced to meet their domestic plasma needs by importing plasma-derived products from the United States, which in turn meets demand by paying plasma donors.

Kidney Markets--my debate with Debra Satz (video)

The video of my debate with Debra Satz on kidney markets is now available, see below.  

You can also find it here: https://humsci.stanford.edu/events/kidney-markets-alvin-roth-and-debra-satz

The question we debated was "Should we experiment with forms of regulated payments to individuals who provide a kidney for others?"  

The audience was asked to vote on that question before we began, and again after we concluded.

 

 To set the stage, in an early slide I spoke briefly about Debra's book  Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, and my book Who Gets What — And Why. The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design.   

If you happen to have read those books, I think you can already have a good idea of what we said, and what a friendly discussion it was.

Plasma donation in the EU: compensated and uncompensated

 Here's a commentary on the EU Parliament's current efforts to ban compensation to plasma donors in the EU, published today.

 Julio J Elias, Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis, Axel Ockenfels, Alvin E Roth, "Quality and safety for substances of human origins: scientific evidence and the new EU regulations," BMJ Global Health, Volume 9, Issue 4 (21 April, 2024) https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2024-015122

"Summary box

The new European Union (EU) ‘Regulation on standards of quality and safety for substances of human origin (SoHOs) intended for human application’ is based on a long-standing diffidence towards offering compensation to donors of SoHOs.

We point to recent, growing empirical evidence indicating that carefully designed compensation can increase the supply of SoHOs without negatively affecting quality and safety. We also elaborate arguments that address some of the moral concerns that motivate the aversion to payments.

As member states proceed to adopt the new EU regulation, our article may provide insights on how to achieve both self-sufficiency and safety"

...

"At least where plasma for fractionation is concerned, the unpaid-donor system has failed to meet demand. Table 1 indicates that in Europe, countries allowing monetary compensation for donors are the only ones achieving self-sufficiency in plasma collection for the production of immunoglobulin. The plasma sector in countries that compensate plasma donors, notably the USA, serves as supplier to many countries experiencing chronic shortages. The USA alone collects about 70% of the world’s plasma supply.10 A combination of a favourable regulatory environment, an extensive collection network and advanced technological infrastructure contributed to establishing the US position.11

Table 1

Plasma self-reliance and models of plasma collection15–19

Country	Reliance on domestic supply (% of total national need)	Monetary payments allowed	Current payment amount	Other incentives
Austria (2020)	100	Yes	€30–40	–
Czech Republic (2020)	100	Yes	€30–35	–
Germany (2020)	100	Yes	€25	–
Hungary (2020)	100	Yes	€30	–
Latvia (2018)	100	Yes	€17	–
Italy (2018)	76	No	–	Paid leave of absence from work
Slovenia (2017)	54	No	–	Paid leave of absence from work
Belgium (2019)	50	No	–	Paid leave of absence from work
France (2020)	50	No	–	–
Netherlands (2020)	45	No	–	–
Slovakia (2018)	41	No	–	–
Denmark (2018)	34	No	–	–
Spain (2020)	34	No	–	–
Portugal (2018)	22	No	–	Exemption from National Health Service user fees

• The table shows, for each country, the percentage of plasma needed for immunoglobulin (Ig) production that is collected domestically. The year in parenthesis is the one to which the data on self-reliance refer. The table then reports whether monetary payments are allowed, the current range of payments per donation and any other incentives in use in each country. In countries that allow payments, plasma collectors offer, in addition to monetary compensation for each donation, additional monetary or in-kind rewards, for example, when a donor reaches a certain number of donations (eg, 5, 10,…), or to first-time donors. The figures reported above do not include these additional rewards.

The Curious Culture of Economic Theory by Ran Spiegler

 Ran Spiegler has new book about the academic culture of the theory part of the Economics profession.  It's open source, so you can sample it online.

The Curious Culture of Economic Theory   by Ran Spiegler

The MIT Press, 2024

DOI:

 

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14884.001.0001

ISBN electronic:

 

9780262379038

Here's what it says on the website:

"An essay collection that insightfully explores the professional culture of contemporary economic theory, highlighting key features of successful economic theory from the last quarter century.

"When is a theoretical result taken seriously enough for economic application? How do theorists actively try to influence this judgment? What determines whether a new theoretical subfield adopts a “pure” or an “applied” style? How do theorists respond to economists' penchant for “rational” explanations of human behavior? These are just some of the questions regarding the professional culture of contemporary economic theory that Ran Spiegler attempts to answer in this incisive essay collection, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory. In exploring these questions, Spiegler addresses the norms that economic theorists apply as they produce, evaluate, and disseminate research.

"Introducing a new genre—a kind of cultural criticism of economic theory—the essays in this unique collection highlight elements of style and rhetoric that characterize classic pieces of economic theory from the last quarter century. For each piece, Spiegler offers a precise yet accessible exposition of modern classics of economic theory while placing them in the broader context of the field's professional culture. Affectionate in its criticism and anthropological in its approach, The Curious Culture of Economic Theory is as valuable a complement to standard textbooks in graduate-level economic theory, game theory, and behavioral economics as it is to the libraries of practicing economic theorists, academic economists, historians of economic thought, and philosophers of economics."

I first sampled Chapter 8, whose first sentence is given below:

Chapter 8: From Competitive Equilibrium to Mechanism Design in Eighteen Months 

"If I had to name one major shift in the sensibilities of economic theorists in the past half century, a prime candidate would be the way we conceptualize markets—from quasi-natural phenomena admired from afar to manmade institutions whose design can be tweaked by economist-engineers."

Call for papers: special issue on Market Design at Mathematics of Operations Research

 Paul Milgrom and Martin Bichler write:

We are excited to announce that, as an initiative arising from discussions during the fall program, the journal Mathematics of Operations Research will be dedicating a special issue on market design (deadline: Sep 30, 2024). This special issue is co-organized by the INFORMS Section on Auctions and Market Design and aims to showcase cutting-edge research in the field, reflecting the depth and diversity of thought that our program sought to cultivate.

We are seeking contributions that not only push the boundaries of our current understanding but also highlight practical implications and potential applications of market design principles. We believe that your research and insights could greatly enrich this special issue, and we warmly invite you to submit your papers for consideration.

We are looking forward to submissions from program participants and to the opportunity to highlight the exceptional work emerging from our community.