Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Kidney exchange in the UK: Algorithms



David F. Manlove and Gregg O’Malley. 2015. Paired and Altruistic Kidney Donation in the UK: Algorithms and ExperimentationJ. Exp. Algorithmics19, Article 2.6 (January 2015), 1.11 pages. DOI=10.1145/2670129 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2670129

"We study the computational problem of identifying optimal sets of kidney exchanges in the UK. We show how to expand an integer programming-based formulation due to Roth et al. [2007] in order to model the criteria that constitute the UK definition of optimality. The software arising from this work has been used by the National Health Service Blood and Transplant to find optimal sets of kidney exchanges for their National Living Donor Kidney Sharing Schemes since July 2008. We report on the characteristics of the solutions that have been obtained in matching runs of the scheme since this time. We then present empirical results arising from experiments on the real datasets that stem from these matching runs, with the aim of establishing the extent to which the particular optimality criteria that are present in the UK influence the structure of the solutions that are ultimately computed. A key observation is that allowing four-way exchanges would be likely to lead to a moderate number of additional transplants."

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

The Fellowship Matches in Orthopedic Surgery


The Journal of Bone and Joint surgery has a new article on the experience of the fellowship matches in orthopedic surgery, many of which started after a study of the (then unraveled) match process in the 2008 article,
Harner, Christopher D., Anil S. Ranawat, Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, Peter J. Stern, Shepard R. Hurwitz, William Levine, G. Paul DeRosa, Serena S. Hu, "Current State of Fellowship Hiring: Is a universal match necessary? Is it possible?," Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 90, 2008,1375-1384.


The new report, by Lisa K. Cannada, MD, Scott J. Luhmann, MD, Serena S. Hu, MD, and Robert H. Quinn, MD is
The Fellowship Match Process: The History and a Report of the Current Experience, 2015-01-01Z, Volume 97, Issue 1, Pages e3(1)-e3(7), The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

It's gated, so here are some relevant paragraphs:

"Beginning in 2007, there was substantial movement from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) to promote a coordinated match process for orthopaedic fellowships. It is estimated that at least 90% of all orthopaedic surgery residents participate in a year of fellowship training 1 . The results of a survey at the 2007 AOA Symposium on Fellowships found that 79% of attendees believed that the current process was unacceptable and 87% believed that the process was unfair to residents 2 . The situation of those disciplines that were not in an organized match process was compared with problems often seen in a decentralized labor market 2 . A survey of residents indicated that 80% of residents were in favor of an organized match for fellowship and wanted a later date in their fourth postgraduate year for the decisions 2 .
...
"There have been previous attempts at a formalized match process for fellowship positions. However, the process for most subspecialties unraveled over time. The failure of the match process in the past was due to a variety of reasons: fewer applicants than positions, interviews in the third postgraduate year, early offering of positions, and the lack of a regulated process with a central agency for applications with deadlines 







The Orthopaedic Hand Surgery Fellowship Match is administered by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) and has been so since 1990.
The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) made arrangements to administer their own match, which they have done since 2005.
The Sports Match was run through the NRMP until 2005. Sports rejoined the formal match process in 2008, using the San Francisco Match (SF Match).
The Adult Reconstruction Match joined SF Match in 2009, and the match is now run with the same applications and timeline as the Tumor Match. There has been no formal match in place for tumor fellowships in the past.
The Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) had a previous match that had failed, in part, because of noncompliance by the fellowship programs and directors. POSNA ran another match from 2008 to 2009 and joined SF Match in 2010.
The Spine Match involves cooperation among multiple societies: the North American Spine Society, the Cervical Spine Research Society, and the Scoliosis Research Society. They joined SF Match in 2009.
The American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society was the pioneer in the new match process, initially beginning in 2006 through the NRMP. Subsequently, the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society joined SF Match in 2007.
The Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) had a match program in the 1990s that dissolved. The OTA reinstated the match in 2007, which was initially administered through the OTA. In 2008, the OTA formalized the match process through SF Match."







Another important aspect is the time away from work and the financial burden of interviewing. As mentioned, residents have an average of ten interviews. This number seems to be consistent between the subspecialties and to be representative of the number of interviews for the fellowship match process. The subspecialty societies have different approaches to the process. The OTA previously offered interviewing at its annual meeting in the fall. However, many programs still require on-site interviews. Currently, the OTA annual meetings offer information sessions from the programs. In this way, the applicants can meet and can interact with faculty and can decide if the program would be suitable for them. The meeting affords the applicants the ability to talk to the fellowship program faculty and current and past fellows before spending several hundred dollars on an interview. Sports fellowships attempt to offer regional interviews so that the applicant can attend several interviews in a short time period, saving time and the added expense of additional flights.POSNA permits interviews at the International Pediatric Orthopaedic Symposium. The society encourages applicants to attend formal interviews at the fellowship location, but it is not a requirement.The Board of Specialty Societies Match Committee has offered interview space to each subspecialty society during the AAOS Annual Meeting. One perceived limitation of regional or national meeting interviews is the inability of the applicant to see the program site firsthand.The cost of the interviewing process associated with the match process has been raised as a concern by applicants from almost every subspecialty society. The costs cited by applicants in the post-match survey response from the applicants ranged from $600 for the interview process to more than $5000.".."A previous reason cited for the failure of the previous matches was the lack of process regulation. To ensure the integrity of a match process, guidelines need to exist. The biggest concerns lie in the area of communication between applicants and programs after the interview. The precedent for the current strict rules could possibly be traced back to the failure of the previous matches in the 1990s and early 2000s. There was no universal match process at that time. The ASES rules state: “No communication between the applicant and program director/staff after the interview.” Likewise, the spine and sports subspecialties have similar strict rules of no communication. The sanctions that each society has in place are available on their web sites. The subspecialty society for the respective match imposes any sanction necessary. Most sanctions to the program involve restriction from participation in the match for a specific time period to fellowship faculty not being allowed to serve on subspecialty boards of directors and/or committees or to the program being banned from making podium presentations or receiving research grants. There have been no major sanctions reported by any subspecialty society.In conclusion, with the advent of a fellowship match and the increased number of applicants, the fellowship application process is not so different from the residency application process. 






Monday, January 19, 2015

Deceased donation in Italy: a discussion of the complexities


A thoughtful article on organ donation in Italy, with help from google translate.

Nudge, la spinta gentile tirata per la giacchetta

"Policies inspired to nudge (translated into Italian as 'gentle push') and to the political philosophy of libertarian paternalism have gained increasing attention over the years, representing a tool available to the policy makers to design and implement interventions is increasingly aimed at the citizen, to simplify and, ultimately, the conditions in which the latter makes his choices. What is a great tool, among many of the box, however, is likely to turn into a mantra, sometimes losing sight of the complexity of reality, if you neglect the main teaching of the nudge same: the experimental method used to test every intervention measure and evaluate their effectiveness. The risk of giving the principle of auctoritas, a bit 'as in the "Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, is strong: it is just to update, from century to century, the person called upon to play the role of Aristotle.
...
"The first issue was first addressed in a working paper of the Nobel Prize Alvin Roth and Judd Kessler, published last August on NBER. The results are wavering confidence accorded to the theory of the nudge. The active choice, in fact, it even seems to decrease enrollment rates, not increase them! The research of the two authors is based on two experiments. The first is a natural experiment - the case where the conditions of an experimental set are created without the intervention of an investigator. From July 2011, the state of California has, in fact, introduced the active choice through the modules of the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Californian city is now asked: "Would you like to sign up to become an organ donor?", With the dual option of answer: "Yes, add my name to the donor registry" and "I do not want to sign up now." Comparing the data before and after the introduction of active choice and using the rate of registration of the other 26 states as a control, it is seen as from July 2011 recordings in California have declined. Through this change of context of choice, it is estimated to have been lost almost 3% of potential subscribers compared to not change the rules.

Obviously, one can not impute to the introduction of the single active choice the fall of recordings. To isolate the causal effect, the two authors have thus created a particular experiment. In Computer Lab for Experimental Research of Harvard University, 368 subjects had the opportunity to login to register for organ donors and to change its status as a donor. The design of the experiment - conducted in the laboratory, but with consequences on the real life of the subjects - has allowed the manipulation of two variables. The first was the way in which each subject was asked if he intended to become a donor, asking to check one available ("I want to register in the register of donors"), or one of two boxes ("I want to register in the register of donors" or "I do not want to sign up to the register of donors"), reproducing the method of active choice. The condition of the single box is meant to simulate the principle of consent. In the event that the box had not been crossed, the subject would not have been entered in the register. The second variable consisted of the information provided about organ donation. In this case, for some subjects appeared on the web page the words "It is estimated that a donor can save or enhance the lives of as many as 50 people donating organs and tissues." Others appeared the same sentence, with the addition of a list of the organs can be donated, such as corneas, heart, kidneys, liver, lungs and others. The intersection of these two variables, therefore, has enabled the creation of four treatment groups.

The subjects who showed a higher rate of registration were those included in the treatment containing the explicit consent and the list of the organs can be donated (40% chance of recording at the end of the study), doing better, respectively, of the combination of "active choice list + "," explicit consent not list + "," + active choice not list ". In general, the subjects were more likely to enroll when the request was framed in the form of explicit consent, rather than active choice between two options. The difference between the two types of treatment is also in the order of magnitude of the difference observed in the experiment natural rate registration in California.

The ability to know what were the subjects already enrolled in registers before the experiment has uncovered two encouraging results. Provide a list of the organs can be donated to those who initially were not donors has increased the probability of recording. The 34.9% of non-donors with list joined, against 22.6% of those without the list. The most obvious result, however, was another. Provide individuals the opportunity to change their status of donor increases the number of registered donors. The subjects are in fact as many as 22 times more likely to enroll in the registry rather than unsubscribe. For this reason, the title of the article quotes the motto of Winston Churchill: "Do not accept a 'No' for an answer." Remember after a little time to the citizens the opportunity to enroll in the registers may prompt them to change the decision not to enroll taken in the past.

If this first experiment seems to question from an experimental point of view the effectiveness of the previously assumed active choice, such problems are overlooked by the behavioral sciences in addressing the complexity of the issue of the donations?

First, the regulations vary from country to country, making it impossible attempts to enclose in categories precise recording systems. A study conducted in 2012 by Amanda Rosenblum and colleagues shows how each donor registry has its own peculiar characteristics of membership, including the method of recording, the minimum age for enrollment, the role of family members and the ability to change the choice. How is it possible to identify the causal contribution of each of these characteristics?

Here emerges a second problem. Labels such as those of "explicit consent", "explicit dissent", "presumed consent", "silence", "active choice" (which in English is expressed by formulas as "mandated choice", "prompted choice" and "active choice ") are often missing in representing important nuances present in the regulatory systems. In literature, this leads inevitably difficulties on the use of terms, which affect the very possibility of successfully replicate entire experimental sets. An example is provided by the working paper analyzed, as the "explicit consent" used in the study may seem like a form of "active choice". This proposal is subject to, within a laboratory, while in many states, in the life of every day, is the subject that has to take steps to register.

A third problem is related to the major role that is played by the decisions of the family of a potential donor. In many countries, in fact, family members can change the choice of the deceased donor, not consenting to organ harvesting. Conversely, may consent to the donation, without the deceased has expressed its consent to life. Alvin Roth and Judd Kessler conducted a survey with 803 subjects, asking if they would have consented to organ harvesting of a relative in the event that the latter had written, or not, to the registers via the express consent or active choice. The results show that a family member is more reluctant to agree the removal of organs if the deceased relative has expressed his desire not to be a donor through the active choice, rather than not giving his explicit consent. As another experiment, therefore, the introduction of active choice would seem to lead to worse results than actual donations to the express, influencing the opinion of family members.

Finally, a fourth problem is the meaning that individuals attach to gesture to donate their organs. We are sure that a citizen confers the same value in the donation through different systems of registration? In this case, active choice and explicit consent could lead to similar outcomes. Shai Davidai and colleagues, in a study of 2012, as noted in a context of choice where there is presumed consent, people placed on a scale of values ​​the gesture of organ donation close to passing in front of someone when you are in tail and to devote part of their time to volunteering. Conversely, in a scenario where worth the explicit consent, assign people to donate organs a value similar to that which is given to gestures like to donate half their wealth to charity or do a hunger strike in support of a cause.

The cited literature, abundant and complex, and not containing unequivocal conclusions about the effectiveness of a particular intervention, does not point to the conclusion that certain institutional immobility is the answer: designing policy interventions that seek to achieve a particular goal is not only desirable, but it is necessary for a society of citizens aware and well informed. That said, it is worth reiterating as there is a science of miracles, whatever form it takes the same miracle that, in turn, becomes fashion in the academic community, generating curiosity (legitimate) and trust (often uncontrolled). Study, analyze, publish a scientific result, no certainties. If not that, in fact, not to have.

of Carlo Canepa and Luciano Canova"

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Sally Satel in Forbes on Organ Markets, Sacred Values, and the Power of Information

Sally Satel, in Forbes, has a recent column about this paper, which was presented at the recent AEA meetings in Boston:

Are Attitudes about Morally Controversial Transactions Affected by Information? The Case of Payments for Human Organs
JULIO J. ELIAS (Universidad del CEMA)
NICOLA LACETERA (University of Toronto)
MARIO MACIS (Johns Hopkins University)
[View Abstract] [Download Preview]

Her column is here: Organ Markets, Sacred Values, and the Power of Information

Saturday, January 17, 2015

The Conference of the Society for Economic Design: Istanbul Bilgi University on July 1-4, 2015


The Conference of the Society for Economic Design 2015 will take place at Istanbul Bilgi University on July 1-4, 2015. The plenary speakers are Eric Maskin (Leo Hurwich Lecture), Stephen Morris (Murat Sertel Lecture), Charles Plott (SED Lecture) and Rakesh Vohra (Paul Kleindorfer Lecture)

Organizing the sessions not by methodology but by topic, the conference aims to implement a platform for theorists and experimentalists to benefit more from each other. Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2015. Please see the details at http://sed2015.bilgi.edu.tr

To follow the tradition, there will be a doctoral school adjunct to the conference on June 30-July 1, 2015. This year's school is organized by Bilgi Economics Lab of Istanbul on experimental economics with special emphasis on the role of experiments for economic design. The lecturers are Gary Bolton, Jordi Brandts, Seda Ertac, Ayca Ebru Giritligil and Emin Karagozlu. For details, please see http://sed2015.bilgi.edu.tr/site_media/docs/SED2015-Grad-School-Jan-2015.pdf or the attached.

Friday, January 16, 2015

College Admissions as Non-Price Competition: The Case of South Korea

Chris Avery and Soo Lee and I have a new NBER working paper:

College Admissions as Non-Price Competition: The Case of South Korea

Christopher AveryAlvin E. RothSoohyung Lee

NBER Working Paper No. 20774
Issued in December 2014
NBER Program(s):   ED 
This paper examines non-price competition among colleges to attract highly qualified students, exploiting the South Korean setting where the national government sets rules governing applications. We identify some basic facts about the behavior of colleges before and after a 1994 policy change that changed the timing of the national college entrance exam and introduced early admissions, and propose a game-theoretic model that matches those facts. When applications reveal information about students that is of common interest to all colleges, lower-ranked colleges can gain in competition with higher-ranked colleges by limiting the number of possible applications.




This paper is available as PDF (474 K) or via email.
A data appendix is available at http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w20774 

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Will suicide remain a crime in India?

From the NY Times: India and the Right to Suicide
By JERRY PINTO

"Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860, a piece of legislation designed by the very Victorian Lord Macaulay, which punished attempts to commit suicide with a fine or up to a year in jail or both. Aiding or instigating suicide — an offense created later — was punishable by up to ten years in jail, including possibly hard labor.

"The rationale for criminalizing attempted suicide is the standard theological argument: Since only God could give you life, only God could take it away. The harsher penalty for abetment arose from something more distinctly Indian.

"India has strict laws against demanding a dowry of brides and their families. But even after marriage, women can be harassed by in-laws asking for money, gold or gifts, and some, driven to despair, kill themselves. Criminal abetment to suicide was often used to take such cases to court.

"But now, at the instigation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the law stands to be repealed. This follows a 2008 recommendation by the Law Commission, which suggested that attempted suicide should be “regarded more as a manifestation of a diseased condition of mind deserving treatment and care rather than an offense to be visited with punishment.”

"The news comes none too soon, given that India has the world’s highest suicide rate for 15-to-29-year-olds and desperately needs to rethink its approach to mental health. (In many cities, electro-convulsive therapy remains a common treatment for depression and suicidal tendencies; in small villages, the standard cure might be exorcism.) Although the anti-suicide law has rarely been applied, its very existence — and the threat of prison — discouraged people who attempted or considered suicide from seeking help. The authorities would sometimes leverage it for political advantage or to extract money by blackmailing already traumatized families."

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Will medically assisted dying become legal in Britain?

The Telegraph has the story: Assisted dying must be legalised, demand key figures

"Political leaders must agree a plan to legalise assisted dying as one Briton a fortnight is now travelling abroad to end their lives, an alliance of prominent figures from across public life warns today.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, some 80 doctors, writers, actors, clerics and politicians say an “overwhelming majority” of the public now supports a change in the law and that Parliament must allow time to finally resolve the issue.
The signatories, which include Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Ian McEwan, the author and winner of the Booker Prize, argue that Britain is “closer than ever” to a historic change after progress in the House of Lords on a Bill tabled by Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor."
***********
In related news from England:
Right-to-die campaigner and MS sufferer Debbie Purdy - who forced the government to publish rules on assisted suicide - dies aged 51

  • "Debbie Purdy has died aged 51 at Marie Curie Hospice in Bradford
  • Was one of most outspoken activists in legal battle over assisted suicide
  • She won a landmark ruling in the House of Lords in 2009 resulting in a guidelines on assisted suicide being published by the government
  • She had been refusing food as she wanted to 'control' her death
  • Her husband has paid tribute to 'a much loved wife, sister, aunt and friend' "


Tuesday, January 13, 2015

A long non-simultaneous kidney exchange chain in Alabama

From the University of Alabama at Birmingham:

Nation’s Longest Kidney Transplant Chain Reaches 34

 "The chain, which began in December 2013, has matched 34 living donors with 34 recipients to create the longest kidney-transplant chain ever recorded in the United States; previously, the longest chain on record involved 30 donors and recipients in 17 hospitals around the country. All 34 recipients in the UAB kidney chain have been transplanted at UAB Hospital or Children’s of Alabama.
...
"Sixty-seven of the 68 surgeries in the chain to date have been performed at UAB Hospital. One recipient, 15-year-old Ryane Burns of Union, Mississippi, was transplanted at Children’s of Alabama, making it the only program in the Southeast to offer living-kidney paired donation to recipients younger than 18.
...
"more transplants are planned in January 2015. Denise Prewitt is a bridge donor who is expected to be part of the chain in the New Year. She is donating on behalf of Marjorie Wilhite who received her kidney this past summer."

Monday, January 12, 2015

Innovator in Residence organ donation initiative at HHS (job posting)

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking to hire an Innovator in Residence to help increase organ donation. Here is the job posting: Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
INNOVATOR IN RESIDENCE (IIR)

"A rapidly growing public health startup, ORGANIZE, is seeking to hire a forward-thinking, entrepreneurial individual to serve a two-year appointment of Innovator In Residence (IIR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The IIR will play an instrumental role in evaluating ongoing efforts to increase organ donation and transplantation and will work closely with HHS staff, including staff in the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Division of Transplantation and the broader organ donation and transplantation community, to identify gaps between these efforts and opportunities for better coordination. The IIR will work with stakeholders to develop an implementation strategy toward improvements in the organ donation system, including new technology, access to data necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs), best practices and systemic improvements to increase organ donor conversion rates and empower OPOs to operate most efficiently.

"This will include studying a broad range of potential focus areas, which the IIR will identify in consultation with HHS and the organ donation and transplantation community, including existing models of federal financial reimbursement of OPOs and transplant centers for organ recovery and transplantation, harmonizing the forces acting on OPOs and their various partners (e.g. transplant centers), and creating opportunities for OPOs to operate most flexibly and effectively. The research will be guided by a panel of experts including HHS staff and thought leaders in the OPO industry. The position is located in Washington D.C., although frequent travel is possible.

"The IIR will work onsite at HHS with the HHS Chief Technology Officer and staff from other HHS operating divisions for exposure to a wide range of policy, stakeholder engagement, and technical expertise. The IIR will work with donor hospitals, transplant centers, OPOs, and other relevant stakeholders toward identifying innovative approaches for increasing the number of organ transplants performed annually and streamlining OPO operations. The IIR will bring experience and expertise in data science, policy, social enterprise, and project management.
...


"Application Requirements

Send a one page letter describing your interest in and qualifications for the position, including a CV and three references to iir@organize.org.
This position will remain open until a candidate is selected.
Available to US citizens or eligible naturalized US citizens.

Organize IIR Advisory Team


Al Roth,
Winner of 2012 Nobel
Prize in Economics,
Professor at Stanford

Judd Kessler,
Behavioral Economist,
Professor at Wharton

Stan Freck,
Senior Director, Microsoft
U.S. Public Sector Office
of Civic Innovation

Simon Sinek,
Speaker and
Best-selling Author"

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Eva Tardos honored as ICIAM lecturer

Here's the story from Cornell, celebrating Eva Tardos, with a nice view of how market design looks from a computer science perspective:

Computer scientist Eva Tardos honored as ICIAM lecturer

"The International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) has selected Éva Tardos, Cornell’s Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science and senior associate dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, to deliver the Olga Taussky-Todd Lecture at the international meeting of applied and industrial mathematicians in Beijing, Aug. 10-14, 2015. It is the most important international event in applied and industrial mathematics, held once every four years.

"This honor is conferred on a “woman who has made outstanding contributions in applied mathematics and/or scientific computation.”

"The lecture is named in memory of Olga Taussky-Todd, whose scientific legacy is in theoretical and applied mathematics, and whose work exemplifies the qualities to be recognized. Lecturers are selected by a committee established by the ICIAM president, with advice from the Association for Women in Mathematics and European Women in Mathematics. Tardos was chosen for her numerous and deep contributions to the fields of combinatorial optimization, discrete algorithms and algorithmic game theory, and her ability to convey the basic ideas and inspire others to pursue them.

"Tardos joined the Cornell faculty in 1989 and became chair of the Department of Computer Science in 2006. Her recent work concerns algorithmic game theory applied to networks. She is most known for her work on network-flow algorithms; approximation algorithms; and quantifying the efficiency of selfish routing, an emerging area of designing systems for “selfish users” who all seek the best possible outcome for themselves, as in competing for bandwidth on the Internet. Her work shows that in many cases the selfish solutions do reasonably well, which diminishes the need for central coordination. In a recent paper, “Network formation in the presence of contagious risk,” she studied the cascade effects of failures, especially relevant after the 2008 economic crisis.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Scott Kominers speaks about Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency and Marginal Returns -- video

Here's a video of a recent lecture by Scott Kominers: Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency and Marginal Returns

"In this presentation, Scott Duke Kominers noted that mechanism design tends to examine only the market clearing stage. The field treats human capital as a fixed or predetermined input, rather than a dynamic range of possibilities. His own model uncovers a relationship between three variables: strategy-proofness, investment efficiency, and marginal rewards."

Friday, January 9, 2015

Repugnance watch: California foie gras ban struck down by judge

Here's the story: California foie gras ban struck down by judge, delighting chefs

"Menus across the Bay Area were being hastily rewritten Wednesday after a federal judge struck down California’s ban on foie gras, allowing restaurants to serve up the delicacy for the first time in two years.

"U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles ruled that the state prohibition on the sale of foie gras, a fatty liver dish made from force-fed ducks and geese, illegally encroached upon the regulatory domain of the federal government.

"California lawmakers passed the groundbreaking ban in 2004 amid concern that force-feeding poultry is inhumane. The law took effect eight years later, immediately putting a crimp in California’s dining scene, where the French-inspired fare is celebrated at many high-end restaurants for its rich, creamy flavor.
...
"Wednesday’s decision was based on the federal Poultry Products Inspections Act, which regulates the sale and distribution of birds and expressly prohibits states from imposing certain conditions on food. Wilson said California’s foie gras ban had done just that.
...
"The ban, which specifically outlawed force-feeding birds for the purpose of enlarging their livers and selling them, was challenged by poultry producer Hudson Valley Foie Gras of New York, Hot’s Restaurant Group in Southern California and the Canadian trade organization Association des Eleveurs de Canards et d’Oies du Quebec. The state attorney general’s office defended the prohibition.

"In Wednesday’s ruling, Wilson acknowledged that emotions ran high over the matter, writing that his 15-page opinion “touches upon a topic impacting gourmands’ stomachs and animal-rights activists’ hearts.”
...
"Strugar noted that, under Wednesday’s ruling, production of foie gras remains illegal in California"


HT: Kim Krawiec

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Finding long chains in kidney exchange: new algorithms

Here's a new paper just published online before print, January 5, 2015, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421853112, PNAS January 5, 2015.

It's about the algorithms we're presently using to find optimal cycles-and-chains solutions in the kinds of sparse kidney exchange graphs we're encountering in the several programs with which we work most closely.

Finding long chains in kidney exchange using the traveling salesman problem
by Ross Anderson, Itai Ashlagi,  David Gamarnik,  and Alvin E. Roth

Abstract: As of May 2014 there were more than 100,000 patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor. Although the preferred treatment is a kidney transplant, every year there are fewer donors than new patients, so the wait for a transplant continues to grow. To address this shortage, kidney paired donation (KPD) programs allow patients with living but biologically incompatible donors to exchange donors through cycles or chains initiated by altruistic (nondirected) donors, thereby increasing the supply of kidneys in the system. In many KPD programs a centralized algorithm determines which exchanges will take place to maximize the total number of transplants performed. This optimization problem has proven challenging both in theory, because it is NP-hard, and in practice, because the algorithms previously used were unable to optimally search over all long chains. We give two new algorithms that use integer programming to optimally solve this problem, one of which is inspired by the techniques used to solve the traveling salesman problem. These algorithms provide the tools needed to find optimal solutions in practice.
************

Update: now published,  PNAS | January 20, 2015 | vol. 112 | no. 3 | 663–668

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Ethics and Market Design: Stanford, Jan 8 (update, note room change)

If you're on the Stanford campus tomorrow, you're invited to hear a panel discussion, with Anat Admati, Debra Satz and me on repugnance and, more generally, Ethics and Market Design

EVENT OVERVIEW

Markets depend on legal and institutional structures. These structures raise questions of ethics: are they fair? Do they generate harms?  If harms are unavoidable, do these structures fairly manage and distribute the risks of harm?This panel discussion brings together prominent  philosophers and economists to discuss the potentials and limits of designing markets with ethics in mind. Cases in point will be markets for donated organs and financial markets. 
This is an RSVP event. RSVP here.

SPEAKER

Anat Admati, George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, author of The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It.
Al Roth, Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University & Gund professor of economics and business administration emeritus at Harvard University, winner of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work on market design.
Debra Satz, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, author of Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Limits of Markets.

4:00PM ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2015 AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, CROWN QUADRANGLE, MANNING FACULTY LOUNGE (ROOM 270)
Sponsored by The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society / ethicsinsociety@stanford.edu
***********
Update (with room change) from the organizers:
"Just a quick update on tomorrow's panel discussion: we've been overwhelmed with RSVPs (over 100), so we booked a larger room for the panel discussion (180 in the Law School - we'll put up signposts tomorrow), and we had to close the list for the dinner. "

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Nikhil Agarwal, in Forbes

30 Under 30: The Entrepreneurs Making Healthcare Digital


"Then there are the big thinkers. MIT Assistant Prof. Nikhil Agarwal is using economics theory to understand how the medical match, which decides where doctors train, works."

Nikhil Agarwal, 28

Assistant professor, MIT
The match system that decides where doctors do their residencies can seem unfair. Worse: it seemed more prestigious hospitals paid less than they should. This MIT economist has created models showing that this is simply the result of having a limited number of positions at the programs that provide the best training. Next up: a study of the similar match system used in New York City high schools.

Monday, January 5, 2015

A position for a market designer in Zurich

Sven Seuken writes:

"the University of Zurich has just announced its search for a new "Professor in Organizational Economics". The position is open rank (full, associate or assistant professor) and available beginning in April 2015 or later. I thought that many junior as well as senior readers of your market design blog might be interested in this position, and thus I was wondering if you might be willing to link to this announcement on your blog: http://jobs.zeit.de/jobs/zurich_switzerland_professorship_in_organizational_economics_109027.html

Ramesh Johari's course on Platform and Marketplace Design, starts tomorrow

Take the class, or you can also scroll down and see the syllabus with links to the papers.

MS&E 336: Platform and Marketplace Design

Course time

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00-11:50 AM

Instructors

Ramesh Johari
Associate Professor
Management Science and Engineering
Electrical Engineering (by courtesy)
Huang Engineering Center, Room 311
E-mail: ramesh.johari@stanford.edu
Office hours: TBA, Huang 311
Additional office hours by appointment


Nick Arnosti (TA)
Management Science and Engineering
E-mail}: narnosti@stanford.edu
Office hours: TBA

Course website

The course website will be accessible through CourseWork.

Catalog course description

The last decade has witnessed a meteoric rise in the number of online markets and platforms competing with traditional mechanisms of trade. Examples of such markets include online marketplaces for goods, such as eBay; online dating markets; markets for shared resources, such as Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb; and online labor markets. We will review recent research that aims to both understand and design such markets. Emphasis on mathematical modeling and methodology, with a view towards preparing Ph.D. students for research in this area.

Detailed course description

Markets are an ancient institution for matching the supply for a good or service with its demand. Physical markets were typically slow to evolve, with simple institutions governing trade, and trading partners generally facing a daunting challenge in finding the “right” partner. The information technology revolution, however, has generated a sea of change in how markets function: now, markets are typically complex platforms, with a range of mechanisms involved in facilitating matches among participants.  Recent trends point to an unprecedented level of control over the design, implementation, and operation of markets: more than ever before, we are able to engineer the platforms governing transactions among market participants.  As a consequence, market operators or platforms can control a host of variables such as pricing, liquidity, visibility, information revelation, terms of trade, and transaction fees. The decisions made by the platform and the market participants interact, sometimes in intricate and subtle ways, to determine market outcomes.


This course is intended to prepare students for research on online and platform markets.  The course was inspired by the following observation: in the last decade, a wide range of graduates with quantitative backgrounds have been put into positions where they are effectively designing markets every day.  Often this is a side effect of being thrust into a software engineering, product development, or regulatory role: for example, a new hire might be asked to change how users browse through search results on eBay or Airbnb.  As is immediately apparent to a market designer, small changes to that basic infrastructure---the search engine---can radically alter the behavior of the market itself.  The goal in the class is to prepare students to be able to think conceptually about these market design challenges.


With that motivation in mind, we have three main goals for the quarter:
  1. Problems.  The first goal is to use the quarter to identify open research directions that have risen to the forefront with the rise of online platforms.  We live in an exciting time for market design, with great interest in the fundamentals, as well as a rich set of applications that motivate research directions, and provide data and testbeds for validation.  A key emphasis in this part of the class is to focus on “levers” that affect the information that market participants obtain about each other in a variety of ways.
  2. Tools. The second goal is to ensure students have access to a basic set of tools with which to reason about such markets.  The course assumes students have already had prior exposure to game theory and economic modeling.  In this course, we will focus on a set of tools that have specifically proven helpful in studying platform markets, and the effects of design interventions on these markets.  A key emphasis is on large market models.
  3. Applications.  Along the way, we hope to learn about how the research questions we identify and the tools we learn are relevant to specific marketplaces.  This will be through a mix of mathematical modeling, empirical research, as well as anecdotal evidence.


The course will be taught using a mix of lecture format and seminar-style guided discussion. Much of what we will discuss is active research, so the reading material will be drawn from relevant papers in the literature; this material will be available from the course website. The focus will be on encouraging discussion of both open theoretical questions and modeling issues. This is particularly important since the course content draws from a range of disciplines (operations research, computer science, economics, etc.). The course should provide a unique forum for a lively exchange of ideas across these boundaries.

Evaluation

Your grade in the course will be based on two components.
  1. Participation in lecture [ 40% of course grade ]. You will be expected to read papers and actively participate in lectures.  To help make sure this happens, for at least four of the weeks of the quarter, you will have to choose one paper that you need to read and prepare a “mini-review”.  The mini-review consists of answers to the following three questions, in 100 words or less each:
    1. What is the paper about?
    2. What are the strengths of the paper?
    3. What are the weaknesses of the paper?
Each mini-review will be graded credit/no-credit, i.e., you will receive full credit for this
component if you satisfactorily complete each mini-review.
  1. Course project [ 60% of course grade ]. A course project is the main evaluation component of the class.  The course project is meant to get you thinking actively about research problems in the market design problems represented by the course material.  The project will culminate in a presentation to your fellow students, and a written report (due by March 20, 2015).
    I will distribute more details on the project in the first week of lecture.

Course outline



Note: The content described on the course outline below will take up the first 14 lectures of the quarter.  (This is why each lecture is 110 minutes, instead of the usual 75 minutes.)  The remainder of the quarter will be used for guest speakers and discussion and presentation of course projects.


Part 1 (2 lectures): Introduction to platforms

We introduce platforms, and cover some of the relevant economics literature that defines and analyzes two-sided platforms.


Topics of interest:
  1. What is a (two-sided) platform?
  2. What is the objective of the platform operator,
    what information does she possess, and
    what tools does she have to acheive these objectives?
  3. What are the objectives of platform participants,
    what information do they possess,
    and what actions are available to them?


Papers:


Part 2 (2 lectures): Operational details of platforms -- pricing

We consider what the introductory papers might have missed, focusing on pricing strategies.  The emphasis is on operational details of platform behavior.


Topics of interest:
  1. Pricing usage
    1. Membership fees and subscriptions
    2. Usage-based fee with flat fee per transaction/match
    3. Usage-based fee with volume-based fee per transaction/match
  2. Pricing visibility: paying for preferential access to the other side of the market
  3. Pricing transaction risk: paying for reduced uncertainty of trade


Papers:


Part 3 (3 lectures): Operational details of platforms -- reputation and feedback

We study the role of reputation systems used by online platforms to help participants judge trading partners they have never met.


Topics of interest:
  1. Examples of reputation and feedback systems
  2. What incentives do particular systems provide to market participants?
  3. How do we design systems that incentivize honest feedback?
  4. How should the platform use the feedback system as a “lever” to improve market performance?


Papers:
  1. Horton and Golden, Reputation Inflation in an Online Market


Part 4 (3 lectures): Operational details of platforms -- search

We discuss how the platform can mediate matches by directing the search effort of each side of the market.


Topics of interest:
  1. How do market participants cope with the search frictions of finding trading partners?
  2. What information should the platform share with market participants about potential matches?
  3. What mechanisms can the platform provide to participants to improve the signals they send each other?


Papers:
  1. Horton and Johari, At What Quality and What Price? Inducing Separating Equilibria as a Market Design Problem


Part 5 (4 lectures): Modeling tools

In this part of the course we will cover some tools that have proven helpful in modeling and analyzing operational aspects of two-sided platforms.  We emphasize the use of large market models.


Topics of interest:
  1. Large market models of static markets
    1. Directed search and decentralized matching
    2. Double auctions
  2. Large market models of dynamic markets
    1. Repeated (dynamic) auctions
    2. Dynamic matching models


Papers of interest:

  1. Arnosti, Johari, and Kanoria, Managing Congestion in Dynamic Matching Markets