Decentralization conference at Stanford June 10-11: call for papers

Here's the call for papers:

Call for Papers 2014 Decentralization Conference

The 2014 Decentralization Conference will be hosted by the Department of Economics at Stanford University on June 10th and 11th at The Sheraton Palo Alto, in Palo Alto, California.  The Local organizer will be Fuhito Kojima.   

Submissions will be accepted until March 15th, 2014. Full papers are preferred, but extended abstracts will also be considered. To submit a paper, please submit your paper to Megan Glatzel (mglatzel@stanford.edu) with the subject line Decentralization Submission.  We aim to announce the conference program by April 15th. All participants must confirm their attendance by May 1, 2014.

The theme of this year's conference will be market and institutional design.  As mentioned in an earlier email, the conference will co-locate with the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (http://www.sigecom.org/ec14/) and the NBER Market Design working group, creating an interdisciplinary market design conference.  The combined conferences will run from the morning of Sunday June 8th to Thursday June 12th. Participants as well as their graduate students are encouraged to attend for the entire week.

There will be a joint session of all three conferences taking place on the morning of June 10th. Owing to this joint session, our exclusive portion of the conference will be slightly shorter than usual. We expect the program to consist of between ten and twelve papers.   In keeping with the traditional format of this conference, each presenter will be allocated an hour to allow for technical and detailed presentations.

We have reserved a block of rooms at the Sheraton Palo Alto. You can contact them by email at www.sheraton.com/paloalto or by phone at 650 462 2930

Please feel free to forward this to email to any scholars who might be interested in presenting at or attending the conference.

All the best

Scott E Page

University of Michigan

Approaches to alleviating the shortage of transplant organs: AAAS annual meeting

Weather permitting, I'll be on my way to Chicago today for a session at the AAAS meeting, on the shortage of organs for transplants.

Transplant Organ Shortage: Informing National Policies using Management Sciences

Friday, 14 February 2014: 10:00 AM-11:30 AM

Columbus IJ (Hyatt Regency Chicago)

Since the first successful kidney transplant in 1954, outcomes have improved dramatically.  As a result,  the wait list for organ transplants has grown significantly over time. With only about 17,000  kidneys available from combined living and deceased donors annually, there are currently 99,000 Americans waiting for a kidney transplant, and the wait-list mortality is now higher than ever before. National policies for organ allocation are largely dictated by legislative priorities, but the organ shortage results in a number of disparities and therefore,  there is a growing interest in optimizing organ allocation policies to develop a balance between fairness, utility and efficiency.

Organs are a limited, perishable resource and using them more effectively saves more lives. The speakers in this briefing have taken an inter-disciplinary approach to addressing the organ allocation in the U.S., suggesting compelling and provocative solutions. Michael Abecassis, a transplant surgeon and Chief of the Transplant Program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and Past President of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons will offer a brief overview of the current issues facing organ allocation. John Friedewald, a transplant nephrologist and  Past Chair of the United Network for Organ Sharing Kidney and Pancreas Committee, that oversaw the most recent proposed changes in kidney allocation, also from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, will speak about the implications of these recent proposed changes to deceased donor kidney allocation policy. Nobel laureate (2012) and Stanford University economist Alvin Roth will discuss the evolution of innovative solutions to the organ shortage and how mathematical models are used to optimize Kidney Paired Donation and the impact of increasing living donor kidney transplants on the waiting list for deceased donor transplants. Sanjay Mehrotra from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University will discuss how simulation models can be used to optimize deceased donor kidney utilization to maximize utility.  Mark Siegler Director of the University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and executive director of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence will  will challenge some long-held beliefs about living donors and will address the salient issues related to ethical considerations in potential solutions to the organ shortage..

Michael Abecassis MD MBA, J. Roscoe Miller Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Microbiology/Immunology, Chief, Division of Transplantaiton, and Founding Director, Comprehensive Transplant Center Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Organizer

John Friedewald MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Surgery, Comprehensive Transplant Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and former chair, Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing Kidney Transplantation Committee

Discussant

Sanjay Mehrotra PhD, Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering, and Director, Center for Engineering and Health, Institute for Public Health and Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Addressing Allocation Inefficiencies and Geographic Disparities

Alvin Roth PhD, Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford University, and co-recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Allocating Donor Organs in Ways that Increase Their Availability

Mark Siegler MD, Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Surgery, University of Chicago Medicine, Founding Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and Executive Director of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence

Ethical Considerations for Innovative Strategies to Increase the Supply of Organs
*******************
Update: here's a picture of the panel:

and here's a news story: Math saving lives: New models help address kidney organ donation shortages

Venture capital looks at the design of marketplaces

Not long ago I had a chance to listen to some interesting presentations at a conference sponsored by Greylock Partners, about businesses that aim to make marketplaces: As Marketplaces Evolve, Greylock Places Its Bets

 Leena Rao writes:
"The idea of marketplaces as a business model for technology startups isn’t new. We saw some marketplaces go belly up in the bubble, and saw a few, like eBay, grow into massive businesses. However, the marketplace model has experienced a renaissance of sorts lately, with companies like Airbnb, Uber and others gaining serious traction and becoming billion-dollar-plus businesses.

Greylock Partners held a conference in mid-November devoted to talking about design, product development, the economics and more around marketplaces, spearheaded in part by the firm’s newest partner and former eBay Motors creator, Simon Rothman.

As part of its new $100 million commitment to investing in marketplaces, Greylock assembled Reid Hoffman, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, eBay CEOJohn Donahoe, Nobel Prize Laureate and marketplace expert Alvin Roth, and many others to discuss the rise of marketplaces and much more. I was able to sit down with some of the speakers to talk about their thoughts on why marketplaces are hot right now.

Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and was an early investor in Facebook, sees many parallels between networks and marketplaces. On the similarities in both models, he says: “There’s a question of how do you identify people? What reputational systems underlie it? What kinds of information and signaling? What kind of transactions go public? There’s some differences, too, but it’s essentially a similar brain activity.”

As for why marketplaces are getting more attention now, Hoffman believes that it’s in part due to mobile and the progression in human behavior. “Now everyone is comfortable with the notion of, ‘Oh, I could actually find someone I don’t know and transact with them, either as travelers, hosts, sellers, buyer.’ Those that can actually work mean that I have some trust in these mechanisms,” he explains further.

Rothman agrees with Hoffman, and told me that trust is a huge element of why marketplaces have evolved, as well as the biggest challenge for these marketplaces. “They’re really selling trust. And until the web adds social identity, I think creating trust at scale is really hard. As we’ve heard, marketplace is about influence, and if you can’t control the experience, if you can’t control the product, you can’t control the fulfillment. All you can control is trust and you need to have that. And then mobile is an accelerant to that. If you are a local market, or a local business, you have to have mobile. There’s just no way Uber works without mobile,” he says.

...

So how do marketplaces add trust? Hoffman advises to look at mechanisms by which you can essentially borrow some trust and add it to the product, such as using social networks or identities. He recalled a product development from his PayPal days, where an engineer developed a better way to authenticate bank accounts.

For years, in order to authenticate a bank account you had to send in a voided check, and a copy of your drivers license. PayPal realized that if they wanted to get to scale, the company would have to make it easier to create accounts. “If we can’t solve this problem, we basically don’t have an interesting business model,” he said. One of the early engineers developed a way to send two sub-dollar transactions to the account, to create a PIN of sorts for instant verification.

While friction is something most marketplaces want to remove, Rothman argues that some should consider “the concept of strategic friction” when it comes to trust and safety. He thinks it’s one of the only places where friction is not only tolerable but kind of desirable.

...

"Hoffman says that Airbnb was creating liquidity out of space. Even if the hosts didn’t own their real estate, the liquidity involved is “hugely valuable and motivating to them.” So, they’ll adopt mobile products, and go through hoops to make that happen. “There was no question that this is going to work,” he says. 

...

Now that Greylock is allocating some of its new $1 billion in funding toward the marketplace model, we’ll be looking to see where the firm will be placing its bets. Rothman thinks that in the next five years there will be more $1 billion dollar marketplaces than there were in the past 20 years, and we already have quite a few that are rising fast. Stay tuned."

Webcast of the luncheon talks on market design from the 2014 AEA Annual Meeting

The AEA has posted a collection of webcasts from the 2014 annual meeting in Philadelphia, including from the
Nobel Laureate Luncheon
William Nordhaus; Paul Milgrom; Roger Myerson 
View Webcast

The video is a little less than an hour: and consists of brief introductions by Nordhaus, and talks on market design and its history by Milgrom and Myerson, and a short talk by me with some thoughts on the future of market design as economic engineering and the science that supports it.  (spoiler: I think it will be important to study congestion...)
**************

Eleven 2014 Annual Meeting sessions are available online. (I enjoyed Claudia Goldin's magisterial address on gender and jobs, which reminded me of the work following up on this and the matching aspects of pursuing both careers and marriages, of our joint student Stephanie Hurder.):

•    AEA Presidential Address "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter" (Claudia Goldin)
•    AEA Awards Ceremony (William Nordhaus)
•    Richard T. Ely Lecture "Retirement Security in an Aging Population" (James Poterba)
•    Nobel Laureate Luncheon (Paul Milgrom, Roger Myerson, and Alvin Roth)
•    AEA/AFA Joint Luncheon (Jeremy Stein)
•    Chairman Bernanke Presentation (Ben Bernanke, Kenneth Rogoff, and Anil Kashyap)
•    What's Natural? Key Macroeconomic Parameters after the Great Recession
•    Discounting for the Long Run
•    Financial Globalization
•    Climate Change Policy after Kyoto
•    Macroeconomics of Austerity

Barcelona experimental economics summer school

Experiments and macroeconomics at Barcelona, this just in:

Announcing the 2014 Barcelona LeeX Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics

Macroeconomic theories have traditionally been tested using non-experimental "field" data. However, modern, micro-founded macroeconomic models can also be tested in the laboratory, and researchers have begun to pursue such experimental testing and evaluation. This June, graduate students specializing in macroeconomics or experimental economics, as well as junior faculty members and researchers of macroeconomic are invited to attend the Barcelona LeeX summer school devoted to experimental macroeconomics research. This intensive 5 day summer school will be held from June 11 to 17, 2014 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain.  Students will be taught experimental methods and exposed to a number of macroeconomic applications that have been tested experimentally. Students will be asked to participate in experiments and to develop their own experimental macroeconomic projects. Faculty will assist with and critique these projects.

Details about the summer school including how to apply are provided on the summer school website

http://www.upf.edu/leex/events/bleess_2014/index.html

This year we invite summer school students to present their ongoing research during the summer school. Such presentations may take the form of presentations during the summer school or a poster session during the associated conference workshop, depending on the number of students seeking to present their work. Such presentations will be at the discretion of the summer school organizers.

Students can submit research proposals as part of their summer school application, though this is not a requirement for participation in the summer school.  Indeed, one purpose of the summer school is to think of macroeconomic topics and models that can be implemented in the laboratory in a way that advances our knowledge of behavior.

Summer school students are also invited to attend the 2 day 5th LeeX International Workshop co-organized with Barcelona GSE Summer Forum on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics  from June 9-10, 2014 that will also take place at UPF immediately prior to the summer school.

The deadline for summer school applications is Monday, April 21 2014.  

Summer school in experimental macroeconomics faculty:

• Guest lectures
• Charles Noussair (Tilburg University)
• Cars Hommes (University of Amsterdam)
• Shyam Sunder (Yale University)
• John Duffy (University of Pittsburgh)
• Frank Heinemann (Technische Universität Berlin)
• Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and  Barcelona GSE )

Summer school organizers:

• John Duffy (University of Pittsburgh)
• Frank Heinemann (Technische Universität Berlin)
• Rosemarie Nagel (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Please forward this message to any interested parties.

Learning and adaptation in the social sciences: NAS Sackler conference, January 10-11

Ido Erev and I will be presenting a paper  on learning and choice behavior at one of the Sackler Colloquia run by the National Academy of Sciences:

In the Light of Evolution VIII: Darwinian Thinking in the Social Sciences

Organized by Brian Skyrms, John C. Avise and Francisco J. Ayala

January 10-11, 2014 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.

 Overview

Darwinian thinking is now having a major impact in social science, both in the consideration of the consequences of biological and cultural evolution on traditional questions, and in the use of quasi-Darwinian adaptive dynamics in evolutionary game theory. This Darwinian point of view is having a major impact on economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and demography.

Agenda

I.  Evolution of Social Norms

Bargaining and Fairness, Kenneth Binmore, University College London
Cooperation, Natalia Komarova, University of California, Irvine
Friendship and Natural Selection, James H. Fowler, University of California, San Diego
Reputation and Punishment, Michihiro Kandori, University of Tokyo

II. Social Dynamics

The Replicator Equation and Other Game Dynamics, Ross Cressman, Wilfrid Laurier University
Payoff-Based Learning Dynamics, Alvin Roth, Harvard University
Strategic Learning Dynamics, David K. Levine, Washington University
Cultural Evolution, Marcus W. Feldman, Stanford University

Keynote Address:  Public Goods: Competition, Cooperation, and Spite, Simon A. Levin, Princeton University

III. Special Sciences

Evolutionary Demography, Kenneth W. Wachter, University of California, Berkeley
Folklore of the Elite and Biological Evolution, Barry O’Neill, University of California, Los Angeles
Economics, Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara
Psychology, Dale Purves, Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School

IV. Applications

Evolutionary Implementation in Mechanism Design, Éva Tardos, Cornell University
Some Dynamics of Signaling, Brian Skyrms, University of California, Irvine
The Rate of Innovation Diffusion in Social Networks, H. Peyton Young, Oxford University
Homophily, Culture, and Coordinating Behaviors, Matthew O. Jackson, Stanford University

Market design today in Philadelphia

Two sessions I'll be attending at today's AEA meetings...


Jan 05, 2014 8:00 am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 204-C 
American Economic Association

Frontiers of Market Design (D4)

Presiding: ALVIN ROTH (Stanford University)

The High-Frequency Trading Arms Race: Frequent Batch Auctions as a Market Design Response

ERIC BUDISH (University of Chicago)

PETER CRAMTON (University of Maryland)

JOHN SHIM (University of Chicago)

[View Abstract]

Organ Donation Loopholes Undermine Warm Glow Giving: An Experiment Motivated By Priority Loopholes in Israel

ALVIN E. ROTH (Stanford University)

JUDD KESSLER (University of Pennsylvania)

[View Abstract]

Mechanism Design in Large Games: Incentives and Privacy

MICHAEL KEARNS (University of Pennsylvania)

MALLESH PAI (University of Pennsylvania)

AARON ROTH (University of Pennsylvania)

JONATHAN ULLMAN (Harvard University)

[View Abstract]

Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence

JOHN WILLIAM HATFIELD (Stanford University)

FUHITO KOJIMA (Stanford University)

SCOTT DUKE KOMINERS (University of Chicago)

[View Abstract]

Discussants:

MICHAEL OSTROVSKY (Stanford University)

JAMES ANDREONI (University of California-San Diego)

ILYA SEGAL (Stanford University)

LARRY SAMUELSON (Yale University)

Jan 05, 2014 10:15 am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 204-A 
American Economic Association

Market Design for Auction Markets (D7)

Presiding: PAUL MILGROM (Stanford University)

The VCG Auction in Theory and in Practice

HAL VARIAN (Google)

CHRIS HARRIS (Google)

[View Abstract]

Market Design and the Evolution of the Combinatorial Clock Auction

LAWRENCE AUSUBEL (University of Maryland)

OLEG BARANOV (University of Colorado)

[View Abstract]

The Continuous Combinatorial Ascending Price Auction

CHARLES R. PLOTT (California Institute of Technology)

[View Abstract]

Deferred Acceptance Heuristic Auctions and United States Spectrum Repurposing

PAUL MILGROM (Stanford University)

ILYA SEGAL (Stanford University)

[View Abstract]

Discussants:

ALVIN E. ROTH (Stanford University)

TAYFUN SONMEZ (Boston College)

Paul Milgrom and Roger Myerson on matching and market design at lunch today

I gather that Lloyd Shapley won't be making the trip to Philadelphia, so I'll be standing in for the two of us.

Jan 04, 2014 12:30 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Grand Ballroom - Salons G & H 
American Economic Association

Nobel Laureate Luncheon

Presiding: WILLIAM NORDHAUS (Yale University)

PAUL MILGROM (Stanford University)

ROGER MYERSON (University of Chicago)

Market design experiments today in Philadelphia

Jan 03, 2014 10:15 am, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 307 
Economic Science Association

Market Design Experiments (C9)

Presiding: JACOB GOEREE (University of Zurich)

From Boston to Chinese Parallel to Deferred Acceptance: Theory and Experiments on a Family of School Choice Mechanisms

YAN CHEN (University of Michigan)

ONUR KESTEN (Carnegie Mellon University)

[View Abstract]

Opt-In versus Mandated Choice for Deceased Organ Donation: An Experimental Study of Actual Organ Donation Decisions

ALVIN E. Roth (Stanford University)

JUDD KESSLER (University of Pennsylvania)

[View Abstract]

Ascending Prices and Package Bidding: Further Experimental Analysis

JOHN H. KAGEL (Ohio State University)

YUANCHUAN LIEN (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology)

PAUL MILGROM (Stanford University)

[View Abstract] [Download Preview]

Spectrum Auction Design: Simple Auctions for Complex Sales

MARTIN BICHLER (Technical University Munich)

JACOB K. GOEREE (University of Zurich)

STEFAN MAYER (Technical University Munich)

PASHA SHABALIN (Technical University Munich)

[View Abstract] [Download Preview]

Discussants:

SCOTT DUKE KOMINERS (University of Chicago)

ERIC GLEN WEYL (University of Chicago)

CARY DECK (University of Arkansas)

TOM WILKENING (University of Melbourne)

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Later in the day there will be another experimental session sponsored by the ESA, and another tomorrow...:

Jan 03, 2014 2:30 pm, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 307
Economic Science Association
Experiments in Economic Development
Presiding: PAULINE GROSJEAN (University of New South Wales)

Institutional Quality, Culture, and Norms of Cooperation: Evidence from a Behavioral Field Experiment
PAULINE GROSJEAN (University of New South Wales)
ALESSANDRA CASSAR (University of San Francisco)
GIOVANNA D'ADDA (University of Birmingham)

Trust and Social Collateral: Empirical Evidence
TANYA S. ROSENBLAT (Iowa State University)
DEAN KARLAN (Yale University)
MARKUS M. MOBIUS (Iowa State University, NBER and Microsoft Research)
ADAM SZEIDL (Central European University)

Health Providers and Patients in Kenya: An Evaluation of Motivations, Interactions and Reports on Sub-Par Behaviors
DANILA SERRA (Southern Methodist University)
ISAAC MBITI (Southern Methodist University)
 ********

Jan 04, 2014 8:00 am, Philadelphia Marriott, Meeting Room 307
Economic Science Association
Identifying Time Preferences from Lab and Field Data
Presiding: CHARLES SPRENGER (Stanford University)

A Perspective on Measuring Discounting and Present Bias
JAMES ANDREONI (University of California-San Diego)

Recent Developments in the Measurement of Time Preferences
GLENN W. HARRISON (Georgia State University)

Identifying Self Control in Field Data
SENDHIL MULLANAITHAN (Harvard University)
SUPREET KAUR (Columbia University)
MICHAEL KREMER (Harvard University)