Results for “alvin roth” 21 found
Kidney swaps II
The Wall Street Journal reports (subs. required) that the kidney swap idea I wrote about earlier is beginning to be implemented. Here are they key points:
Last year, 43% of kidneys transplanted in the U.S. came from living donors, up from 28% a decade ago.
But a biological barrier often blocks a transplant from a relative. In about a third of all would-be pairs, blood types are incompatible. In others, the sick person has antibodies that can initiate a rejection of the donated organ. It’s heartbreaking “to have the treasure of the live donor and then have that not go forward because of a biological obstacle,” says Massachusetts General Hospital transplant surgeon Francis DelMonico.
Occasionally, transplant centers spot a way out: One New England father with blood type A couldn’t donate a kidney to his daughter with blood type B. So he gave a kidney to a teenager with blood type A, and the teenager’s sister gave a kidney for the man’s daughter.
Such swaps, however, typically occur only when happenstance alerts surgeons to the possibility. Economist Alvin Roth and co-authors have devised an algorithm, however, that computes all the possible swaps and which is incentive-compatible.
…when Dr. Saidman gave the economists details on 45 pairs in which the would-be donor was unable to give a kidney to the intended recipient. Even though each of the 45 had a donor willing to spare a kidney, all were stuck waiting for the right person to die. With swaps involving two kidneys, the economists found, eight transplants were possible. If swaps involving three kidneys were possible, then 11 transplants were possible.
Addendum: Alert readers will note that kidney swaps are quite similar to organ clubs an idea for saving lives that has been implemented by Lifesharers.
Kidney swaps
Your spouse is dying of kidney disease. You want to give her one of your kidneys but tests show that it is incompatible with her immune system. Utter anguish and frustration. Is there anything that you can do? Today the answer is yes. Transplant centers are now helping to arrange kidney swaps. You give to the spouse of another donor who gives to your spouse. Pareto would be proud. Even a few three-way swaps have been conducted.
But why stop at three? What about an n-way swap? Let’s add in the possibility of an exchange that raises your spouse on the queue for a cadaveric kidney. And let us also recognize that even if your kidney is compatible with your spouse’s there may be a better match. Is there an allocation system that makes all donors and spouses better off (or at least no worse off) and that maximizes the number of beneficial swaps? In an important paper (Warning! Very technical. Requires NBER subscription.) Alvin Roth and co-authors describe just such a mechanism and show that it could save many lives. Who says efficiency is a pedestrian virtue?
See here for more on how to alleviate the shortage of transplant organs.
My excellent Conversation with Marilynne Robinson
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Marilynne Robinson is one of America’s best and best-known novelists and essayists, whose award-winning works like Housekeeping and Gilead explore themes of faith, grace, and the intricacies of human nature. Beyond her writing, Robinson’s 25-year tenure at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop allowed her to shape and inspire the new generations of writers. Her latest book, Reading Genesis, displays her scholarly prowess, analyzing the biblical text not only through the lens of religious doctrine but also appreciating it as a literary masterpiece.
She joined Tyler to discuss betrayal and brotherhood in the Hebrew Bible, the relatable qualities of major biblical figures, how to contend with the Bible’s seeming contradictions, the true purpose of Levitical laws, whether we’ve transcended the need for ritual sacrifice, the role of the Antichrist, the level of biblical knowledge among students, her preferred Bible translation, whether The Winter’s Tale makes sense, the evolution of Calvin’s reputation and influence, why academics are overwhelmingly secular, the success of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, why she wrote a book on nuclear pollution, what she’ll do next, and more.
And an excerpt:
COWEN: As a Calvinist, too, would not, in general, dismiss the Old Testament, what do you make of a book such as Leviticus? It’s highly legalistic, highly ritualistic. Some Christians read Leviticus and become a split Christian Jew almost. Other Christians more or less dismiss the book. How does it fit into your worldview?
ROBINSON: I think that when you read Herodotus, where he describes these little civilizations that are scattered over his world — he describes them in terms of what they eat or prohibit, or they paint themselves red, or they shave half their head. There are all these very arbitrary distinctions that people make in order to identify with one clan over against another.
At the point of Leviticus, which of course, is an accumulation of many texts over a very long time, no doubt, but nevertheless, to think of it as being Moses — he is trying to create a defined, distinctive human community. By making arbitrary distinctions between people so that you’re not simply replicating notions of what is available or feasible or whatever, but actually asking them to adopt prohibitions of food — that’s a very common distinguishing thing in Herodotus and in contemporary life.
So, the arbitrariness of the laws is not a fault. It is a way of establishing identification of one group as separate from other groups.
COWEN: So, you read it as a narrative of how human communities are created, but you still would take a reading of, say, Sermon on the Mount that the Mosaic law has been lifted? Or it’s still in place?
ROBINSON: Oh, it’s not still in place. We’ve been given other means by which to create identity. Moses was doing something distinctive in a certain period of the evolution of Israel as a people. He didn’t want them to be Egyptians. He didn’t want them to subscribe to the prevailing culture, which was idolatrous, and so on. He’s doing Plato in The Republic. He’s saying, “This is how we develop the idea of a community.”
Having said that, then there are certain other things like “Thou shall not kill,” or whatever, that become characterizing laws. Jesus very often says, when someone says to him, “How can I be saved?” He says, “You know the commandments.” It’s not as if God is an alien figure from the point of view of Christ, whom we take to be his son.
Interesting throughout.
What I’ve been reading
1. Carole Angier, Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald. Might Sebald be the only semi-recent writer who can hold a candle to Ferrante, Knausgaard, and Houllebecq? This book is sprawling, and suffers somewhat from lack of access to the author’s family, but it is a true labor of love. And Angier has a deep understanding of Sebald, and also brings out the Jewish-related themes in his work (though he was not Jewish himself). It attempts to be a Sebaldian work itself, and even if it does not always succeed it is the kind of passionate book we need more of. Recommended, but you have to read Sebald first, if need be start with Die Ausgewanderten [The Emigrants].
2. Arthur Herman, The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World. Ignore the subtitle! There have been a number of good books on the Vikings lately, and this is perhaps the most “popular” and big picture of the lot. The early Vikings swept through Europe in a matter of decades, mixing conquest and trade. King Canute was pretty impressive it seems. Specialists may pick nits, but it is very readable and seems to me to give a good overview of the role of the Vikings in European history. This would be the one to start with.
3. Lawrence Rothfield, The Measure of Man: Liberty, Virtue, and Beauty in the Florentine Republic. An excellent introduction to Florence, with some focus on issues of liberty and also civic leaderhip. One should never tire of reading about this particular topic.
4. Howard W. French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World 1471 to the Second World War. Think of this book as a retelling of some standard historical episodes, but with Africa at the center rather than as a recipient of European advances. This is a useful reframing, and I enjoyed the read. But perhaps by the end it was the New World that in my mind was upgraded as a more central spot for the rise of modernity? Too frequently the relevance of Africa has to be rescued by invoking Portugal, as Sweden, Russia, and Turkey simply will not do the trick there.
New out is Diane Coyle, Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be; she is typically wise.
I am happy to see the publication of Calvin Duke’s Entrepreneurial Communities: An Alternative to the State, The Theories of Spencer Heath and Spencer MacCallum.
There is also Kyle Harper, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, long and comprehensive.
What I’ve been reading
1. Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives, by Sunil Khilnani. A highly readable introduction to Indian history, structured around the lives of some of its major figures. I passed along my copy to Alex.
2. Haruki Murakami, Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa. More for classical music and Ojawa fans than Murakami readers, this is nonetheless an easy to read and stimulating set of interviews for any serious classical music listener. They are most interesting on Mahler.
3. Elsa Morante, History. In America, this is one of the least frequently read and discussed great European novels of the 20th century.
4. Miriam J. Laugesen, Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians are Paid. Will people still care about these issues for the next four years? I hope so, because this is the best book I know of on Medicare pricing and its influence on pricing throughout the broader U.S. health care system.
My copy of Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy has arrived. It is a very good statement of how political fragmentation and intensified intellectual competition drove modernity and the Industrial Revolution.
I have only perused John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth, Handbook of Experimental Economics, volume 2, but it appears to be an extremely impressive contribution.
Marc Levinson’s An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy details what made the post World War II era so special in terms of its economics and income distribution and why it will be so hard to recreate.
Chris Hayes’s A Colony in a Nation, due out in March, he argues that racial equality really hasn’t improved much since 1968.
Guillermo A. Calvo, Macroeconomics in Times of Liquidity Crises is a useful book on sudden stops and related ideas.
Arrived in my pile is Yuval Noah Harati, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.