@muunver
Professor of Economics, Boston College | Matching Markets, Market Design, Mechanism Design | running, hiking, board games, phil. of science | https://sites.bc.edu/utku-unver https://liverpairedexchange.bc.edu/en https://www.covid19reservesystem.org
I did not anticipate this level of success, a program that completed in 3 years more exchanges than all conducted in the world combined in the previous 20 years. Most congratulations go to our partners in Malatya Inonu University.
@tayfunsonmez.bsky.social
The BBS-Liver Exchange System today completed its 300th transplant in Malatya, Türkiye, with 102 of them completed this year. Breakdowns of all transplants, categorized by exchange sizes and the type of pairs involved, are provided below. When we launched this program in 2022.
Prof Sezai Yılmaz's interview in Turkey related to the BBS-liver paired exchange program that Tayfun Sönmez and I founded with him and their other liver transplant achievements in Malatya, Turkey by their amazing team (use google translate)
ankahaber.net/haber/detay/...
Great article regarding Prof. Sezai Yilmaz, his great success in building a world-leading transplant center in Malatya, and the founding of our liver exchange system (Google Translate works reasonably well)
www.fortuneturkey.com/malatyayi-du...
@tayfunsonmez.bsky.social
Elon Musk likened the government to the DMV; this is an incorrect and horrendous analogy. Another reminder:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/o...
Musk's DMV = government analogy is so wrong at so many levels, especially in regulation and solving the public goods provision problem in research funding and infrastructure building. DMV analogy can work if police, traffic law provision and DOT become part of DMV. Then decide how to optimize it.
Nation Can't Believe It On Harvard's Side
One my favorite college professors, Joe Nye, passed very recently. He developed the concept of soft power in international relations.
Two of the strongest sources of US soft power were international aid and higher ed. The Republican administration has utterly destroyed both. Ask yourself why.
This is the stuff of authoritarian regimes. There isn't even the pretense that this is anything but persecution, unbound by law.
This is bleak reading
From the mayor of Istanbul to the world, opinion essay on FT:
on.ft.com/4jxJrrj Why Turkey’s democratic future matters for the world
If you are not already following @seanmcarroll.bsky.social's Mindscape, probably the best Science and Philosophy podcast out there, you are definitely missing big time. After so many years of following, he deserves a shoutout. At these trying times, the best refuge.
I certainly agree with all points. Some are good for Europe clearly. But fur the US, the scary part is that this is a tipping point problem. Even if the wave turns back it will take generations to build normalcy with the allies. Brexit is a living example.
Is the US going to become the science backwater it once was? The current administration's love of the 19th Century certainly points in that direction.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
2.2 million people gathered to protest the recent arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main rival of Erdogan in the next presidential election.
It feels like Adam Smith never
wrote either "Theory of Moral Sentiment" or "Wealth of Nations" or even a pin factory was never opened. At least there will be many poli sci and econ PhD theses written in the next decade due to this bonanza.
Thank you, Al, for promoting our collaborators' work. You can more learn about the background of how we initiated the Liver Paired Exchange Program in Malatya in Section 12.3 of the manuscript of @tayfunsonmez.bsky.social
arxiv.org/pdf/2401.003...
Partial text of Justin Trudeau comments on Trump tariffs.
"We have fought and died alongside you....During your darkest hours...we were always there. Standing with you, grieving with you, the American people.” I’ve had my differences with Justin Trudeau, for sure, but he rose to the occasion here.
NBER Market Design Working Group Report, talking about many exciting recent papers in all areas of market design/design of economic mechanisms. www.nber.org/reporter/202...
Using French data, we demonstrate that our mechanism reduces the teacher experience gap across regions more effectively than benchmarks, including the current mechanism, while
providing higher average welfare for teachers.
To evaluate the performance of our mechanism, we focus on teacher (re)assignment, where the unequal distribution of experienced teachers across schools is a well-documented concern.
We justify our constructive and practical approach by micro-founding it through the theory of inequality measures in welfare economics.
Centralized (re)assignment of workers to jobs is increasingly common in public and private sectors. However, these markets often suffer from distributional problems. We propose a new strategy-proof mechanism that efficiently improves individual and distributional
welfare over the status quo.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5112041
I am excited to share the new version of our paper "Market Design for Distributional Objectives in (Re)assignment:
An Application to Improve the Distribution of Teachers in Schools" with @combeju.bsky.social, Umut Dur, Olivier Tercieux, and @camilleterrier.bsky.social
I encourage you all to submit a paper to the 14th Conference on Economic Design. The conference is organized by Albin Erlanson at the University of Essex, June 23rd-25th, 2025. Paper submission deadline is 1st February, 2025. Hope to see many of you there 🙂
#econsky @vmdseminar.bsky.social
On the amazing downfall of Alzheimer's research by widespread manipulations and the crooked incentive structure in science: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/o...
Congratulations. This is great.
Very very nice.