Market Design

Here's the announcement of a new prize, initially to be awarded for work in the social sciences, reflecting the fact that social science can be politically contentious.

Here's a story from the WaPo whose headline already conveys a lot about the economics of tradeoffs: Ukraine weighs legalizing pornography to raise tax revenue and buy drones Facing a massive defense budget shortfall, Ukraine has not been able to cash in on

The new English language journal Madina: Journal of Islamic Law has, in it's inaugural issue, a literature review of the Iranian kidney market.

Frederike Ambagtsheer is the principal investigator of a Dutch project conducting organ trafficking research, whose website discusses their work: welcome to organ trafficking research This platform presents research projects on the human organ trade that…

The hosts of the podcast Behavioral Grooves open by chatting about heroin and hitmen, followed by a discussion among the three of us: Behavioral Economics: When Markets Clash with Morals | Al Roth "Horse meat, kidneys, prostitution.

Here's the first commercial translation I've seen of my book Moral Economics, which appeared in English in May 2026.

The not-so-secret secret of building a good school is to have good students.

That there is life after tenure-denial is robustly proclaimed and manifested by Emily Oster, in the opening minutes of an interview by Mary Childs on her podcast Mary in America.

Here's the announcement from INFORMS: Announcing the Winner of 2026 Market Design Impact Award "The Auctions and Market Design section of INFORMS is pleased to announce that Yan Chen, Daniel Kahneman Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of

I'm a little shaken to learn that (even*) Greg Segal has temporarily suspended his registration as a potential deceased organ donor.

Michael Kremer, one of the most creative and dedicated economists of our time, has found his next act, at the World Bank.

Are robots (and robot cars) repugnant?

Here's an interview recorded during my visit to Taiwan this past April.

The debate over how to regulate, promote, and defend against new developments in A.I. has taken a market design turn, with increased calls for regulation to limit the likelihood of both unintended consequences and malicious use.

The figure below is a slide from a lecture I once gave about the transition from medical school to medical residencies in the U.S.

As LLMs become increasingly important, we're starting to see experiments that explore their psychology.

Here's a preliminary program for the October NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting at Stanford Market Design Working Group Meeting Organized by Eric Budish and Michael Ostrovsky October 16-17, 2026 Format: 35 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for

Crossing the Atlantic today, to return home from Paris, this story in The Atlantic seems apropos: Mothers for Sale.

Transplants of organs from genetically modified pigs to humans is making progress, but pig organs haven't yet survived long enough to be a viable substitute for human organs.

Here's a paper featured by Microeconomic Insights, which shows that in the highly concentrated dialysis market, in which prices are mostly federally regulated, mergers reduce competition on quality.

Here's tomorrow's conference agenda for the opening day of the Redefining Health Care in the Age of A.I. conference in Paris.

I'm in Paris, for the conference Redefining Healthcare in the Age of AI "The Paris Institute for Transplantation and Organ Regeneration (PITOR) is delighted to announce the first Nature Conference in Europe dedicated to artificial intelligence in medicine,

Here's the press release: HHS Announces Winners of the 2026 KidneyX EMPOWER: Living Link Prize Challenge to Advance Living Kidney Donation and Patient-Centered Innovation WASHINGTON, D.C. — August 27, 2026 — The U.S.

Privacy while driving seems to be more important than privacy while surfing the internet, to judge from recent reactions to automated license-plate readers produced by the company Flock Safety.

Session 18: Psychology and Economics Thu, Sep 3 2026, 8:00am - Fri, Sep 4 2026, 7:00pm PDT Thursday, September 3, 2026 Sep 3 8:00 am - 9:00 am PDT Check-in and Breakfast Sep 3 9:00 am - 9:40 am PDT What do we really know about risk preferences for binary…

Here's the announcement: 2026 European Meeting of the Economic Science Association (ESA) in Barcelona, September 2-5 "We are delighted to announce that Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Spain) will host the 2026 European ESA Meeting, celebrating the…

Lynn Thoman and I discuss three takeaways from Moral Economics (and hers are different than mine): You can listen here: Why Doing the “Right Thing” Can Make Everything Worse and you can watch as well as listen here: "What can we do when doing the morally…

I'm always on the lookout for different perspectives on market design, and here's a paper that caught my eye in the ASSA Preliminary Program for the January 2027 meetings in Washington DC.

President Trump's renaming* of Lake Ontario got me thinking about the famous song by Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land.

I just received my copy of William Thomson's excellent new book: A Guide for the Young Economist, third edition by William Thomson "A newly updated edition of the definitive guide for budding economists, with a new chapter of advice for young professors.

Here's a podcast recorded some weeks ago that has just been published.

The US is a destination for people needing assisted reproductive technology (ART) to have a child, often because it is unavailable in their home country.

Here's a recent interview of Axel Ockenfels, about market design.

The FT has the story: Germany becomes Europe’s largest regulated cannabis market.

Human reproduction gives rise to lots of different controversies, with the partisans not always aligned across issues the ways you might suppose.

The magazine Reasons to be cheerful has a cheerful discussion of kidney exchange (which includes some reflections by Mike Rees on non-simultaneous chains): The Chains of Generosity Transforming Kidney Donation More than 90,000 people in the U.S. are on the

Purdue recognizes Martin Dufwenberg as a distinguished professor.

Here's the call for papers for the NBER workshop on market design, at Stanford in October.

Basil Baccouche has a forthcoming book, which I found pretty thrilling: The End of Death: A Surgeon, a Heart Transplant, and the Fight to Change What It Means to Die Here's my blurb for the book: “Basil Baccouche is a new star in the constellation of phys…

Kidney exchange in Italy is now making good use of deceased-donor initiated chains.

Deceased organ donation in China does not yet have overwhelming public support although receiving a deceased donor organ transplant does: Hu, D., Wang, Y., Hu, Q. et al.

I follow the Tour de France, partly out of an interest in performance enhancing drugs.