Top Trading Cycles (TTC) and the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Mathematical Economics

 This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Mathematical Economics, and also of the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) algorithm that was introduced in Volume 1, number 1 of the journal, in the paper by

Shapley, Lloyd, and Herbert Scarf. "On cores and indivisibility." Journal of mathematical economics 1, no. 1 (1974): 23-37. 

TTC was further analyzed in 

Roth, Alvin E., and Andrew Postlewaite. "Weak versus strong domination in a market with indivisible goods." Journal of Mathematical Economics 4, no. 2 (1977): 131-137.

Now the JME is assembling a 50th anniversary collection of papers surveying some of the resulting literatures, with some papers posted online ahead of publication. Here's what they had as of yesterday, including an article on Top Trading Cycles, by Morrill and Roth, and one on Housing markets since Shapley and Scarf, by Afacan, Hu, and Li:

JME’s 50th Anniversary Literature  Edited by Andres Carvajal and Felix Kübler

1. Research articleFull text access

   Top trading cycles

   Thayer Morrill, Alvin E. Roth

   In Press, Journal Pre-proof, Available online 16 April 2024

   Article 102984

   View PDF

2. select article Bubble economics

   Research articleOpen access

   Bubble economics

   Tomohiro Hirano, Alexis Akira Toda

   April 2024

   Article 102944

   View PDF

3. select article Stable outcomes in simple cooperative games

   Research articleFull text access

   Stable outcomes in simple cooperative games

   Gabrielle Demange

   April 2024

   Article 102960

   View PDF

4. select article Fifty years of mathematical growth theory: Classical topics and new trends

   Research articleFull text access

   Fifty years of mathematical growth theory: Classical topics and new trends

   Emmanuelle Augeraud-Veron, Raouf Boucekkine, Fausto Gozzi, Alain Venditti, Benteng Zou

   April 2024

   Article 102966

   View PDF

5. select article Housing markets since Shapley and Scarf

   Research articleFull text access

   Housing markets since Shapley and Scarf

   Mustafa Oğuz Afacan, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li

   April 2024

   Article 102967

   View PDF

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At least one of the papers in the (virtual) special issue is already published, I gather that some will be in the June issue:

Monday, March 4, 2024

50th anniversary of Shapley and Scarf (1974), and of the Journal of Mathematical Economics

Market design at Stanford

 Two recent Stanford news stories focus on market design:

Symposium inaugurates Center for Computational Market Design. The new center will bring interdisciplinary expertise to bear on crafting rules and procedures for creating and improving markets.

"In an interview, Amin Saberi, a co-director of the center and professor of management science and engineering, said he hopes that research by the center’s members can inform market-related policy decisions in health care, education, transportation, electricity, and the environment.

“One of our goals is to collaborate with industry and the government to analyze existing markets and improve their performance,” Saberi said. “We also hope that the center becomes a launchpad for prototyping new marketplaces.”

Itai Ashlagi, the center’s other co-director and a professor of management science and engineering, said in an interview that the rise of artificial intelligence played a role in the decision to launch the center. “AI is going to be a big player in marketplaces,” he said.

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For the Colorado River and beyond, a new market could save the day. Stanford economist Paul Milgrom won a Nobel Prize in part for his role in enabling today’s mobile world. Now he’s tackling a different 21st century challenge: water scarcity.

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Earlier:

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Market Design for Surface Water , by Ferguson and Milgrom

Talks at Washington State University, today and tomorrow

Below is the announcement for a public lecture I'll give today at Washington State University, in Pullman, WA.  

Bertha C. and Roy E. Leigh Distinguished Lecture in Economics — School of Economic Sciences

"The School of Economic Sciences invites you to the Leigh Lecture on Thursday, April 11, at 4:30 p.m. in CUE 203 on the Pullman campus. The talk, titled “Economists as Engineers: Matchmaking and Market Design,” will be presented by Dr. Alvin Roth, the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University."     (another announcement here.)

And tomorrow at 3:00 I'll give an Economics department lecture on "Controversial markets and prohibited transactions."

Celebrate Vince Crawford in Budapest at the CONFERENCE ON MECHANISM AND INSTITUTION DESIGN in July. (Call for papers...)

 Here's the announcement:

CONFERENCE ON MECHANISM AND INSTITUTION DESIGN

The 2024 Conference on Mechanism and Institution Design will take place in Budapest, Hungary, July 8-12, 2024, and be hosted by Corvinus University of Budapest. It will be an in-person meeting. This biannual conference is under the umbrella of the Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design (SPMiD). The conference will also celebrate Vincent Crawford’s 75th birthday and his fundamental contributions to economic theory, game theory, and the Society.

The confirmed keynote speakers include:

• Paul Milgrom (Stanford University),
• Roger Myerson (University of Chicago),
• Al Roth (Stanford University), and
• Eva Tardos (Cornell University).

Call for papers

The theme of the conference is on mechanism and institution design, interpreted in a general sense. The conference welcomes papers in all areas of economics, finance, computer science, law, and politics, etc., which are related to mechanisms and institutions. The topics include but are not limited to game theory and foundations, auction design, mechanism design, market design, information design, market and equilibrium, assignments, contests, bargaining, matching, college admission, election schemes, political institutions, public good provision, algorithmic mechanism design, algorithmic game theory, computational social choice, engineering economics, nonlinear pricing, law and litigation, voting, sports, economic reform, regulation, taxation schemes, school choice, governance, corporate finance, cryptocurrency, financial institutions, capital structure, incentives in labor market, social choice, information and learning, decision theory, platform, network, etc. Papers can be theoretical, empirical, experimental, or historical. Young economists including senior PhD students are encouraged to submit their papers.

Kidney exchange (and other bits of market design) in the New York Times

 Peter Coy, the veteran New York Times economics columnist, writes about kidney exchange, after an interview/conversation sparked by a recent working paper of mine, Market Design and Maintenance. (He's a rare economic journalist who reads economists' papers.)

Here's his column, published yesterday afternoon:

The Economist Who Helped Patients Get New Kidneys, Feb. 5, 2024, 3:00 p.m. ET, By Peter Coy

He's also a rare interviewer: his column includes the names of more of my coauthors than I can recall in any other interview. In order of appearance: Tayfun Sonmez and Utku Unver, Frank Delmonico, Susan Saidman, Mike Rees (implicitly) when he names Mike's nonprofit Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, and Elliott Peranson.  Market design is, after all, a team sport.

Here's his concluding paragraph:

"What is it like to straddle the worlds of academia and practice? I asked. “It takes a lot of patience,” he said. “Market design is outward-facing. I learn from trying to persuade people who aren’t economists. It’s a lot of fun also. Sometimes you have to go beyond your completely reliable scientific knowledge.”

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Earlier post:

Monday, December 11, 2023

Market Design and Maintenance (new NBER working paper, from a conference)

Matching and market design in the latest GEB (stack overflow...)

 The current (January 2024) issue of Games and Economic Behavior presents an increasingly common dilemma (faced by scholars in burgeoning fields, and maybe by aging scholars...). Papers I should read are being written much faster than I can read them.

Here are 9 papers in that issue that are pretty clearly about matching and market design (which leaves out some papers on auctions and one on unraveling of the timing of markets) :

1. Obvious manipulations of tops-only voting rules

   R. Pablo Arribillaga, Agustín G. Bonifacio

   Pages 12-24

   View PDF

2. select article Rejection-proof mechanisms for multi-agent kidney exchange

   Research articleOpen access

   Rejection-proof mechanisms for multi-agent kidney exchange

   Danny Blom, Bart Smeulders, Frits Spieksma

   Pages 25-50

   View PDF

3. 1. Designing rotation programs: Limits and possibilities

      Ville Korpela, Michele Lombardi, Riccardo D. Saulle

      Pages 77-102

      View PDF

   2. select article School choice with transferable student characteristics

      Research articleOpen access

      School choice with transferable student characteristics

      Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez, Antonio Romero-Medina

      Pages 103-124

      View PDF

      Auction timing and market thickness

      Isaías N. Chaves, Shota Ichihashi

      Pages 161-178

      View PDF

      
      

      1. School choice with costly information acquisition

         Tyler Maxey

         Pages 248-268

         View PDF

      2. select article Singles monotonicity and stability in one-to-one matching problems

         Research articleOpen access

         Singles monotonicity and stability in one-to-one matching problems

         Yoichi Kasajima, Manabu Toda

         Pages 269-286

         View PDF

      3. select article Reallocation with priorities

         Research articleFull text access

         Reallocation with priorities

         Julien Combe, Jan Christoph Schlegel

         Pages 287-299

         View PDF

         
         

         Coalitional stability in matching problems with externalities and random preferences

         Adriana Piazza, Juan Pablo Torres-Martínez

         Pages 321-339

         View PDF