Thursday, March 28, 2024

Cannabis in US airports

 An anomaly of US Federal law is that marijuana is illegal on airplanes (interstate commerce) even when the airports involved are in states where marijuana is legal.

The WSJ has the story and a picture:

Don’t Put Your Stash in the Overhead Bin. A ‘Cannabis Amnesty Box’ at Chicago’s Midway Airport.  By Bob Greene



Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Danny Kahneman (1934-2024)

 Danny Kahneman passed away today.

Here's the Washington Post obituary:

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-winning economist, dies at 90. He found that people rely on shortcuts that often lead them to make wrongheaded decisions that go against their own best interest  By Chris Powe

"Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and best-selling author whose Nobel Prize-winning research upended economics — as well as fields ranging from sports to public health — by demonstrating the extent to which people abandon logic and leap to conclusions, died March 27. He was 90.

"His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor for the New Yorker. She did not say where or how he died.

...

"Dr. Kahneman took a dim view of people’s ability to think their way through a problem. “Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions,” he wrote in his popular 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” “They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.”

"Dr. Kahneman spent much of his career working alongside psychologist Amos Tversky, who he said deserved much of the credit for their prizewinning work. But Tversky died in 1996, and the Nobel is never awarded posthumously.

"Both men were atheist grandsons of Lithuanian rabbis, and both had studied and lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their three-decade friendship and close collaboration, chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 2016 book “The Undoing Project,” was a study in opposites.

"According to Lewis, Tversky was the life of the party; Dr. Kahneman never even went. Tversky had a mechanical pencil on his desk and nothing else; Dr. Kahneman’s office was full of books and articles he never finished. Still, Dr. Kahneman said, at times it was as if “we were sharing a mind.” They worked so closely together that they tossed a coin to decide whose name would go first on an article or a book.

"Their research helped establish the field of behavioral economics, which applies psychological insights to the study of economic decision-making, but also had a far-reaching effect outside the academy. "

Mexico’s Law Suit Against US Gun Dealers

U.S. gun dealers are protected against lawsuits stemming from crimes committed by their customers. by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), But that law doesn't protect them from lawsuits resulting from their own actions, and a U.S. judge has permitted a suit by Mexico to go forward which accuses five Arizona gun dealers of violating American laws.

Law.com has the story:, 

Federal Court in Arizona Allows Mexico’s Case Against US Gun Dealers to Proceed. The federal gun industry shield law should not keep the suit from moving forward, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled. by Amy Guthrie 

"A federal district court judge in Arizona has ruled that a lawsuit filed by the government of Mexico against five Arizona firearm dealers alleged to be engaging in weapons trafficking should be allowed to proceed.

"U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez held that the federal gun industry shield law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), should not prevent the suit from advancing. 

...

"The complaint “adequately alleges that defendants’ knowing violation of firearm-specific statutes proximately caused plaintiff’s injuries for purposes of the predicate exception to the PLCAA,” she wrote in her ruling, dated March 22.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

American guns fuel Haiti's gangs

The U.S. is an importer of illegal drugs, and an exporter of illegal firearms (i.e. firearms whose sale is legal, even protected in the U.S., but illegally smuggled into countries that would like to control firearms...)

The Guardian has the story:

Guns and weapons trafficked from US fueling Haiti gang violence. Experts say most guns smuggled from states with lax firearms laws such as Florida, Arizona and Georgia.  by Oliver Laughland

"As Haiti has again plunged into violent chaos, images of gang members bearing high-powered rifles, pump-action shotguns or automatic weapons in the streets of Port-au-Prince have become ubiquitous.

"But this weaponry is not made in Haiti, a country with no firearms or ammunition manufacturing capabilities.

"It is an arsenal that largely comes directly from the US, with most guns, experts say, likely to have originated from states with lax firearm laws, and many trafficked into Haiti from Florida.

"This clandestine trade has left Haiti’s gangs with a vast cache of illegal arms and much greater firepower than the country’s dispirited and underfunded police force.

...

"Joly Germine, a 31-year-old leader of 400 Mawozo, directed specific requests for high-powered weapons via WhatsApp messages sent from a Haitian prison. The requests were made to US citizens in Florida, including Germain’s romantic partner, and the weapons were then stuffed in garbage bags, loaded into large barrels and hidden under “clothes, shoes and Gatorade” ready for shipment.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Anger and Sadness in Tel Aviv

Saturday, on the last night of my just-ended visit to Israel, I attended two adjacent mass public events. 

One was a political demonstration against the leadership of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his governing coalition. The other was a vigil for the kidnapped hostages, living and dead.

In each of these two events, the one Hebrew word you heard more than any other was NOW (עכשיו).  As in "Elections NOW!"  or "Bring them home NOW!"

In the political demonstration, the primary mood expressed by the speakers was anger.  In the vigil, it was sadness.

Below some pictures and a video of a speech with added subtitles in English translation.

From the demonstration:

The signs say "Elections Now!"



The sign (addressed to Bibi) says: "You are the boss.
You are guilty"







From the vigil for the hostages:


Prepared to welcome the hostages home  to Shabbat dinner
















x
















And one bonus picture, on the road connecting the two gatherings, from the Women Who Wage Peace


Sunday, March 24, 2024

Conference in Jerusalem, in solidarity with Israeli academics

 I'm expecting to be back in California later today.  I gave three talks while in Israel, and met with many people, but the proximate cause of my trip was the economics conference organized by Effi Benmelech on behalf of Northwestern's Crown Family Israel Center for Innovation. It was organized as an expression of support for Israeli academics.


Here is the program

Wednesday, March 20 | Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

9:00-9:15 Welcome  Effi Benmelech, Northwestern University

9:15-10:00 Amir Yaron, Governor of the Bank of Israel

10:00-10:15 Break

Macro Session

10:15-11:00 Moving to Fluidity: Regional Growth and Labor Market Churn  Eran Hoffman, Hebrew University

11:00-11:45 Policy Design and Rates of Convergence in Learning Models  Martin Eichenbaum, Northwestern University

11:45-12:45 Lunch

Applied Micro Session

12:45-13:30 Fostering Soft Skills in Active Labor Market Programs: Evidence from a Large-Scale RCT  Analia Schlosser, Tel Aviv University

13:30-14:15 Decomposing the Rise of the Populist Radical Right  Roee Levy Tel Aviv University

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:15 Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation  Edward Glaeser, Harvard University

15:15-15:30 Break

Matching Markets Session

15:30-16:15 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part I  Al Roth, Stanford University

16:15-17:00 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part II  Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Thursday, March 21 Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

Industrial Organization Session

9:15-10:00 Selling Subscriptions Liran Einav, Stanford University

10:00-10:15 Break

10:15-11:00 An Empirical Analysis of Merger Efficiencies  Alon Eizenberg, Hebrew University

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:00 Pharmaceutical Advertising in Dynamic Equilibrium  Ariel Pakes, Harvard University

12:00-13:00 Lunch

Economic History Session

13:00-13:45 Land Privatization and Business Credit: The Response of Bankruptcies to Land Enclosures in England 1750-1830  Karine van der Beek, Ben-Gurion University

13:45-14:00 Break

14:00-14:45 Diversity, Pluralism and Tolerance: The Roots of Economic Progress  Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

14:45-15:00 Break

Experimental Economics

15:00-15:45 Describing Deferred Acceptance to Participants: Experimental Analysis  Yannai Gonczarowski, Harvard University

15:45 Adjourn


Saturday, March 23, 2024

Kidney biopsies can be predicted pretty well, which could speed organ allocation

 Here's a big international collaboration suggesting that AI assisted predictions about kidney biopsies are effective, and could speed acceptance of deceased donor organs for transplant.

 "A Machine Learning-Driven Virtual Biopsy System For Kidney Transplant Patients." Nature Communications 15, no. 1 (2024): 554.  by Daniel Yoo, Gillian Divard, Marc Raynaud, Aaron Cohen, Tom D. Mone, John Thomas Rosenthal, Andrew J. Bentall, Mark D. Stegall, Maarten Naesens, Huanxi Zhang, Changxi Wang, Juliette Gueguen, Nassim Kamar, Antoine Bouquegneau, Ibrahim Batal, Shana M. Coley, John S. Gill, Federico Oppenheimer, Erika De Sousa-Amorim, Dirk R. J. Kuypers, Antoine Durrbach, Daniel Seron, Marion Rabant, Jean-Paul Duong Van Huyen, Patricia Campbell, Soroush Shojai, Michael Mengel, Oriol Bestard, Nikolina Basic-Jukic, Ivana Jurić, Peter Boor, Lynn D. Cornell, Mariam P. Alexander, P. Toby Coates, Christophe Legendre, Peter P. Reese, Carmen Lefaucheur, Olivier Aubert & Alexandre Loupy

From the discussion:

"In this international, multicohort study of kidney transplant biopsies from 17 worldwide centers including the largest Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) in the USA and labeled by expert kidney pathologists, we derived and validated a virtual biopsy system that uses non-invasive and routinely collected donor parameters to predict kidney histological lesions.

...

"Over the past decade, the use of kidneys from older donors with comorbidities has expanded the pool of kidneys, raising the question of whether pathological examination of donated kidneys could help better characterize organ quality or drive inefficiencies in organ allocation22. Additionally, this biopsy procedure needs to be performed and interpreted by trained experts, which is difficult to implement 24/7 . Furthermore, in the USA, the United Network for Organ Sharing policy for organ allocation, recommends the use of KDPI, day-zero biopsy results, and donor characteristics to assess organ quality before transplantation. Despite the importance, the lost time due to this procedure could be precious when the biopsy result is used for allocation purposes as every additional hour of cold ischemia time is highly associated with worse graft outcomes. Therefore, many centers are discouraged from performing day-zero biopsy because it remains an invasive and time-consuming procedure that could increase cold ischemia time."

 

Friday, March 22, 2024

Lysistrata in Kiryat Joel

 Kiryas Joel is a Hasidic community in New York State, in which ancient religious traditions can come into conflict with modern customs.   

Haaretz has the story, about religious activist Adina Sash:

'Call Your Rabbi, Husband': Why These ultra-Orthodox New York Women Are on a 'Sex Strike'.  After hiring a plane to fly a "Free Malky" banner over the Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel, the ultra-Orthodox feminist activist Adina Sash decided a sex strike by the community's women would be the next step in pressuring a local man to give his wife a religious divorce.  by Rachel Fink

"Sash, who goes by the handle flatbushgirl, is singularly focused on using her platform to call attention to women in the ultra-Orthodox community, of which she considers herself a full-fledged member, whose husbands refuse to give them the Jewish bill of divorce known as a get. According to Jewish law, it is the man who gives the get and the woman who receives it, never the other way around.

"Last week, Sash aimed her sights on the place where, according to her, Jewish women yield the most power: The bedroom. Sash called for Orthodox women to go on a "mikveh strike." According to Jewish law, following menstruation, married women must immerse in a mikveh, or ritual bath, before they can have sex with their husbands – which many do later that night.

...

"She also advocates that the sex strike take place on "mitzvah night," by which she means Friday night. Like engaging in sexual relations directly after the mikveh, many observant Jews give special status to sex on the Sabbath, which relates to the rabbinic obligation to delight in the Sabbath.

...

"According to an Instagram story she posted on the day she announced the current strike, "When your husband says, 'Why?' say, '... Please call your rabbi and figure out a way to help free Malky,'" she wrote.

...

"How is it possible that the rabbis have compassion for men, giving them a way out but not women?" Sash continued. She is referring to a rabbinic loophole called a heter meah rabbanim (literally, permission of 100 rabbis) which allows men to remarry in the rare instance that a wife refuses to receive a get. While this could theoretically result in an "agun," or chained man, the rabbis came up with a solution allowing the man to remarry based on the biblical law that states that a man can have more than one wife. However, since a woman cannot be married to two men, both ancient and modern rabbinical courts are unwilling to apply this exemption to women."