Economics Faculty Awarded NSF Grant
RISE Lecture - Nobel Laureate William F . Sharpe
Economics Faculty Awarded NSF Grant
Congratulations to Professors Hülya Eraslan , Jeremy Fox , and Yinghua He , who have recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant ( in the amount of $ 443,678 ) for a research project that investigates “ Operationalizing Pseudo- Market Mechanisms : School Choice and Shared Office Allocation .” Working with Rice graduate student Yakym Pirozhenko , the team will investigate more complex structures for market mechanisms that are now used to solve matching problems , such as matching students to schools in systems of school choice or matching medical students to residency training programs .
Yinghua He notes that , “ Matching market design is an exceptionally exciting research field . On the one hand , it combines knowledge from many fields , such as computer science , economics , mathematics , and operational research . On the other hand , it has been successful in the real world , assigning students to better schools , finding patients organs for transplantation , and in general finding ways to make the best use of limited resources .” Most current matching mechanisms utilize only a simple preference ranking from participants , such as a ranking by students of schools they would like to attend . However , Eraslan , Fox , and He are interested in a class of mechanisms that considers more specific information from participants , who would give not only a preference ranking but also provide information on the strengths of their preferences . As
Jeremy Fox puts it , “ We ’ re asking people to give us information about the intensity of their preferences , for example , are their first and second choices pretty close or is their first choice quite a bit better for them than their second choice ?” While the basic concepts behind such mechanisms can be found in the existing economic literature , no one has yet implemented these principles in practice . The team will investigate whether the additional information on individual preferences provided beyond just a simple ordering of options results – as predicted – in improved and more efficient assignments of people to slots . Such systems also have other advantages , as they can take into account preference structures in which participants care not only about their own assignment but about the assignment of others , and can also allow
Jeremy Fox , Yakym Pirozhenko , Hülya Eraslan , and Yinghua He
for different priorities in school choice . The team ’ s specific project will construct a simulated market in which these intensity preferences are registered without the use of money . A key factor will be the calculation of a competitive equilibrium , a problem that has practical obstacles , and the team plans to implement a new computational algorithm to find equilibria in these markets . Their approach will also take into account the possibility of coordination by students in stating their preferences . The Economics Department research team has already put the ideas behind their project into practice by using their methodology to assign offices to Economics PhD students , and they will also be implementing their approach to the problem of assigning rooms to students at Wiess College for the next academic year .
RISE Lecture - Nobel Laureate William F . Sharpe
The Rice Initiative for the Study of Economics ( RISE ), directed by former Economics Department Chair and current Dean of Social Sciences Antonio Merlo , has brought numerous distinguished recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Rice . This semester ’ s RISE lecture features Professor William F . Sharpe of Stanford University , who received the Nobel Prize in 1990 for his work in financial economics . Among many other accomplishments , Sharpe was one of the originators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model and developed the Sharpe Ratio , which is widely used to analyze investment performance . He has been president of the American Finance Association , published a wide range of articles in top professional journals , and written seven books . His lecture is entitled “ Financing Retirement : Social Security , Public Pensions and Defined Contribution Plans ,” and will be delivered on Thursday , March 8 , at 5:00 p . m . in Stude Hall . We hope that you will be able to attend .
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