Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts

Friday, February 9, 2024

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:

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.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Janos Kornai (1928-2021)

 Peter Biro alerts me to the passing of Janos Kornai.

Renowned Economist Kornai Dies Aged 94

and here

Economist Janos Kornai dies

He was a bridge between East and West, between command economies and market economies.  Here's his Google Scholar page: Janos Kornai.

When I met him, he was spending half his time at Harvard and half back in Hungary.  At his retirement dinner from Harvard, someone asked him something along the lines of "what's the biggest difference between Hungary and the U.S.?" He answered that it was how people answered the question "How are you?"  In Hungary, he said, people told you of their complaints, but in the U.S., everyone gave you a big smile and said "I'm fine, how are you?"  He recounted how he thought the American answer was more cheerful, and that he would try to change the equilibrium in Hungary by answering like an American, when in Hungary.  But this didn't work, he said (which is the problem with equilibria...)  When he would reply that he was fine, the response he got was along the lines of "Of course you're fine, you live in the United States!"). So he resigned himself to the fact that equilibria are hard to change...

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Course allocation at Eötvös Loránd University, by Attila Rusznák, Péter Biró, and Rita Fleiner)

At Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, there's a course allocation system that gives rise to intense course exchange after its official conclusion (some of which may be planned in advance). Here's a description and analysis:

Seat transfers in the course allocation mechanism of Eötvös Loránd University  by A. Rusznák, P. Biró and R. Fleiner, 2021 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI), 2021, pp. 503-508, doi: 10.1109/SACI51354.2021.9465548.

"Abstract: We initiate the study of the course allocation mechanism of the largest Hungarian university, ELTE, based on a real data provided for three semesters in 2018-2019. Besides introducing their priority based mechanism and the structure of their course registration data provided, we analyse a special issue coming from a students’ survey related to seat transfer. We identify the seat transfer actions in the last stage of the mechanism from the data that we describe in a transfer graph, and we analyse this network observing interesting patterns."


"In Hungary the course allocations are conducted at every major university by the same administrative system, called Neptun, and most universities use a simple first-come-first-served method. However, the largest university in Hungary, ELTE, uses a three-phase priority-based method [12]. In the first phase the students can submit their most preferred bundles, and the university admission may adjust the quotas of the courses based on these initial inputs. The second phase is the most important, where the students are ranked at each course based on a scoring system and lottery for breaking ties. They have a week to select their best bundles, but the mechanism is dynamic, the students can be unsure whether they will really get admission to a course. After finalising the assignment based on priorities and quotas, in the third phase of the mechanism a simple first-come-first-served method is used to allocate the remaining open slots. This final round also facilitates the informal seat transfers and swaps, a topic that we focus on in this paper. We conducted an online survey at ELTE sent to all registered students, and we received more than 3000 replies in total, so we could identify the main practices and issues for this priority based mechanism. We also received the complete course allocation record from their Neptun system for three recent semesters in 2018-2019. We will use this rich data to check the issues and strategies reported in the students’ survey, starting with the analysis of the seat transfers and swaps in the last stage of the mechanism.

...

"One of most critical comments was concerned with the rejection of the students even from their main courses that fits in their ideal curriculum. Some students mentioned that they could only get admission to some of their important courses by getting a favour from another student, who had higher priority at that course, so could take it in the second stage, and then transfer the course to them in the third stage. The transfer can be observed in the data as the withdrawal of a student and an almost immediate registration by another student. In this paper we initiate the study of this issue by studying the course allocation record of ELTE for the years of 2018-2019, that we describe in the next section."


Thursday, July 2, 2020

John Harsayni, on Hungarian coinage (and a memorable conversation)

The title of this blogpost is ambiguous, but the picture should disambiguate it. (As far as I know, the late great game theorist, who initiated the literature on Bayesian games of incomplete information, never wrote about coinage):



Here's the story:

Hungarian Mint Commemorates Nobel Prize Winner János Harsányi
By CoinWeek -June 25, 2020

"János (or John Charles) Harsányi, the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize laureate in Economic Sciences, was born in Budapest on May 29, 1920. His primary field of research was game theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize with John Forbes Nash and Reinhard Selten in Economic Sciences “For his ground-breaking work in the area of non-cooperative game theory and equilibrium analysis.” In the field of game theory, they were the first scientists to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
...
"The Hungarian Mint has issued a silver collector coin of 10,000 forints and a copper-nickel version of 2,000 forints on the 100th anniversary of the distinguished University of California at Berkeley researcher’s birth.
...
"The silver coin, with a face value of 10,000 forint is struck in .925 fine silver and weighs 31.46 grams. It costs $67.50. The non-ferrous metal 2,000 forint is produced from an alloy of copper (75%) and nickel (25%) and weighs 30.8 grams. It is priced at $19.95. The mintage limit of both the silver collector coin in proof finish and that of the non-ferrous version in BU finish is 5,000 pieces of each."
************

I don't need a coin to remind me of John, but reading about his monetization brought back a particularly memorable conversation.

In the summer of 1975, after completing my first year as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, I drove back to California to spend the summer visiting Harsanyi at Berkeley. I had perhaps imagined many long conversations, but the way he made space for me was to give me his office, while he worked from home. So our conversations were not so frequent, and were somewhat formal: he called me Professor Roth, and I of course called him Professor Harsanyi.

On at least one occasion I drove him down to Stanford when there was a seminar we both wanted to attend. The conversation I recall most vividly came on the return trip from one of these, when we gave a lift up to Berkeley to Bob Aumann, who had purchased a used car there and needed to pick it up.  We all rode in my fairly small 1966 Ford Mustang (purchased used in 1971 when I began graduate school.)  I drove, Harsanyi sat in the front passenger seat, and Bob sat behind him

We had a lively conversation the whole way. What I remember about it were the forms of address. Bob and John, and Bob and I, were naturally on a first name basis. But, throughout the drive, Harsanyi called me Professor Roth, and I called him Professor Harsanyi.  I hope I didn't show that I thought it was hilarious, but it is possible that I addressed my passengers by name more often than strictly necessary. And so it went, Bob and John, Al and Bob, Professor Harsanyi and Professor Roth.

We stopped at the house Bob was going to, and as soon as the car door closed behind him, Professor Harsanyi turned to me and said "Professor Roth, perhaps it would be best if we went to a first name basis." 

And so we did.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Repugnance watch: Hungary moves to roll back legal recognition of transsexuality

The covid-19 pandemic has allowed a consolidation of authoritarian power in Hungary, as also elsewhere, which can take some odd forms.

The Guardian has the story:

Hungary prepares to end legal recognition of trans people
Trans people fear more discrimination as Orbán pushes through law defining gender based on ‘sex at birth’

"Hungary’s rightwing government looks likely to push through legislation that will end the legal recognition of trans people by defining gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes” and thus making it impossible for people to legally change their gender.
...
"“In Hungary, you need to show your ID to rent a bike, buy a bus pass or to pick up a package at the post office. It basically means coming out as trans to complete strangers, all the time. The good version is they are nice about it, but there are situations where people turn quite hostile,” said Ivett Ördög, a 39-year-old trans woman living in Budapest."
*********

Here's the background story:
Hungary seeks to end legal recognition of trans people amid Covid-19 crisis

"The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, called on Hungary’s parliament not to adopt the law, and said the measure was in contravention of human rights standards and the case law of the European court of human rights."






Sunday, October 27, 2019

Interview with Péter Biró on kidney exchange and related matters

The interview touches on Peter's history, and on developments in kidney exchange.

Az algoritmus, ami életeket ment - interjú Biró Péterrel
[Google Translate: The algorithm that saved lives - interview with Péter Biró ]

Google translate gives a pretty readable version...

" Unfortunately, Hungarian colleagues are very busy with their basic tasks, so despite their good intentions, they can devote little resources and attention to creating a Hungarian kidney exchange program. Since 2016, there has been a so-called COST Action program in Europe, which promotes European networking on kidney exchange. I recently visited an economist in Padua on this topic and went to a leading nephrology surgeon there. We talked about how the Italian system could be improved and agreed to test the practicalities of this with the Padua data. By the way, this center carries out most of the living donor kidney transplants in Italy."

Sunday, April 2, 2017

The Central European University is worth defending from government pressure

The Central European University in Budapest is in danger of being forced to shut down.

World’s leading economists ask Hungary to withdraw anti-CEU legislation

"More than 150 prominent European and American economists, including Presidents of European Economic Associations and more than a dozen Nobel Prize Laureates, have signed an open letter asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to withdraw legislation that would force Central European University to shut down in Budapest. "
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And here's a Statement of solidarity with Central European University, from their colleagues at the Center for Economic and Regional Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CERS HAS).

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Matching in Budapest, Dec 14-15

101 years of matching in Hungary will be the subject of two matching conferences are coming up in Budapest.
On Dec 14, 100 years of matching theory in Hungary.  Here is the conference program.

And on Dec 15:
Programme  (also here)
8:30-9:00Registration
9:00-10:00Keynote presentation: Utku Unver (Boston College)
Efficient and Incentive Compatible Liver Exchange
10:00-10:30Coffee break
10:30-12:30Session 1
First Choice-Maximizing School Choice Mechanisms, by Timo Mennle (University of Zurich)
School Choice with Voucher, by Mustafa Afacan (Sabanci University)
Iterative Versus Standard Deferred Acceptance: Experimental Evidence, by Rustam Hakimov (WZB Berlin)
12:30-14:00Lunch
14:00-15:00Session 2
Testing different cardinal matching mechanisms in the field, by  Alexander Nesterov (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg)
Hungarian secondary school and higher education admissions data in the Databank, by Zoltán Hermann (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
15:00-16:00Policy roundtable: Course allocation
Estelle Cantillon (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Utku Unver (Boston College)
16:00-16:30Coffee break
16:30-18:30Session 3
Team Formation as an Incentive Device, by Xiaocheng Hu (University of Southampton)
Assignment maximisation, by Inacio Bo (WZB Berlin)
Refugee resettlement, by Alex Teytelboym (University of Oxford)
******************
In November, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences also hosted a
Workshop on Future Directions in Computational Social Choice, which contained papers on stable matching by Ágnes Cseh: Popular Matchings and Zsuzsanna Jankó: Various Stable Matching Concepts.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Janos Kornai on recent developments in Hungary and its political and economic institutions

Janos Kornai, the eminent Hungarian economist, is not optimistic about recent developments there.


Janos Kornai 


Harvard University; Corvinus University of Budapest

July 11, 2015

Capitalism and Society, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 2, 2015 

Abstract:      

For two decades Hungary, like the other Eastern European countries, followed a general policy of establishing and strengthening the institutions of democracy, rule of law, and a market economy based on private property. However, since the elections of 2010, when Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party came to power, Hungary has made a dramatic U-turn. This article investigates the different spheres of society: political institutions, the rule of law, and the influence of state and market on one another, as well as the world of ideology (education, science and art), and describes the U-turn’s implications for these fields and the effect it has on the life of people. It argues against the frequent misunderstandings in the interpretation and evaluation of the Hungarian situation, pointing out some typical intellectual fallacies. It draws attention to the dangers of strengthening nationalism, and to the ambivalence evident in Hungarian foreign policy, and looks into the relationship between Hungary and the Western world, particularly the European Union. Finally, it outlines the possible scenarios resulting from future developments in the Hungarian situation.


His first paragraph:
"Hungary is a small country, poor in raw materials, with a population of only 10 million. No civil wars are being waged on its territory, nor are there any popular uprisings or terrorism. It has not become involved in any local wars, and it is not threatened by immediate bankruptcy. So why is it still worth paying attention to what is going on here? Because Hungary, a country that belongs to NATO and the European Union, is turning away from the great achievements of the 1989–1990 change of regime—democracy, rule of law, freely functioning civil society, pluralism in intellectual life—and attacking private property and the mechanisms of the free market before the eyes of the whole world; and it is doing all this in the shadow of increasing geopolitical tensions"