Outcomes and the Value of Choice in Assignment Problems

分配问题中的结果和选择的价值

• 批准号: 1948714
• 负责人: Nikhil Agarwal
• 金额: $ 59.9万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-03-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1948714&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Outcomes; Value; Choice; Assignment; Problems

This award funds research in economics that will develop and employ new methods to evaluate the results of existing matching systems. The project will also provide new insights into how to design such systems to meet societal goals. The research focuses on ideas that could improve the methods used in the U.S. and around the world to manage organ donations from deceased donors. The project will also evaluate the effects of recent changes to the system used in the U.S. to match donated organs to recipients. Donated organs are a scarce resource; in the U.S. alone approximately 22 people died each day in 2019 while waiting for a kidney transplant. This means that understanding the effects of current methods and the development of possible improvements could save lives. The new methods can also be applied to evaluate and possibly improve the effectiveness of many other systems that are used to match people to opportunities. For example, some public school systems use these ideas to place students in specific schools. The project has several goals. The first is to develop methods that can be used to measure the performance of various assignment systems on these important outcomes. The proposed methods are based on combining data on outcomes and administrative data on the matching process to estimate the effects of various matches on the outcomes of interest, for example, the effects transplanting kidneys from different types of deceased donor to various patient types. The researchers will use quasi-experimental variation generated by the matching system to estimate these effects. The second goal is to apply these methods to study the life-year effects of different types of matches between different types of kidneys from deceased donors and patients with kidney failure. This part of the project improves on the current approach that uses an observational approach to estimate life-year benefits from kidney transplantation. The third goal is to understand how choices in a matching system relate to these outcomes of interest. Most matching mechanisms typically give patients a significant degree of choice. Patients and surgeons can accept or refuse an organ offer; students get to rank schools, and public housing applicants may apply to a subset of housing units. The goal is to understand the extent to which the people participating in these mechanisms make choices that are aligned with maximizing the outcomes such as survival effects in the case of kidney patients or test-score effects in the case of students. The final aim is to use these findings to evaluate existing matching systems and to design new systems. Moreover, the plan is to quantify the value of providing choice to agents. For example, it may be possible to use the assignment system to steer patients and their surgeons towards choosing the kidneys that are particularly well suited to them,but have little value for others. Improving the design along these dimensions can have a significant impact on patient health and survival.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项资助经济学研究，将开发和采用新的方法来评估现有匹配系统的结果。该项目还将为如何设计此类系统以满足社会目标提供新的见解。这项研究的重点是可以改善美国和世界各地用于管理已故捐赠者器官捐赠的方法的想法。该项目还将评估最近美国用于将捐赠器官与接受者相匹配的系统变化的影响。捐献器官是一种稀缺资源;仅在美国，2019年每天就有大约22人在等待肾移植时死亡。这意味着，了解当前方法的效果并开发可能的改进方法可以挽救生命。新方法也可以用于评估和可能提高许多其他系统的有效性，这些系统用于将人与机会相匹配。例如，一些公立学校系统使用这些想法将学生安排在特定的学校。 该项目有几个目标。第一是制定可用于衡量各种派任制度在这些重要成果方面的绩效的方法。所提出的方法是基于结合的结果和管理数据的匹配过程中，以估计各种匹配的结果的影响，例如，从不同类型的死者供体的肾脏移植到各种患者类型的影响。研究人员将使用匹配系统产生的准实验变化来估计这些影响。第二个目标是应用这些方法来研究已故捐赠者和肾衰竭患者的不同类型肾脏之间不同类型匹配的生命年效应。该项目的这一部分改进了目前使用观察方法来估计肾移植的生命年益处的方法。第三个目标是了解匹配系统中的选择如何与这些感兴趣的结果相关。大多数匹配机制通常给患者很大程度的选择。病人和外科医生可以接受或拒绝器官捐赠;学生可以申请学校排名，公共住房申请人可以申请一部分住房单位。我们的目标是了解参与这些机制的人在多大程度上做出了与最大化结果相一致的选择，例如肾脏患者的生存影响或学生的考试成绩影响。最后的目的是使用这些发现来评估现有的匹配系统，并设计新的系统。此外，该计划还将量化为代理人提供选择的价值。例如，可以使用分配系统来引导患者及其外科医生选择特别适合他们的肾脏，但对其他人几乎没有价值。改进设计沿着这些尺寸可以有一个显着的影响病人的健康和survival.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。