Allocating Scarce Organs: How a Change in Supply Affects Transplant Waiting Lists and Transplant Recipients
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 11,
no. 4, October 2019
(pp. 210-39)
Abstract
Vast organ shortages motivated recent efforts to increase the supply of transplantable organs, but we know little about the demand side of the market. We test the implications of a model of organ demand using the universe of US transplant data from 1987 to 2013. Exploiting variation in supply induced by state-level motorcycle helmet laws, we demonstrate that each organ that becomes available from a deceased donor in a particular region induces five transplant candidates to join that region's transplant wait list, while crowding out living-donor transplants. Even with the corresponding demand increase, positive supply shocks increase post-transplant survival rates.Citation
Dickert-Conlin, Stacy, Todd Elder, and Keith Teltser. 2019. "Allocating Scarce Organs: How a Change in Supply Affects Transplant Waiting Lists and Transplant Recipients." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11 (4): 210-39. DOI: 10.1257/app.20170476Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D47 Market Design
- I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
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