Organ donation with vouchers

Jaehong Kim, Mengling Li and Menghan Xu

Journal of Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 191, issue C

Abstract: The ever-increasing shortage of organs for transplantation has motivated many innovative policies to promote the supply of organs. This paper proposes and analyzes a general class of deceased organ allocation policies that assign priority on organ waiting lists to voucher holders to promote deceased donor registration. Priority vouchers can be obtained by self-registering for donation or through family inheritance. In an overlapping generations framework, we find that extending the donor priority benefits to future generations can improve the aggregate donation rate and social welfare. In particular, giving higher priority to voucher inheritors who register for donation is always beneficial regardless of the levels of population growth and care for future generations. By contrast, the efficacy of granting priority to nondonors with inherited vouchers depends on these two sociodemographic factors because of potential free-riding incentives.

Keywords: Organ donation; Priority rule; Voucher; Overlapping generation; Public good; Health economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D47 D64 D78 H42 I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:191:y:2021:i:c:s0022053120301526

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.105159

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