Allocating Scarce Organs: How a Change in Supply Affects Transplant Waiting Lists and Transplant Recipients

Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Todd Elder and Keith Teltser

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 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.

JEL-codes: D47 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20170476
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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