Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money

Mohammad Akbarpour (), Julien Combe, YingHua He, Victor Hiller, Robert Shimer and Olivier Tercieux ()
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Mohammad Akbarpour: Stanford University - Graduate School of Business
Olivier Tercieux: Paris School of Economics; CNRS

No 2020-126, Working Papers from Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics

Abstract: For an incompatible patient-donor pair, kidney exchanges often forbid receipt-before-donation (the patient receives a kidney before the donor donates) and donation-before-receipt, causing a double-coincidence-of-wants problem. Our proposal, the Unpaired kidney exchange algorithm, uses “memory†as a medium of exchange to eliminate these timing constraints. In a dynamic matching model, we prove that Unpaired delivers a waiting time of patients close to optimal and substantially shorter than currently utilized state-of-the-art algorithms. Using a rich administrative dataset from France, we show that Unpaired achieves a match rate of 57 percent and an average waiting time of 440 days. The (infeasible) optimal algorithm is only slightly better (58 percent and 425 days); state-of-the-art algorithms deliver less than 34 percent and more than 695 days. We draw similar conclusions from the simulations of two large U.S. platforms. Lastly, we propose a range of solutions that can address the potential practical concerns of Unpaired.

Keywords: Kidney exchange; medium of exchange; dynamic matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D47 E00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://repec.bfi.uchicago.edu/RePEc/pdfs/BFI_WP_2020126.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: UNPAIRED KIDNEY EXCHANGE: OVERCOMING DOUBLE COINCIDENCE OF WANTS WITHOUT MONEY (2022)
Working Paper: Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money (2020)
Working Paper: Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money (2020)
Working Paper: Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money (2020)
Working Paper: Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money (2020)
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