 Does Implementing Opt-Out Solve The Organ Shortage Problem? Evidence from a Synthetic Control ApproachSelina Schulze Spüntrup No 403, ifo Working Paper Series from ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich Abstract: In light of the persistent shortage of organ donations needed to save precious human lives, several countries have modifed their organ donation laws introducing an opt-out system. Using a panel dataset covering a 21-year period, I apply a synthetic control approach to focus on countries that changed their prevailing organ donation legislation from opt-in to opt-out. I compare them to a synthetic counterfactual from countries that have kept their legislation the same since 1999. Synthetic control estimates show that Argentina and Wales achieved substantially higher organ donation rates with the shift from an opt-in to an opt-out system than without the reform taking place. My fndings suggest that as one strategy among others, implementing opt-out cannot solve the organ shortage problem entirely but effectively contributes to reducing it considerably. Keywords: Organ donation; opt-out; opt-in; presumed consent; informed consent; synthetic control method (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ifowps:_403 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in ifo Working Paper Series from ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.