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Kidney Exchange

 
Paper:ewp-game/0308002
From:    
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 01:05:59 -0500

Abstract:
Most transplanted kidneys are from cadavers, but there are also substantial numbers of transplants from live donors. Recently, there have started to be kidney exchanges involving two donor-patient pairs such that each donor cannot give a kidney to the intended recipient because of immunological incompatibility, but each patient can receive a kidney from the other donor. Exchanges are also made in which a donor- patient pair makes a donation to someone on the queue for a cadaver kidney, in return for the patient in the pair receiving the highest priority for a compatible cadaver kidney when one becomes available. We explore how such exchanges can be arranged efficiently and incentive compatibly. The problem resembles some of the "housing" problems studied in the mechanism design literature for indivisible goods, with the novel feature that while live donor kidneys can be assigned simultaneously, the cadaver kidneys must be transplanted immediately upon becoming available. In addition to studying the theoretical properties of the design we propose for a kidney exchange, we present simulation results suggesting that the welfare gains would be substantial, both in increased number of feasible live donation transplants, and in improved match quality of transplanted kidneys.

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EconWPA began as a conversation between Bob Parks and Larry Blume on January 28, 1993. I located Paul Ginsparg's archive (then xxx.lanl.gov) and he graciously installed his software on a Sun Sparc system which was supporting the department of economics email and computation. EconWPA began accepting papers July 1, 1993 and had ftp, email, gopher and web interfaces. The web interface for submissions was engineered into existence in July 1995. A complete and catastrophic machine failure in 1999 caused the loss of EconWPA's email new paper announcment service at which time there were over 15,000 subscriptions with over 8,000 unique email addresses.

In 2005, Arts and Sciences commandeered the computing services that I had provided to the Department of Economics since 1987. Some might say that the department was sold out, others would (erroneously) claim that centralization is efficient, and still others would claim that I have few marketing skills.

I was told that I could keep operating EconWPA (as well as many other services including rfe.wustl.edu, barnett.wustl.edu, and three RePEc servers) but I would receive no support (hardware, software, or anthing else) and (as had been the case) no compensation. At that point, given the apparent low valuation of my activities by the department, and university, it made no sense for me to continue operating EconWPA or other services.

Thanks to all who have supported EconWPA in the past.

A Chinese curse states May you live in intersting times. I have. Bob Parks - Jan 2006