A Market for Organ Donation

by one of my favorite economists, Gary Becker from Harvard

http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/MarketforLiveandCadavericOrganDonations_Becker_Elias.pdf

We evaluate the introduction of monetary incentives in the market for live and cadaveric
organ donations. We show that monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs
for transplant sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets, and the
suffering and deaths of many of those waiting, without increasing the total cost of
transplant surgery by more than 12%. We build on the value of life literature and other
parts of economic analysis to estimate the equilibrium cost of live transplants for kidneys
and livers. We also show that price will be determined by the cost of live donations, even
though most organs will come from cadavers.