Unpaired Kidney Exchange: Overcoming Double Coincidence of Wants without Money / Mohammad Akbarpour, Julien Combe, Yinghua He, Victor Hiller, Robert Shimer, Olivier Tercieux.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Akbarpour, Mohammad.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Combe, Julien.

He, Yinghua.

Hiller, Victor.

Shimer, Robert.

Tercieux, Olivier.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27765.

NBER working paper series no. w27765

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

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 proposed algorithm, 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.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2020.