Altruistically unbalanced kidney exchange

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Soenmez, Tayfun; Uenver, M. Utku
• 署名单位: Boston College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2014.04.003
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 105-129
• 关键词: Kidney exchange; market design; matching

摘要

Although a pilot national live-donor kidney exchange program was recently launched in the US, the kidney shortage is increasing faster than ever. A new solution paradigm is able to incorporate compatible pairs in exchange. In this paper, we consider an exchange framework that has both compatible and incompatible pairs, and patients are indifferent over compatible pairs. Only two-way exchanges are permitted because of institutional constraints. We explore the structure of Pareto-efficient matchings in this framework. We show that under Pareto-efficient matchings, the same number of patients receive transplants, and it is possible to construct Pareto-efficient matchings that match the same incompatible pairs while matching the least number of compatible pairs. We extend the celebrated Gallai - Edmonds Decomposition in the combinatorial optimization literature to our new framework. We also conduct comparative static exercises on how this decomposition changes as new compatible pairs join the pool. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.