Saving Lives with Mechanism Design: A Framework for Reasoning About Kidney Exchange

Abstract

Kidney exchange is emerging as a new candidate to provide those who suffer from chronic kidney disease with transplant kidneys. Interestingly, the mechanics of centralized kidney exchange behave similarly to various other matching markets studied in market design such as those of school choice, marriage, and college admissions. As a result, we are able to apply a quantitative approach to our analysis of this market and use game theory, economics, and computation to better understand this phenomenon. The merge between kidney exchange and economics is a recent development, and we hope to continue this conversation. We first describe a new simplistic model of kidney exchange. Upon establishing this model, we can then analyze it and reason about it. As a result of our analyses, some interesting truths about the limits of kidney exchange are discovered. Finally, we challenge all of the assumptions made in our model and seek ways of improvement