Prioritized organ allocation rules under compatibility constraints

We study the efficacy of the donor-priority rule in promoting deceased organ donation under blood-type compatibility constraints in both theory and the laboratory. Compared with an allocation policy in which transplantations are performed only within the same blood-type group, we find that transferring organs across blood-type compatible groups discourages the donation incentives of hard-to-match agents and reduces the supply of the more widely acceptable type of organ. Meanwhile, the easy-to-match agents have higher incentives to donate. At the aggregate level, both our theoretical and experimental results suggest that the aggregate donation rate is lower under allocation policies that allow blood-type compatible transplants among different blood-type groups.