Alex Chan (Harvard) - Opt In? Opt Out?

Event details

Speaker: Alex Chan (Harvard)

Abstract: Thousands of people die each year waiting for a life-saving organ transplantation. Cadaveric organ donations from the deceased provide the majority of transplanted organs in the U.S and many other countries. In the U.S., a potential donor has to "opt in" to become a donor under the principle of informed consent. Many countries around the world have shifted cadaveric organ procurement to a presumed consent system where a deceased person is classified as a potential donor in absence of explicit "opting out" to donation before death. Using an event studies design and newly constructed cross-country panel data, I offer novel causal evidence on the impact of presumed consent laws on donation rates. I offer theoretical predictions on when opt in is better than opt out, and when the opposite is true. I study in the laboratory an experimental game modeled on the decision to register as an organ donor and the decision to donate someone's organ on their behalf as a decision proxy to investigate how changes in the consent regime might impact donations. We find that an "opt in" regime dominates an "opt out" regime except in situations where a population's donation propensity is moderate and where families have little power to overturn the consent.

Host: Luigi Siciliani (York)