Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: Stanford University

Title of entry: A Beautiful Application: The Economics of Efficient, Fair Kidney Exchanges

About this entry: Nearly 100,000 people are on the waiting list to receive a kidney in the United States; hundreds will die before they get a chance for a transplant. Determining the fairest and fastest way to get new organs to people with renal failure is a thorny practical and ethical challenge. And it’s a particularly interesting problem for people who think about questions of scarcity, allocation, and efficiency for a living — economists and operations experts.

“A Beautiful Application,” a feature story in the Fall 2021 issue of Stanford Magazine, examines the work of several Stanford Graduate School of Business professors who have focused on improving the system for donating and allocating kidneys. Among the questions they’ve considered: How can “donor chains” ensure better matches and more transplants? Should sicker people get priority for new organs? And what if living donors were paid?

Their work exemplifies the two-way exchange between research and practice that is foundational at Stanford GSB: Research informs practice; practice, in turn, raises new questions for researchers to pursue. And behind the equations and models and theories lies the simple, rewarding fact that improvements to the system aren’t just about numbers. “This issue sits at the intersection of economics and ethics — not an area that economists typically spend their time in,” says GSB Dean Jon Levin, an economist. “The payoff is saving people’s lives. That’s an inspiring challenge.”