What Matters for the Productivity of Kidney Exchange?

Almost 100,000 patients are currently waiting for a lifesaving kidney transplant. Buying organs is illegal in the United States. Kidney exchange (KE) presents a unique opportunity for patients with a living but incompatible donor (Roth, Sonmez and Unver, 2004). In 2017, Kidney Exchange facilitated approximately 15% of all living donor transplants in the United States. In addition to increasing the quality and length of life, each transplant saves several hundreds of thousands of dollars on health-care expenditure over remaining on dialysis.