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Organ donations from deceased donors provide the majority of transplanted organs in the United States, and one deceased donor can save numerous lives by providing multiple organs. Nevertheless, most Americans are not registered organ donors despite the relative ease of becoming one. We study in the laboratory an experimental game modeled on the decision to register as an organ donor and investigate how changes in the management of organ waiting lists might impact donations. We find that an organ allocation policy giving priority on waiting lists to those who previously registered as donors has a significant positive impact on registration. (JEL C91, D64, I11)

Several models of prisoner's dilemma interactions were tested in a series of twelve games whose termination point was determined probabilistically. A new model was introduced to discriminate among equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations on the basis of a player's expected benefits or losses for cooperating. The experiment included twelve payoff matrices, three probabilities for continuing, two opponent strategies, and the player's sex as independent variables. Results showed that both the game payoffs and the probability that the game would continue interacted to affect the rates of cooperation observed, and that the equilibrium model predicted this outcome most accurately. While the predictions of each of the models were supported, the equilibrium models appeared to be superior to the others. The discussion highlights the importance of considering the likelihood of a game terminating as a major determinant of the cooperation that can be expected in mixed—motive interactions.

This study reports an experiment designed to test the predictive value of Axelrod's measure of conflict of interest. The results support the conclusion that Axelrod's measure is a good predictor of the time required to reach agreement in a given bargaining game, but that it is not a good pedictor of the frequency with which disagreements will be observed in a given game. The theoretical implications of this conclusion are discussed.

This paper presents the results of an n-person characteristic function game played by between seven and and twelve players, one of whom was a monopolist. A factorial design allowed for analysis of the effects of group size, the availability of information, and communication opportunities for a series of seven trials. The data were compared to the game theoretic concepts of the core and Shapley value, (Shapley, 1953, Roth, 1977a), and to the predictions of the Weighted Probability model (Komorita, 1974). The findings indicated that the monopolist held a great deal of power, especially when communication among the players was not allowed. His payoffs increased over trials and approached the core in all of the conditions except when communicaion was available in seven and eight-person groups. The overall results were very close to the Shapley value and the predictions of the Weighted Probability model. The results were compared to an earlier study on a similar three-person game; increasing the group size seemed to be the primary case of the increase in the monopolist's payoffs.

This Handbook brings together the latest research on applied market design. It surveys matching markets: environments where there is a need to match large two-sided populations to one another, such as law clerks and judges or patients and kidney donors.

IRBs can disallow high incentives they deem coercive. A vignette study on MTurk concerning participation in medical trials shows that a substantial minority of subjects concurs. They think high incentives cause more regret, and that more people would be better off without the opportunity to participate. We model observers as judging the ethicality of incentives by partially using their own utility. The model predicts that payments are repugnant only to the extent that they affect the participation decision, and more so for larger transactions. Incentivizing poorer participants is more repugnant, and in-kind incentives are less repugnant than monetary incentives.

The design of the New York City (NYC) high school match involved trade-offs among efficiency, stability, and strategy-proofness that raise new theoretical questions. We analyze a model with indifferences—ties—in school preferences. Simulations with field data and the theory favor breaking indifferences the same way at every school—single tiebreaking—in a student-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism. Any inefficiency associated with a realized tiebreaking cannot be removed without harming student incentives. Finally, we empirically document the extent of potential efficiency loss associated with strategy-proofness and stability, and direct attention to some open questions. (JEL C78, D82, I21)