BUFFALO, N.Y. — Economic analysis suggests that healthy young donors

in economies like that in the U.S. that place them at low-risk for post-surgical death would sell a kidney or a portion of a liver at prices that would drastically increase the number of those organs available for transplant and increase transplant cost by only 12 percent.

In a study published recently in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, economist Julio Elias of the University at Buffalo and Gary S. Becker of the University of Chicago, argue that “the use of monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs for transplant sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets, and the suffering and deaths of many of those waiting, without increasing the total cost of transplant surgery by a large percent.”

The study may be found online at the journal’s Web site: http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/ (http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/).