Michael Giberson
Al Roth, blogging at Market Design, discusses Lifesharers in a post “Lifesharers: organ donation as a club good rather than a public good“:
Deceased organ donation is a public good in the sense that everyone is better off in expectation if everyone else is willing to donate their organs when they die, but no one receives any direct benefit from donating his organs after death (and there must be perceived costs to donation, since not everyone is a donor).
Economists often worry about how to provide public goods …
In between public and private goods are “club goods,” like a park or country club that is funded by members, and is only open to members and their guests. The idea of LifeSharers is that organ donation can be a club good: members indicate that they are willing to donate their organs, giving first preference to other members.
That isn’t exactly the standard version of the economic term “public good,” but I guess we can make allowances for the remark being a blog post rather than an research article.
Roth frequently posts on organ donation and related topics. See his posts tagged kidney exchange and compensation for donors.
Previous posts on organ donation here at Knowledge Problem include “Life on the Kidney Queue in the Land of the Market” and “Markets for Kidney Transplants.”