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Research Program

Organ Allocation & Transplant Policy

Overview

I study how law and policy shape organ allocation, including geographic allocation rules, access to transplantation, patient outcomes, and the legal structure of organ distribution. This work combines empirical analysis of allocation reforms with legal and policy analysis of who receives scarce organs and on what terms.

Selected Scholarship

Sharing Is Caring: Eliminating Geographic Boundaries in Organ Allocation

Benjamin J. McMichael

Forthcoming American Journal of Health Economics (2026).

Inequitable Organ Allocation

Benjamin J. McMichael

UC Davis Law Review, 58(1): 1–110 (2024).

Stealing Organs?

Benjamin J. McMichael

Indiana Law Journal, 97(1): 135–201 (2022).

Public Attitudes toward Contemporary Issues in Liver Allocation

Heather W. O’Dell, Benjamin J. McMichael, Suzie Lee, Jay L. Karp, R. Lawrence Van Horn, and Seth J. Karp

American Journal of Transplantation, 19(4): 1212–1217 (2019).

Data, Code & Interactive Research

Approved public datasets, replication materials, figures, and interactive research may be collected here where available.