And speaking of the Census,  I was in my car listening to the radio the other day when a Census advert came on.  It encouraged me to fill out my Census form so that the right number of teachers would be provided in my school district.  When is the last time you saw a private business counting every man, woman, and child to determine the how much of a good or service to supply?

“We evaluate the introduction of monetary incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations. We show that 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 more than 12%. We build on the value of life literature and other parts of economic analysis to estimate the equilibrium cost of live transplants for kidneys and livers. We also show that price will be determined by the cost of live donations, even though most organs will come from cadavers.”

I found the article rather interesting. I was a bit skeptical reading through section 4.1 on the price of an organ, and their mathematical calculations which put a monetary price on a life, but it provided some research on a long debate of whether organ donors should be compensated. The authors present that a monetary incentive would cause the inelastic supply of organ donors to become elastic. The cost of organ transplants is incredibly high, and an monetary incentive would only raise it.

The article doesn’t go into depth about who would and how this monetary incentive would be supplied, but what if there was compensation for living donors or the families of cadaveric donors? Would it be the invisible hand that would create an equibrium in this market?

Of course, Paul Krugman cannot make this argument, because he supports efforts to stimulate the economy through government spending. I am not asking him to change his economics. That is irrelevant here. Krugman writes, “The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument.” Where is Dr. Krugman’s economic argument, here or in other pieces? I read his column regularly and see very little sustained economic reasoning. Instead, he opines openly and sublimates the bad economics that drive his (frequently partisan) convictions: this process frequently results in his producing the kind of shaky argument I mentioned above.

Winning the Nobel Prize does not make you exempt from making real arguments. Until Paul Krugman realizes this, he won’t convince me of anything.