Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is September 11th, 2015, and this episode is a follow-up of sorts.

To the interview I did this summer with Alvin Roth.

In that interview, we talked about some of the creative ways that Roth and others have helped encourage kidney donation.

And at one point in that episode, Roth mentioned in passing that there's only one country in the world

where it's legal to buy and sell kidneys.

That country being Iran. And I almost asked Roth about that, and what he knew about it.

But I missed the chance, the interview moved along, and that was that.

And then, as fate would have, at a few weeks later, Tina Rosenberg, author and writer at the New York Times,

wrote a piece in the Times on the Iranian kidney market and the possible implications

and a second piece that she wrote for the United States. And she is our guest today.

Tina, welcome to Econ Talk.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks.

So, to start with, here in the United States, there are a lot more people who want a kidney transplant

and there are kidneys available. And this is true in most countries in the world.

What happens to those folks generally who have or desperately in need of a kidney

because their kidneys aren't working?

...