Lecturer: Subhajit Pramanik
Title: A Dynamic Bargaining Framework for International Kidney Paired Exchange Programs
/Authors: Antonio Nicolò, Subhajit Pramanik/
Date: 29th January 2026
Venue: 1097 Budapest Tóth Kálmán u. 4. seminar room T.4.23
Abstract:
This paper develops a theoretical framework for International Kidney Paired Exchange (IKPE) to address efficiency and fairness concerns in multicountry kidney exchanges. Drawing on a discrete version of the Kalai-Smorodinsky (KS) bargaining solution, we propose a mechanism that first maximizes the least-gained country’s relative gain and then selects a matching that achieves the largest overall transplant benefit. The model features a dynamic weighting scheme that adjusts over time to compensate countries whose participation yields lower gains in the past rounds compared to other countries, ensuring an equitable distribution of cooperative gains. We prove that the proposed mechanism guarantees per-period Pareto optimality and individual rationality of the resulting allocation, as no country is worse off by cooperating than by acting alone. We also show that over multiple periods, dynamic weighting corrects historical imbalances, eventually converging countries’ cumulative gains under mild stochastic assumptions. We further extend the framework to a dual-objective setting that simultaneously protects total transplants and access for hard-to-match recipients via a bi-criteria KS screen, retaining the per-period guarantees and long-run convergence.
Short Bio: Subhajit Pramanik is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Padova, Italy. His research focuses on matching theory, market and mechanism design, with connections to computational social choice. He previously completed a BS – MS dual degree at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal.
