Opt In? Opt Out?

Cadaveric organ shortages leave thousands without life-saving transplants each year. Countries differ in using opt-in (informed consent) or opt-out (presumed con sent) systems for donor registration. Using newly assembled cross-country panel data and an event-study design, this paper shows that presumed-consent laws are associated with increased organ donation only when strictly enforced and fam ily veto power is limited; weak opt-out regimes show negligible or even negative changes. A theoretical signaling model provides a plausible mechanism that de termines when opt-in or opt-out yields more donations, emphasizing the roles of donation propensity, signaling costs, and the family’s ability to overturn defaults. A large laboratory experiment further tests this mechanism, showing that opt-in generally produces equal or higher donation rates unless signaling is costly and family veto power is minimal. The results underscore that defaults alone rarely increase donations unless paired with strong institutional enforcement.