“Access Costs” and the Governance of Post-Mortem Tissues

Abstract

From a law and economics perspective, legislation governing the donation and post mortem use of human tissues for research can be understood as a governance system that structures access to a scarce resource. Against this background, this paper aims to capture the economics of the legal mechanisms that enable, hinder or condition access to human biological material after death. To do so, it adopts the category of “resource access costs” to trace the costs embedded in governance schemes across European legal systems. Finally, the paper applies this framework to assess whether allowing the donors to limit or condition their consent could improve the overall allocative performance of the Italian law.