In many settings, randomly arriving objects are offered successively to agents according to their fixed order in a waiting list. Though it is costly to wait, an agent may prefer to decline an offered object in order to wait for a better one (e.g. as in perhaps the most significant of such environments, the assignment of donor organs to queued patients). We consider the welfare consequences of i...

© 2002 Canadian Medical Association S waiting lists are seen by many as epitomizing the shortcomings of our public health care system. Yet, they can also be interpreted as being the result of a societal compromise between the founders’ promise of universal access to care and the reality of currently committed resources. Regardless of one’s perception, the debate about the “appropriate length” o...