Blueprinting Organ Donation : A ‘Policy-first’Approach for Developing Agent-based Models

Agent-based models have long been argued a useful toolto support policy analysis, variably targeting the assessment of policydesign, as well as establishing its performance. Challenging, however,remains appropriate empirical parameterization and validation of suchmodels. This paper contributes to the development of rigorous accountsof policy modelling primarily driven by policy documents in order to develop general conceptual model. Such models can then serve as a basis forearly validation by subject matter experts, but more importantly, informthe subsequent inquiry relevant for the parameterization of such models, while at the same time offering the opportunity to detect deviationsfrom regulated practice. Relying on the scenario of organ donation basedon the Swedish legislation, we explore the merits of such an approach,and sketch the individual steps from policy documents to conceptualmodel. Supporting the methodological process, this paper employs theInstitutional Grammar 2.0, which offers selected features supporting theproposed modelling approach.