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Moral Economics

What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

Alvin Roth

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Basic Books
21 May 2026
Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth argues that our most important and difficult decisions - about our most controversial issues - require a different calculation of what matters most.

Our intuitive and automatic thinking is influenced - in ways we don't always recognize - by strongly-held notions of repugnance. A transaction is repugnant if some people want to engage in it, and others think they shouldn't be allowed to. You Can't Do That explores how ideas about repugnance have changed drastically over time, and examines the causes and consequences of forbidding transactions in our most intimate relationships (such as sex, reproduction, or donating blood) and our commercial relationships (finance, labor, or data use).

Leading economist Alvin Roth turns his attention to a controversial set of markets to answer difficult questions about allowing, regulating or forbidding certain transactions. Should narcotics be legalised? Should we allow compensation for kidney donors, or let thousands of people die each year while waiting for an altruistic kidney? Should we allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who desire death with dignity? Roth's goal is not to tell us what to think, but to give us a new framework for how to think - balancing the rights of people to pursue their individual and mutual goals with the need to protect society's most vulnerable members from harms that might arise from markets, including black markets, growing without boundaries.

This is about trade-offs, not moral absolutes. Combining Roth's expertise in market design with his skill in making complicated ideas accessible, You Can't Do That examines how to make those trade-offs in the most humane, beneficial, and efficient ways.
By:  
Imprint:   Basic Books
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm, 
ISBN:   9781399816632
ISBN 10:   1399816632
Pages:   368
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Primary ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Alvin E. Roth, PhD, is the McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and is one of the world's leading experts in the fields of market design and game theory. He was a corecipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics. Roth received his Ph.D. at Stanford University at the age of 22 and was tenured at the University of Illinois by the age of 25. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and in the Harvard Business School. Roth won the Nobel Prize for his work as one of the founders of the new economic discipline of market design, the subject of his 2015 book Who Gets What - and Why? The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design.

Reviews for Moral Economics: What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

From the right to sell a kidney to the cost of a surrogate birth, our sense of ""right and wrong"" shapes the economy more than we realize. Nobel laureate Alvin Roth - the world's leading ""philosopher-economist"" - unpacks the hidden moral codes that govern our most intimate transactions. This is a clear-eyed guide to understanding where the market ends, where morality begins, and how we can design a world that honors both -- Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, Nobel laureates, Stanford University With clarity and compassion, Al Roth explores the transactions society cannot escape - surrogacy, the purchase of body parts, the sale of sex, and a host of ""repugnant"" relationships. What should be regulated? What should be banned? What are the limits of using price in the marketplace? Be prepared to think in new ways and gain from the insights of a great market designer -- Claudia Goldin, Nobel laureate and author of CAREER AND FAMILY Alvin Roth received the Nobel Prize for work in economics that has saved thousands of lives. In Moral Economics, Roth applies his open-minded, evidence-based thinking to controversial issues at the intersection of markets and morals, where his way of thinking could save even more lives -- Peter Singer, author of ETHICS IN THE REAL WORLD A surprisingly large part of economics is about things money can't buy, for many good and bad and complicated reasons. This wonderful book by the leading scholar in that area of economics is something else that just money could never buy. It's a labor of love, a testament from a lifetime of thought and research -- Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Nobel laureates and authors of POOR ECONOMICS


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