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Moral Economics
From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- May 12, 2026
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- ISBN-13
- 9781668658161
Price
$27.99Format
Format:
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
- ebook $17.99 $22.99 CAD
- Hardcover $32.00 $42.00 CAD
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Some of the most intractable controversies in our divided society are, at bottom, about what actions and transactions should be banned. Should women and couples be able to purchase contraception, access in vitro fertilization, and end pregnancy by obtaining an abortion? Should people be able to buy marijuana? What about fentanyl? Can someone be paid to donate blood plasma, or a kidney?
Disagreements are fierce because arguments on both sides are often made in uncompromising moral or religious terms. But in Moral Economics, Nobel Prize–winning economist Alvin E. Roth asserts that we can make progress on these and other difficult topics if we view them as markets—tools to help decide who gets what—and understand how those markets can be fine-tuned to be more functional. Markets don’t have to allow everything or ban everything. Prudent market design can find a balance between preserving people’s rights to pursue their own interests and protecting the most vulnerable from harm.
Combining Roth’s unparalleled expertise as market design pioneer with his incisive, witty accounts of complicated issues, Moral Economics offers a powerful and innovative new framework for resolving today’s hardest controversies.
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“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
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“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
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