I post market design related news and items about repugnant markets . See my Stanford profile . I have a 2026 book : Moral Economics The subtitle is "From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work."
I know you have been just about to buy my book Moral Economics, ever since it came out in May. But you don't need to charge blindly ahead, you can gather evidence first (something the book strongly suggests is a good general practice:). You can read the introduction and part of the first chapter (which happens to be on Sex), for free, on google books:…
I talk with Gemma Boothroyd, about Moral Economics and controversial markets in Canada, including medical aid in dying, about which she has a story of her own. CANADALAND #1414 Repugnant Markets: Where Blood is Sold and Kidneys Swapped “Sometimes the transplants weren't done in a sterile environment. They weren't done in a hospital. They were done in an apartment somewhere. There are some very bad…
The forthcoming issue of PNAS (August 18, 2026 | vol. 123 | no. 33 ) has a big set of papers on illegal markets, with the goal of searching for common features, which turn out to be somewhat elusive. Research Article August 10, 2026 A budding science of illegal markets Illegal markets create untold societal and environmental harm, but they have attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention.…
Protections intended to thwart organ trafficking may inadvertently also "protect" legitimate patients and donors from receiving life-saving medical care. The Paradox of Protection: How Overregulation Threatens Living Kidney Donation in Mexico , by Francisco J. Reyna-Sepulveda and Javier Sanchez-Maldonado, Transplantation, Publish Ahead of Print, July 27, 2026. | DOI: 10.1097/TP.0000000000005860…
The Nobel Laureate Who’d Buy Your Kidney What is bad about prostitution? Why is it wrong to eat horses? Al Roth’s latest book asks the most provocative moral questions. He gave The Free Press some of his answers. By Peter Coy "I was a little surprised to find out that Roth has a wide streak of provocation in his personality. It comes across in his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to…
Sam Bowles and Wendy Carlin propose that we should think of civil society as the third leg in regulating economic life, along with government and markets. (They use kidney exchange as an example to indicate what they mean.) The Governance Triangle: Economic interactions in civil society, the state, and the market , Bowles, Samuel; Carlin, Wendy; (2026), Annual Review of Economics . "Abstract:…
Here's a review paper concentrating primarily on transplantation of organs (primarily kidneys) from deceased donors. It closes with a set of open research questions. Organ Allocation and Transplantation by Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth, Annual Review of Economics, Volume 18, 2026, Vol. 18:613-645, August 2026, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-092425-123425 ABSTRACT: There is a large…
It turns out that Cornell had no rule preventing students from skinning bears in a communal dormitory kitchen. But now they do. (A lot of regulation works like that... keep an eye on AI...) Students Skinned a Bear in a Dorm. Cornell Realized It Should Ban That. After two Cornell University students skinned a black bear in a communal kitchen last year to make a meal, the school changed the rules.…
Now published: Annual Review of Economics - Volume 18, 2026 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/economics.2026.18.issue-1 Dynamic Contracting Alessandro Pavan https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080525-114300 show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for: Dynamic Contracting The Economics of Professional Decision-Making: Can Artificial Intelligence Reduce Decision Uncertainty? W. Bentley…
I was interviewed about Moral Economics by the comedian Paul Ollinger on his podcast Reasonably Happy . Here's a link to the audio recording , which I can hear quite clearly. And here's a link to the video , which I can see clearly enough, but can't manage to turn on the audio, but maybe you can. (It's not a stirring video, I'm at home on zoom and he's in a studio...) He began "Lets start with the…
The summer experiment fest is on:) Session 6: Experimental Economics | Department of Economics Thu, Aug 6 2026, 9:00am - Fri, Aug 7 2026, 7:00pm PDT Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street, Stanford, Thursday, August 6, 2026 Aug 6 9:00 am - 9:30 am PDT Check-in and Breakfast Aug 6 9:30 am - 9:45 am PDT Introduction Aug 6 9:45 am - 10:45 am PDT Session 1 (Chair: Muriel) Aug 6 9:45 am - 10:15 am PDT AI…
Mississippi Today has the story: ‘Kidney chains’ could save lives and billions of healthcare dollars, advocates say. by Pat Boone, Robert Hays and Steve Young "Editor’s note: Entertainer Pat Boone, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young and actor Robert Hays of “Airplane” fame signed on as authors of a guest essay provided by US Blood Donors.org for Mississippi Today on “Kidney Chains.”…
Below is a Youtube video of all the talks given at the 4th International Workshop on Game Theory and Economic Applications at the University of São Paulo last Wednesday. My talk, whose title was "Controversial markets, black markets, and market design" is introduced at minute 2:24 (and for some of you the link below should start up there). The talk before mine is by Bob Wilson, and the one after…
Public rhetoric and parliamentary maneuvering display opposite positions on IVF in an election year. G.O.P. Kills Bid to Expand I.V.F. Access in the Military In a notable shift, Republican senators voted unanimously against a proposal to expand the military’s coverage of fertility treatments. By Annie Karni " Republicans in Congress have quietly blocked a proposal to expand military health…
Cardiff Garcia interviewed me about Moral Economics , and we began by talking about medical aid in dying, and moved briskly on to other controversial markets such as pornography and prostitution. The New Bazaar Economist Alvin Roth, winner of the economics Nobel in 2012 for his work on market design, joins Cardiff to discuss his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales: What…
The first stop (post-arrest, pre-trial) for many people caught up in the US criminal justice system is a local jail. Many of the people who are jailed have healthcare issues involving, for example, mental illness and/or drug and alcohol addiction. But jails don't view themselves as healthcare facilities. So I'm glad to see that Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is funding Improving Medical Care for…
One feature of giving talks to unfamiliar audiences is that you only get noisy feedback on how your talk was received. This past June, I gave the Starzl Lecture at the American Transplant Congress in Boston . (The ATC is jointly organized by the two big American transplant societies, the AST and the ASTS,*) I spoke to an audience of about 1500 people (just a guess, but I could see some empty seats…
Voluntary donation of whole blood in the US has provided adequate supply for many years, but since Covid it has sometimes come close to a shortage, and now we have a second declared shortage. This contrasts with blood plasma, which includes supply from paid donors. American Red Cross Declares Second-Ever National Blood Supply Crisis, Urges Immediate Blood Donations I think the graphic is meant to…
An article in Floha de S. Paulo, tells of the first inter-hospital kidney exchange in Brazil: Transplante renal pareado amplia opção para pacientes que têm doador, mas não podem receber o rim by Claudia Collucci English translation: Paired kidney transplant expands options for patients who have a donor but can't receive the kidney…
Here's a high level overview of the program , which begins today. And here's the detailed day by day program . I'm expecting to speak on Wednesday, which looks to be a busy day:
My old friend, colleague and coauthor Marilda Sotomayor is presiding over a big game theory conference in São Paulo this coming week. Here are the first paragraphs of the announcement from the University of São Paulo: USP brings together six Nobel laureates in Economics in an event on Game Theory The Faculty of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Actuarial Sciences of the University of São…
Dr. Silvia Console Battilana who partnered with Paul Milgrom to found the auction consulting firm Auctionomics, writes about markets for compute capacity as an aid to developing AI. The Missing Market We Need To Win The AI Race By Silvia Console Battilana,Forbes Councils Member. for Forbes Business Council COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based) "In 2025, the global artificial intelligence market…
Here's an editorial arguing that as the recently legalized kidney exchange in Germany is implemented, attention should be paid to the controversies that have been encountered and addressed elsewhere, including those about non-directed donors, and the governance and transparency of transplant decisions. Benning L, Lu W, Budde K , Josephson, M. Germany’s move toward kidney paired exchange and…
Here's a story in the NYT, covering an uproar that's been in the German newspapers for a week or so now. A leader in the German governing coalition announced on social media that he and his husband had welcomed a new baby into their family, born via surrogacy in the U.S. But surrogacy in Germany is not legal, so this was a "for me but not for thee" hypocrisy moment there. (In general it's hard to…
A recent letter from Mayo Clinic transplant providers raises concerns related to bad outcomes when some patient-donor pairs are separated (the donor donates before the intended recipient is matched to a donor), but the intended recipient is hard to match. Donor Mentoring in Private Kidney Paired Donation Programs: The Need for Transparency and Accountability by Tayyab S. Diwan, Pooja Bhudiraja,…