This essay examines how repugnance sometimes constrains what transactions and markets we see. When my colleagues and I have helped design markets and allocation procedures, we have often found that distaste for certain kinds of transactions is a real constraint, every bit as real as the constraints imposed by technology or by the requirements of incentives and efficiency. I'll first consider a range of examples, from slavery and indentured servitude (which are much more repugnant now than they once were) to lending money for interest (which used to be widely repugnant but no longer is), and from bans on eating horse meat in California to bans on dwarf tossing in France. An example of special interest will be the widespread laws against the buying and selling of organs for transplantation. The historical record suggests that while repugnance can change over time, it can persist for a very long time, although changes in institutions that reflect repugnance can occur relatively quickly when the underlying repugnance changes.
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Volume (Year): 21 (2007) Issue (Month): 3 (Summer) Pages: 37-58 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sonmez & M. Utku Unver, 2004.
"Pairwise Kidney Exchange,"
NBER Working Papers
10698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Atila Abdulkadiroğlu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sonmez, 2005.
"The Boston Public School Match,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 368-371, May.
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Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sönmez & M. Utku Ünver, 2004.
"Kidney Exchange,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
MIT Press, vol. 119(2), pages 457-488, May.
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Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sonmez & M. Utku Unver, 2003.
"Kidney Exchange,"
NBER Working Papers
10002, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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