Free-Market Gross-Outs
A friend sends, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a paper by Alvin E. Roth on "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets." Now, now, before you start yawning, scroll down for the bit on dwarf-tossing:
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 once were not as repugnant as they now are) to lending money for interest (which used to be widely repugnant and is now not), 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, change can be quite slow.
I recall simple things like "usury" being defined as lending at interest rates exceeding 8% (presumably in a relatively inflation-free economy) and "slavery" being restricted to indentured servitude of fixed duration : religious constraints on Jews. When fixed in "Holy Writ" change can go from slow to "forget it".
opit at November 24, 2006 9:26 AM
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