Moral Economics: A Book Event at the American Enterprise Institute, May 14 (You're invited, IRL or watch remotely)

Moral Economics: A Book Event  with Sally Satel
Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM ET
AEI, Auditorium | 1789 Massachusetts Ave. NW | Washington, DC 20036

You can RSVP at the above link.

Event Contact: Jillian Holley | Jillian.Holley@aei.org
Media: MediaServices@aei.org | 202.862.5829


Agenda
4:15 p.m.
Registration Opens

4:30 p.m.
Opening Remarks:
Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

4:40 p.m.
Presentation:
Alvin E. Roth, Professor, Stanford University

5:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion

Panelists:
Nick Gillespie, Editor at Large, Reason
Judd Kessler, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Alex Tabarrok, Professor, George Mason University

Moderator:
Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

5:45 p.m.
Q&A

6:00 p.m.
Adjournment 

"What should the government ban, and why? Questions surrounding the legal status of prostitution, marijuana use, abortion, euthanasia, and more are typically answered in the language of morality or religion. In his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner Alvin E. Roth contends that we should judge policies by their consequences, not only by their intentions. A panel of economists and cultural commentators will address Dr. Roth’s arguments.

Submit questions to Jillian.Holley@AEI.org.
If you are unable to attend in person, a video livestream will be made available on this page.

Related Content

Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work
Alvin E. Roth | Basic Venture | May 12, 2026"

Moral Economics: A Book Event live video 

 

Moral Economics: How to buy a copy at a bookstore

 It's publication day for Moral Economics, so I think my involvement in bookselling has probably reached it's peak.  You can buy it IRL now, at American bookstores, and my English publisher notes that you can still pre-order it there at a discount from independent bookstores (see below).

 Here's a snapshot taken at a Barnes and Noble in New York City on publication day May 12.

Moral Economics: New and Notable at Barnes and Nobel

 And here's a message from my publisher in England, where the book will come out in real life only later this month.

"May Pre-Order Offer 2026

We’re delighted to include your forthcoming book in our May Pre-Order Offer, for a limited time, readers will be able to pre-order your book and save 20%. With this offer, we’re aiming to drive extra sales supporting indie bookshops ahead of publication day.

How to get involved
Please share a Bookshop.org link to your book between 13-17th May.

Pre-order a copy of my book from Bookshop.org between 13-17 May and save 20% with the code: PREORDER20 Every sale supports real independent bookshops across the UK!"

 

 

 

Felix Salmon, at Bloomberg, reviews Moral Economics

  Felix Salmon, at Bloomberg, reviews Moral Economics, which starting today is now sold in stores (at least in the U.S.):

An Economist’s Case for Selling a Kidney.  In a new book, Nobel laureate Alvin Roth argues that decriminalizing taboo markets can save lives.  

He tells this story from the book:

"Roth gave a talk in 2017 at the Organ Donation Congress in Geneva about one such chain that started in 2015. A woman from the Philippines, known in the literature as FW, was willing to give up one of her kidneys to save the life of her husband, FM. The two flew to the US, where FM received a kidney from an altruistic donor in Georgia, and FW’s kidney was transplanted into a man in Minnesota. A friend of the Minnesota man, who had been willing to give up one of her kidneys to save his life, instead gave one to a man in Washington, whose father-in-law gave a kidney to a woman in Georgia, and so on. By the end of the year there had been 11 successful transplants, and the chain was still continuing.

" After his talk, Roth was confronted by a Spanish doctor who was deeply concerned about the potentially problematic implications of the economic inequality between the Philippines and the US. Roth pointed out that without the transplant, the patient would surely have died. Replied the Spanish nephrologist: “He should be dead!” Spain’s National Transplant Organization later denounced Roth as an organ trafficker.

"Roth tells this story in his most recent book, Moral Economics (Basic Venture, May 12), which, at least in part, is an attempt to apply the empiricism of economics to domains that are often resistant to such analysis. The opposition to the 2015 kidney chain, for instance, comes from nephrologists who have no problem with chains but who draw the line at international chains, or at least chains linking poor and rich countries."

######

Much of the objection to cross-border kidney exchange appears to be fading, some of it was based on the idea that countries should be self-sufficient in transplants.

See earlier posts:

Friday, January 9, 2026  WHO Says Countries Should Be Self-Sufficient In (Unremunerated) Organs And Blood by Krawiec and Roth (now open source)

 

Friday, September 11, 2020  Global Kidney Exchange supported by the European Society of Transplantation's committee on Ethical, Legal, and Psychosocial Aspects of Transplantation .

Perils of podcasting

 I had a stimulating 3 hour discussion with famed podcaster Lawrence Krauss a few days ago, about my forthcoming book Moral Economics.  Almost immediately after we concluded, it turned out that neither of us had recorded it. (We did a  shorter makeup later.)

 Here's his tweet on that:

Lawrence M. Krauss   @LKrauss1

Today my podcast worst nightmare happened.  

I did a 3 hour  @OriginsProject podcast with Nobel Laureate Alvin E. Roth on his wonderful new book, Moral Economics, that I thought was one of the best podcasts I have recorded. Except I forgot to hit record! Lost it all! With amazing grace and perseverence, he agreed to redo it 2 hours later. What resulted may have been even better. My colleague and friend @slsatel at AEI (who will do an event with him there May 14 ) told me he was a mensch. And boy was she right. I cannot believe his kindness. Thank you Al! And your book is truly inspiring. Hope to release the podcast next week. Watch it and then buy the book! Or buy the book and then watch it. :)

 

Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Dr. Vikas Shah about Moral Economics (on Thought Economics)

 Dr. Vikas Shah has published a post on his site Thought Economics, devoted to my imminently forthcoming book Moral Economics.  The long transcript combines a conversation we had together, interspersed with bits of the book itself, paraphrased to appear as part of the live conversation.

Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth· by Dr. Vikas Shah 

"Roth’s new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work (Basic Venture, 2026), is a tour through what he calls repugnant transactions — exchanges that consenting parties want to make but that others believe should be forbidden, often on moral or religious grounds. The territory ranges from sex, surrogacy and adoption to alcohol, drugs, blood plasma, vaccine challenge trials, kidney transplants and medical aid in dying. Roth’s central argument is bracing in its calm: most contested markets cannot really be abolished, only relocated — driven underground, exported across borders, or left to operate informally and dangerously. The honest question is therefore not whether to permit such markets, but how to design and regulate them so that they command sufficient social support to work, and so that the costs and benefits fall in places we can defend. Markets, in his view, are tools to help decide who gets what; the work of moral economics is to keep asking, with evidence rather than absolutes, how those tools should be built. I spoke with him about the philosophical architecture of the book, the everyday paradoxes of repugnance, the lessons of kidney exchange, the controversies around vaccine challenge trials and assisted dying, and what new frontiers of moral contention the next generation of technologies — from CRISPR to artificial intelligence — will force us to confront." 

It’s time to carefully but urgently rethink payments to kidney donors. My op-ed in the Washington Post

 This morning the Washington Post published my op-ed online (which is scheduled to appear in the print edition on Sunday). 800 words is hardly enough to explain why I think what I do...I could write a whole book about that.

But here's the op-ed: 

Why paying people to donate kidneys is a good idea

With 90,000 patients waiting for a kidney, compensating living donors would save lives.

May 8, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. EDT

 

By Alvin E. Roth

Alvin E. Roth is an economics professor at Stanford University and co-recipient, with Lloyd Shapley, of the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics. This article was adapted from his new book, "Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work."

It’s time to carefully but urgently rethink payments to kidney donors.

There are approximately 130,000 new cases of kidney failure annually in the United States. It is disproportionately a disease of the poor, and is four times as likely to affect Black people as White people. Kidney failure costs Medicare alone more than $55 billion per year, mostly for dialysis. More than 500,000 people are presently on dialysis, about half of whom will die within five years of beginning treatment. The best treatment for kidney failure is transplantation, but in 2025 fewer than 30,000 people in the United States received kidney transplants. So most people who could benefit from a lifesaving transplant will die without one.

 About 90,000 people are registered on the national waiting list to receive a deceased-donor kidney, and many more would be, if there were enough transplants for all who need them. Thousands die each year while waiting, and thousands more are removed from the waiting list when they become too sick to undergo transplant surgery.

The law in the U.S. and most of the world says kidneys must be gifts; their price must be zero. So, any attempt to raise the supply of kidneys by compensating donors would have to overcome the almost worldwide repugnance for payment.

About three-quarters of kidneys transplanted in the U.S. come from deceased donors, and the rest come from living donors: Healthy people have two kidneys and can remain healthy with one. But sometimes potential donors can’t donate to the person they love, because kidneys have to be medically compatible with the recipient. It’s a challenge even within families. For example, often a mother can’t receive a kidney from her spouse or children because during pregnancy, her immune system developed antibodies to some of their proteins.

 

 For the last quarter-century, living-donor transplants have also been arranged through kidney exchange, in which each patient receives a compatible kidney from another patient’s intended donor. Some of these transplants take place in long chains initiated by a nondirected donor, who donates a kidney, anonymously, to anyone who needs one. That begins a chain of donations in which each recipient’s intended donor passes the gift forward. Kidney exchange has made possible thousands of additional transplants, without payments to donors.  

Nevertheless, kidneys for transplant remain in tragically short supply. So it is past time to consider amending the 1984 law that prohibits giving “valuable consideration” for a kidney for transplant.

This would have to be done with care, because there are good reasons that the phrase “payments for kidneys” arouses repugnance. We wouldn’t want inappropriate donors to be unduly influenced to give up a kidney. (This is something already considered when screening the thousands of people who donate one of their kidneys each year without payment.) Another concern is that we wouldn’t want to live in a world in which only rich people could get kidneys, by buying them from poor people.

In the United States, we might think about letting individual states experiment with different regulations. Or we could explore a national system in which only the federal government could buy kidneys — from carefully qualified donors, after a significant period devoted to medical and psychological screening, and having obtained carefully informed consent. Those kidneys could then be allocated without regard to patients’ income, much as we presently allocate deceased-donor kidneys, which are treated as a national resource. 

 

It would be financially feasible to pay donors quite generously without requiring recipients to pay anything at all. Donors could be paid entirely from the savings to the health care system by taking patients off dialysis.

There is a long history of thoughtful arguments in favor of allowing kidney donors to be legally paid or compensated in some way, with carefully considered precautions. These include a current proposal called the End Kidney Deaths Act, which would establish a limited pilot program for a tax credit to nondirected kidney donors.

To be clear, we should keep trying for big long-term goals, such as vastly reducing the incidence of kidney disease by preventing or curing diabetes, hypertension and other causes. We should keep trying to expand deceased donation (perhaps by offering funeral benefits in gratitude to the next of kin who allow it). We should keep exploring cures that don’t require transplants of human organs. But we can save many lives now by being more generous to living donors, and it makes sense to start experimenting with ways to do this legally, ethically and equitably."

############

And here's the picture they chose to accompany the op-ed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon's list of best non-fiction books coming out in May

 Here is Amazon's list of  Best Nonfiction books of May. 

(You have to scroll to the right to see Moral Economics, but I'm still glad to see that it's there:)

Publication day is May 12, just over a week away. 

 

Moral Economics, on the Passion Struck podcast

In the run up to the May publication date, I've been interviewed on a variety of podcasts about my book Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work.  Here's one from the podcast Passion Struck: Nobel Laureate Alvin Roth: How Incentives Shape Your Life | EP 757

 

 #############

Earlier:

Wednesday, April 22, 2026   Moral Economics, on the Armchair Expert podcast

Below is a one minute bit excerpted from the Armchair Expert interview, on why it's easy to buy drugs, but hard to hire a hitman: 

The Difference Between Hitmen and Dealers

 

New Chinese edition of Who Gets What and Why

 There's a new (October, 2025) Chinese edition of my 2015 book Who Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design.  It's the same translation as the first edition, with a new (improved) title, closer to the English.  This is the simplified character version, distributed on the mainland.

 

 

The 2016 traditional character translation is still in use in Taiwan:

 

 

First box of books

Moral Economics won't be for sale until May 12, but the supply chain is stirring: my publisher sent me a box of finished copies.

Moral Economics: Al Roth and Ray Fisman at Cambridge Public Library, Monday May 11

 Here's the invitation to a discussion I'll have in May with Ray Fisman, about Moral Economics.

Some of my Boston/Cambridge friends asked how to get tickets now because they're afraid it will sell out (the price is right), and others because they're afraid that if they don't come Ray and I will be speaking to an empty hall...

Alvin E. Roth at the Cambridge Public Library   Monday, May 11 at 6 pm

You can get tickets at this link. 

 

"Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Alvin E. Roth—Nobel Prize–⁠winning economist, the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University—for a discussion of his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. He will be joined in conversation by Ray Fisman—who holds the Slater Family Chair in Behavioral Economics at Boston University.
Ticketing

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Moral Economics and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing." 

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever (New Republic)

 As an author with a forthcoming non-fiction book, it's both depressing to read that non-fiction book sales are down, but inspiring to read of the importance of books.

The New Republic considers the (diminishing) prospects and (continuing) importance of non-fiction books.

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever
Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction, and our understanding of the world around us.  by Paul Elie

 “The decline in sales of new nonfiction might reflect a changing information ecosystem,” Elizabeth Harris observed. “People looking for information can now easily turn to chatbots, YouTube, podcasts and other free online sources.” Last December, The Guardian cited NielsenIQ figures indicating a one-year drop of 8.4 percent in nonfiction book sales (twice that of fiction) and quoted a writer who had “heard publishers have soured on any nonfiction that isn’t ‘Hollywood friendly.’”

... 

"Fretful narratives about the demise of books and the rise of devices have been in play for half a century or longer. “Our world of books, like most other worlds now, is the arena of an increasingly bitter struggle for space, and for the limited reading time that a busy citizen in this electronic age can afford,” John Updike lamented when accepting the American Book Award in 1982. Narrative nonfiction in particular has faced headwinds in mass culture before. And in many respects, the challenges it faces are built in. Long fact is hard to publish and always has been. Reportage and research take time, resources, attention, and fortitude. A book can require several years to write and another year and a half to be edited, checked, printed, and publicized—only to wind up coming out during a news cycle dominated by a sex scandal, school shooting, pandemic, or war. It was as true half a century ago as it is today that readers expect to pay for fiction but are used to getting nonfiction passively through the media. 

...

"In societies where freedom is under threat, an informed citizen is countercultural and deep reading is an act of resistance. Just as protest and vigilance are essential, so is the ability to read and think. In a would-be autocracy, the autocrat aims to subsume our society’s particular narratives into his master narrative—in which his name fills the headlines, his voice and image dominate the broadcasts, and his airbrushed visage appears on the facades of government. To read a book, however, is to enter a narrative that stands outside the politics-and-media maelstrom. In a would-be autocracy, even a small bookstore—with hundreds of books, classic, recent, and current—is a space of contrary narratives, where truth is recognized as both essential and complicated." 

Pre-publication review of Moral Economics from Publisher's Weekly

Another small adventure in publishing:) 

Here's the pre-publication review of Moral Economics from Publisher's Weekly. "

TL;DR "Bringing balanced, evidence-based analyses to emotionally fraught debates, Roth reveals the power of markets to inspire solutions. This is trailblazing"

 

Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

Alvin E. Roth. Basic Venture, $35 (368p) ISBN 978-1-5417-0201-1

"Nobel Prize–winning economist Roth (Who Gets What—and Why) delivers a stimulating study of morally contested products and services, such as abortion, assisted suicide, and marijuana. He refers to these as “repugnant transactions,” as they spark objections primarily on religious or moral grounds but don’t cause easily measurable harms to those seeking to ban them. Viewing these transactions as markets, or systems that can be designed to “allocate scarce resources efficiently and equitably,” can help people make progress on challenging topics, he argues. For example, analyses of legal prostiution show it can increase the market for paid sex but can also reduce rape and the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Another topic discussed is kidney donation. There is a nearly universal ban on compensating donors based on the concern that payments might lead to poor or vulnerable people being coerced into selling their organs. Meanwhile, there is an extreme shortage of donors, and loved ones are often incompatible with those they want to help (kidney disease runs in families). Roth and his colleagues designed a kidney exchange, in which incompatible patient-donor pairs exchange kidneys with other such pairs. Because no money changes hands, the problem of paying donors can be avoided. Bringing balanced, evidence-based analyses to emotionally fraught debates, Roth reveals the power of markets to inspire solutions. This is trailblazing. (May) 

 

 

A philosopher interviews economists about rational choice

A hardcover copy of this book of interviews (of economists, by a philosopher) arrived in my mail the other day, and I'm enjoying it. It's also freely available online at the links below. (Here is my interview (pp 371-395).

Conversations on Rational Choice, a series of interviews conducted by Catherine Herfeld DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316344392   Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2025

 

 Contents:

Acknowledgments

1Introduction

2Pioneers of Rational Choice

1. 2.1Kenneth Arrow

2. 2.2Thomas Schelling

3. 2.3Martin Shubik

4. 2.4Gary Becker

3Formal Theories of Rational Choice

1. 3.1David Kreps

2. 3.2Itzhak Gilboa

3. 3.3Christian List

4Psychological Dimensions of Rational Choice

1. 4.1Robin Hogarth

2. 4.2Daniel Kahneman

3. 4.3Ernst Fehr

4. 4.4Gerd Gigerenzer

5Relating Neurons, Norms, and Networks to Rational Choice

1. 5.1Colin Camerer

2. 5.2Cristina Bicchieri

3. 5.3Rachel Kranton

6Rational Choice, Games, and Markets

1. 6.1Robert Aumann

2. 6.2Alvin Roth

3. 6.3Vernon Smith

7Critical Reflections on Rational Choice

1. 7.1Duncan Foley

2. 7.2Robert Sugden

3. 7.3Alexander Rosenberg

8Rational Choice in Philosophy

1. 8.1Isaac Levi

2. 8.2Patrick Suppes

3. 8.3Laurie A. Paul

9Epilogue

References

Index