Monday, June 22, 2026

A rogue's gallery of transplant heroes (following ATC2026)

After my talk yesterday at the American Transplant Congress, I had lunch with a table of transplant heroes, Joe Tector, Peter Friend, Juliana Bastos, Mike Rees and Gustavo Ferreira.

Saturday, June 20, 2026

Medical aid in dying (and Moral Economics) on Freakonomics Radio

The latest episode of Freakonomics looks at the controversies and philosophies involved in the growing legalization of medical aid in dying (MAID). Stephen Dubner interviews people with multiple perspectives, and offers a personal insight of his own.

"DUBNER: I have a sister who died last year, it was a pretty rotten death, honestly, and she wanted to hasten it. We couldn’t physically orchestrate it. And it really made me see this issue in a new way. It just seemed, you know, I don’t want to say the scales fell from my eyes, but I’d never encountered it first-hand. And it made me think that almost anyone who did encounter it first-hand might have a reckoning, might be in favor of it. But I don’t know, maybe that’s just me. Do you have any sense of how broad the support is for it generally?

ROTH: We’re an aging population, so I think not only do more people have a reason to contemplate their own death, but more people know a peer who’s died, and certainly parents have died, and relatives, you know, siblings and friends. So I would think that anyone who’s seen an agonizing death should at least give some thought to whether we should be legalizing medical aid in dying."

You can listen or read the transcript at this link:

Who Gets to Choose a “Good Death”?
New York is the latest state to legalize medical aid in dying. Stephen Dubner speaks with the governor who signed the law, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a death doula — and an ethicist who thinks the very idea is wrong.

"SOURCES:
Kathy Hochul, governor of New York.
Suzanne O'Brien, death doula, founder of Doulagivers Institute.
Al Roth, economist at Stanford University.
Daniel Sulmasy, physician, philosopher, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

RESOURCES:
Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work, by Al Roth (2026).
"New York Moves to Allow Terminally Ill People to Die on Their Own Terms," by Grace Ashford (New York Times, 2025).
The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life, by Suzanne O'Brien (2025).
The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, by Neil Gorsuch (2009).
EXTRAS:
"Make Me a Match (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

Friday, June 19, 2026

Starzl Lecture: "The Economics of Kidney Exchange," Sunday at the American Transplant Congress in Boston

I'll be speaking Sunday at the American Transplant Congress, on kidney exchange. It will be hard to squeeze in all the recent developments in my half hour, including current controversies.

State-of-the-Art Speakers: Transplantation’s leading luminaries and innovative thinkers will share inspiring research and insights at ATC 2026.

Alvin E. Roth, PhD:
Thomas E. Starzl State-of-the-Art Lecture: The Economics of Kidney Exchange

Sunday, June 21: 11:00 AM ET

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

When people rely on A.I. to avoid ethical challenges

HBS puts the spotlight on a paper by Alex Chan.

When AI Gives Advice, Employees Rarely Ask Why Featuring Alex Chan. By Ben Rand

"People increasingly trust AI to make decisions—but research by Alex Chan finds they avoid evaluating the algorithm's rationale if it causes moral discomfort. How can organizations encourage employees to think more critically? "

Here's the paper:

Preference for Explanations: Case of Explainable AI
By: Alex Chan Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 26-028, November 2025.

Abstract
Participants acted as loan officers deciding whether to approve real $10,000-loans issued by a private U.S. lender using an AI’s default-risk predictions. When explanations revealed that the AI penalized non-White or female borrowers, participants were more likely to override the AI’s profit-maximizing recommendation. When their bonuses depended on repayment, however, they sought predictions but avoided explanations, consistent with willful ignorance; this effect disappeared when explanations were framed as purely financial or demographics were hidden. A secondary experiment reveals a novel bias: participants failed to reason contingently and undervalued explanations even when these complemented private information and improved decision accuracy.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

A chef makes the case for foie gras, and addresses the concerns regarding animal welfare

I'm no expert on the production of foie gras, but I am glad to see arguments about repugnant transactions and controversial markets that take seriously the concerns of opponents.

The Washington Post has the story.

Why I’m proud to serve foie gras. But first, let me take your concerns seriously. By Bart Hutchins
Bart Hutchins is the chef and owner of Butterworth’s in Washington, D.C.

"There is now a proposed ballot initiative moving through Washington that would ban foie gras entirely. No producing it, no selling or serving it. Fines between $1,000 and $5,000 per violation. License suspension for repeat offenses

...

""I am asking you to not sign the petition. But first I want to do something the other side rarely does, which is to take their concerns seriously.

"Gavage — force-feeding through a tube inserted down a bird’s throat — looks terrible. I know because I have seen it. I understand completely why someone sees footage of it and reacts with horror. If you imagine the same thing done to human beings, it looks like violence.

"But here is what I also know, and what the activists with the megaphones do not know and do not want to know because it would complicate the argument they have decided to make.

...

' A duck’s esophagus, where the gavage tube is inserted, is desensitized, without a gag reflex, and it is capable of swallowing whole crustaceans and scaly fish in the wild. Its windpipe is separate from the esophagus, meaning the gavage process has no impact on breathing. More importantly, this overfeeding is something the bird does naturally. Before their annual migration, ducks gorge — they stuff themselves with excess food. The calories are stored as fat, not only in the liver but in the expanded esophagus. (The verb “gorge” comes from this behavior.) What foie gras farming does is amplify a natural biological process rather than invent a cruel one .

...

"The producer I buy foie gras from exemplifies the kind of care and attention good farming demands. Their ducks are raised for 15 weeks, about twice the poultry industry standard, in open barns, on a vegetarian diet. Force-feeding by hand happens three times a day for the final three weeks. Each feeding takes approximately 1½ seconds, and, from my observation, the ducks barely seem to notice it."

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My previous posts about foie gras.

Monday, June 15, 2026

Horsemeat, Prostitution and Kidney Sales, interview by Peter Coy

Peter Coy interviewed me about Moral Economics for his substack Economics for Everyone.

You can find the video and the transcript at this link:

Horsemeat, Prostitution and Kidney Sales by Peter Coy
"Nobel laureate Al Roth tackles them all in a fine new book. I interviewed him."

"I asked Roth if he’s a libertarian, since libertarians say people should be free to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. No, Roth told me.

“People who call themselves libertarians often don’t like market regulation of any sort, but I’m a market designer,” Roth said. “I think that good regulations help markets work well.”

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

Peter C. interviewd me once before:

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Kidney exchange (and other bits of market design) in the New York Times

" Peter Coy, the veteran New York Times economics columnist, writes about kidney exchange, after an interview/conversation sparked by a recent working paper of mine, Market Design and Maintenance. (He's a rare economic journalist who reads economists' papers.)

Here's his column, published yesterday afternoon:

The Economist Who Helped Patients Get New Kidneys, Feb. 5, 2024, 3:00 p.m. ET, By Peter Coy

He's also a rare interviewer: his column includes the names of more of my coauthors than I can recall in any other interview. In order of appearance: Tayfun Sonmez and Utku Unver, Frank Delmonico, Susan Saidman, Mike Rees (implicitly) when he names Mike's nonprofit Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, and Elliott Peranson. Market design is, after all, a team sport."

Sunday, June 14, 2026