The Economist reviews Moral Economics

 It appears that even a week after book-publication week, I'm not finished with book news.

This week The Economist reviewed Moral Economics.  

Here's the short version, from the issue's overview in World in Brief.

"Alvin Roth investigates repugnant markets

"Would you like to buy a kidney? How about heroin? Or sex? Don’t worry: you haven’t wandered down the wrong alley—these and other morally questionable transactions are the subject of a new book by Alvin Roth, a Nobel-prize winning economist. Published in Britain on Thursday, “Moral Economics” looks at the murky world of “repugnant transactions”: deals in which buyers and sellers happily transact, but which onlookers would rather ban on moral grounds.

"For Mr Roth, moral economics is about trade-offs. Are the harms of allowing an activity greater than those of disallowing it? Policy, he argues, should weigh both. Two principles emerge. First, bans never fully work: motivated buyers and sellers find workarounds. Second, prohibition generally reduces the size of the market; it would be cheaper and easier to buy heroin if it was legal. It might also be safer. That leaves Mr Roth asking whether the restrictions or the market cause more harm. Here, too, the answer is that it depends." 

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And here's a link to the longer review, from the Free Exchange column. That column is unsigned, but others on the web have attributed it to Gavin Jackson, who did interview me about the book.  Here is the resulting review:

How should economists treat morality? 

 My review of the review is that it missed some of the nuances in my book, but many aspects of the big picture came through clearly:

"The picture that emerges from the book is of a deeply moral person, who believes in bodily autonomy, in not subordinating individual lives to a collective and in not accepting unnecessary deaths to spare some people from feeling squeamish."