Three takeaways on Moral Economics, with Lynn Thoman

 Lynn Thoman and I discuss three takeaways from Moral Economics (and hers are different than mine):

 You can listen here:

Why Doing the “Right Thing” Can Make Everything Worse 

 and you can watch as well as listen here:

"What can we do when doing the morally “right” thing produces worse outcomes?

And what if some of society’s strongest moral instincts are preventing us from solving problems we all agree are terrible?

Alvin Roth is a Stanford professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has helped redesign real-world systems, including kidney exchanges and the way doctors are matched with hospitals. His new book, Moral Economics, tackles a harder category of problems: markets and behaviors we find morally objectionable, even when banning them may create consequences we don’t want.

He discusses:

    Why nearly 100,000 Americans can be waiting for a kidney 

    What prohibitions of alcohol and heroin can teach us 

    What happened when Rhode Island accidentally legalized indoor prostitution

    Whether paying kidney donors could save lives without creating an ethically unacceptable market

    Why evidence becomes especially important when reasonable people disagree about morality

    Whether performance-enhancing drugs could eventually become as ordinary as coffee

Some policies sound obviously right when judged by their intentions. But what happens when you judge them by their actual consequences?

Roth pushes into the uncomfortable territory between those two questions: when banning something creates a black market, when changing a rule may save more lives than inventing a new technology, and what we should do when the outcome we believe is morally necessary turns out to be something we cannot actually achieve."

The Gray Area, on Moral Economics and controversial markets

 Here's a podcast recorded some weeks ago that has just  been published. We talk kidneys and other controversial markets covered in Moral Economics.

 

Peter Coy on Moral Economics in The Free Press

 The Nobel Laureate Who’d Buy Your Kidney
What is bad about prostitution? Why is it wrong to eat horses? Al Roth’s latest book asks the most provocative moral questions. He gave The Free Press some of his answers.
By Peter Coy 

"I was a little surprised to find out that Roth has a wide streak of provocation in his personality. It comes across in his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal about How Markets Work, published in May. In a mild, just-asking-questions tone, Roth digs into one prohibited or controversial activity after another: buying sex, eating horses, selling organs, assisting suicide, carrying a stranger’s baby. He asks why many of these activities are prohibited or restricted even though some people clearly want them. And he thinks about whether it’s possible to design markets for them in a way that preserves people’s freedom to transact while protecting those who don’t want to. 

...

"Roth entertains so many ideas that others strenuously resist that I asked if he calls himself a libertarian. No, he said. “People who call themselves libertarians often don’t like market regulation of any sort,” he said. “But I’m a market designer. I think that good regulations help markets work well.” Cigarettes and alcohol, for example. They can be sold, but not to children. That’s a reasonable balance. 

...

"If you want to design markets that enable beneficial exchanges while protecting the vulnerable, you may have to persuade people that a market in some repugnant good or service is tolerable. Roth seems to have taken on that task in Moral Economics. He never told me what to think. He just asked me what I think, and to think about what I think. It’s an economist’s kind of mischief—relentlessly, cheerfully inquisitive about the rules we’ve decided to live by but have never quite explained to ourselves.
Kidney transactions don’t seem so repugnant to me anymore. Would I sell a kidney to a stranger? Um, maybe, some day. Would I buy a kidney from a stranger if I really needed one? Hell, yeah."

Work and Moral Economics: Two Podcasts (Dart Lindsley's "Work for Humans" and Ben Zweig's "The Economics of Work).

Two podcasts interview me about Moral Economics, starting from a concern with work. 

 Dart Lindsley interviews me on his Podcast "Work for Humans":

Moral Economics: Where Human Values Shape Markets | Alvin Roth
Work For Humans 

Here it is on every platform.  

 

"A kidney transplant does not work like buying a gallon of milk. Neither does hiring or getting into a medical residency. In these markets, both sides care deeply about who they end up with, and a good outcome depends on more than money. 

Alvin Roth has spent his career studying what makes those systems succeed or fail. His work designing kidney exchange programs showed that even when people desperately want to help each other, the market can still break down unless the rules create the right kind of match. In this episode, Dart and Al discuss matching markets, moral economics, and the hidden rules that shape opportunity, fairness, and work itself.

Alvin Roth is an economist and professor at Stanford University best known for his work on market design and matching theory. He received the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on stable matching and the design of markets used in medical residencies, school choice, and kidney exchange.

In this episode, Dart and Al discuss:
- Why some markets depend on matching
- Why fit matters more than money
- What makes a market stable
- Why real markets are messy
- The difference between theory and engineering
- What “repugnant transactions” are
- Why societies ban some exchanges
- How social norms shape markets
- Why work is also a matching problem
- And other topics…

Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and recipient of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded with Lloyd Shapley for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design. His work has helped design matching systems for medical residencies, public school admissions, and kidney exchange programs. He is the author of Who Gets What — and Why and Moral Economics: Why Good and Bad Markets Exist.

Resources Mentioned:
Al’s Book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

Al’s Book, Who Gets What — and Why

##########

And here's Ben Zweig's The Economics of Work:

  "It was so fun talking to Alvin Roth, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics. "One of my favorite books of all time is Who Gets What and Why, which has shaped the way I view labor markets. His second book, Moral Economics, came out last week and it’s so so good - endlessly thought provoking, funny, and sharp. In the podcast, we talk about controversial markets and what makes something repugnant, how to think about exploitation and coercion, and what that means for labor markets. "Check out the latest episode of The Economics of Work and Al's new book Moral Economics! "Moral Economics from Basic Books: Amazon: https://a.co/d/0cu6ZCLm Podcast Episode: Apple: https://lnkd.in/esVGQQx5 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e4sr844Q Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eif7DHMS" 

Neale Mahoney interviews me abut Moral Economics on Econ to Go

 Neale Mahoney interviews me on Econ to go (with a transcript of our half hour conversation).

 "Neale Mahoney: Markets are often treated like natural objects, things that simply exist. But economist Al Roth sees them differently. To him, markets are human inventions, systems we design, shape, and sometimes struggle to agree on. Because when money and morality collide, things can get complicated. Who should be allowed to buy and sell? What should they be allowed to transact? and what happens when people want to trade things that others find morally unacceptable.

Alvin Roth: I think that one of the things we need to do is experiment on what we're morally obliged to do and reflect on it in connection with what we're actually able to do. 

Neale Mahoney: I'm Neale Mahoney, Economist and Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. On this episode of "Econ To Go," I catch up with Stanford Economist and Nobel Laureate Al Roth over coffee on campus. We talk about what he calls moral economics, the study of markets where society struggles to agree on what should be bought and sold. From kidney exchange to commercial surrogacy, from prostitution laws to the surprising economics of matchmaking, Al shows us that markets don't just allocate goods. They also reflect our values. You've said that markets and marketplaces are human artifacts. They are not just features of the natural environment. Why is that a good starting place when we think about the study of economics?

Alvin Roth: Well, for a long time, economists sort of thought that markets were things that we just had to take as given. You know, we speak of economists thinking of people as price takers, but in fact, they also thought of us as market takers. There are these markets. But of course, markets are human artifacts. To a great extent they're collective human artifacts, but marketplaces are often artifacts of individual companies or designers, or small groups of participants who modify the marketplace to fit their needs over time, just in the way that Uber is a marketplace designed by the company Uber. But I think there's a good analogy, which is that languages are also human artifacts, and they're collective human artifacts. You and I can speak to each other in English because we both learned English in a conventional way, but there are lots of words in our English that weren't in the language 100 years ago, words like computer and internet and AI. So, we're constantly modifying the language to better suit our needs."

Here is the whole half hour interview on YouTube:

 

There's also a Stanford news story:

Sex, drugs & surrogacy: When morality and markets clash
Stanford’s Alvin Roth won the Nobel Prize for improving how markets work. In a new book, he introduces a new way of thinking about society’s most controversial transactions, from sex work to drugs to assisted dying.  byKrysten Crawford
 

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." 

Moral Economics, on the Armchair Expert podcast

At the Armchair Expert podcast, Dax Shepard interviewed me in anticipation of the May publication of my book Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work  

 

Here's the video (which was recorded last month at their studio in LA): 

x 

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

 

Interview about the new edition of the Chinese translation of Who Gets What and Why

 Last month I was interviewed in connection with the new edition of the Chinese translation of my 2015 book Who Gets What and Why.  

Here is the interview in Chinese, and translated back to English. (You can also click "translate to English" from the Chinese version, to get a more creative translation that among other things renders my name as variations on "Erwin Ross.")

 Below are some excerpts from the better back-translation (from interview in English translated into Chinese, and then back to English):

"In November 2025, LatePost conducted a video interview with Roth. The interview began at 7 a.m. local time, and the 74-year-old had already arrived at his office, walking on a treadmill desk while conversing with us. A white beard, furrowed brow when deep in thought, a smiling expression, and concise communication—these are the impressions Roth gave during the conversation.

'Market design is economics confronting the external world,' Roth told us. A month earlier, his popular book on market design, Who Gets What―and Why, was republished in Chinese under the title Matching. Designing, improving, and maintaining well-functioning matching mechanisms is the work of market design. In Matching, Roth demonstrated how market design could be applied in practice to change people's destinies and the way societies operate. 

...

"Alvin Roth: Significant changes have occurred in both kidney transplantation and kidney exchange. By the way, since 2015, there has been a major transformation in the approach to transplant surgeries in China. Prior to that, most organs used in transplants came from executed prisoners; now, China is developing a voluntary organ donation program, which represents a significant shift. However, China has yet to initiate kidney exchange programs.

"A new global trend is that we are beginning to experiment with cross-border kidney exchanges. This is particularly crucial for smaller countries or regions with limited numbers of kidney transplants, where some patients struggle to find compatible donors. 

...

"Q: In your "Market Design" blog, you previewed a new book to be published next year titled Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. Why did you write this book? What issues do you discuss and how do you address them?

"Alvin Roth: One issue that economists have yet to fully understand is which markets gain societal support and which ones do not. For instance, I have explored the surrogacy market. Surrogacy is legal in the United States but illegal in China. After the Chinese government relaxed its one-child policy, many people desired to have a second child, but age became an obstacle. In California, where I reside, there are agencies offering surrogacy services where Mandarin is spoken, and many clients come from China.

"This is one of the core questions I attempt to address: why are certain genuinely beneficial practices legal in some places but illegal in others? "

#######

When I search for the new edition on Google I get the following AI overview:

Alvin Roth's book, originally titled

Who Gets What―and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design, has been published in Chinese under two different titles. 

The two Chinese titles are:

• 《共享经济：市场设计及其应用》 (Simplified Chinese: Gòngxiǎng jīngjì: Shìchǎng shèjì jí qí yìngyòng, meaning "Sharing Economy: Market Design and Its Application").
• 《配对：诺奖得主艾文・罗斯教你赢得博弈，突破市场经济赛局的思维》 (Traditional Chinese: Pèiduì: Nuò jiǎng dé zhǔ Ài wén luō sī jiào nǐ yíng dé bó yì, tū pò shìchǎng jīngjì sài jú de sī wéi, meaning "Matching: Nobel Laureate Alvin Roth Teaches You to Win the Game and Break Through Market Economy Game Thinking"). 

The simplified Chinese characters edition was published by Machinery Industry Press in 2015. 

 

Earlier: 

Thursday, January 28, 2016  Who Gets What and Why in Chinese

 

 

Interviews with economists at Social Science Encyclopedia: (Lusardi, Wilson, Krugman, Roth)

I was recently interviewed by Aiden Singh for his new Social Science Encyclopedia.  Here are several of his interviews.

 Annamaria Lusardi On Improving Financial Literacy

 

 Robert Wilson On Economic Engineering, Game Theory, & Auction Design

 

Paul Krugman On Trade, Tariffs, & America’s Role In The Global Economy

 

 Alvin Roth On Matching Markets, Economic Engineering, & How Economics Has Changed In Recent Decades

 

 

 

Mohammad Akbarpour, interviewed by Scott Cunningham

Here's an interview of Mohammad Akbarpour, as part of Scott Cunningham's growing series of interviews of interesting economists. (Even the picture of the two of them looks interesting, and it gets better:)

   

Scott writes:

"Welcome to the Mixtape with Scott! Sometimes the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line, but other times the shortest distance is a winding path. This week’s guest, Mohammad Akbarpour from Stanford University, is perhaps an example of the latter. Mohammad is a micro theorist at Stanford who specializes in networks, mechanism and design and two sided matching. Mohammad is an emerging young theorist at Stanford, student of such luminaries as Matt Jackson and Al Roth, whose background in engineering, mathematics and computer science has given him a fresh approach to topics that I associate with Stanford’s theory people as a whole — policy oriented, applied work, mechanism design, networks and matching. He got into economics “the long way” — growing up in Iran, majoring in engineering, and then moving into Stanford’s operations research PhD program. In this interview, he generously shares a snippet of the arc of his life, and it’s a remarkable story, and one I really enjoyed hearing. I think you will too."

Practical insights from market design, in Japan

I was recently interviewed by Fuhito Kojima as part of a symposium conducted by the University of Tokyo Market Design Center on practical insights from market design. The whole symposium is available on YouTube.

All but one of the presentations are in Japanese (summarized below by Fuhito):

1. Introduction (Fuhito) 

 2. Our interview (in English) 

3. More explanation of the stable matching problem and its application to personnel assignment (Shunya Noda)

4. Application of stable matching algorithm in personnel allocation in a firm: My team helped our partner firm, Sysmex, introduce the DA algorithm (in fact, a modified "flexible" deferred acceptance algorithm proposed by Kamada and Kojima 2015 AER) in the assignment of new employees to different divisions of the firm. The firm has been using matching algorithm for 4 years now. Our partner from the firm talks about their experience.

5. Application to daycare assignments: My team is collaborating with a major government contractor for municipal governments IT system, CyberAgent. The project studies daycare-related data provided by  municipal governments and helps those government introduce and improve their matching algorithms of daycare seats to children. Our partner from the firm talks about our team's effort, e.g., how we convinced one city change algorithm from Boston-like mechanism to DA, and how we helped fine-tune their priority design to cope with problems in which kids with siblings were not matched as well as single kids.

 6. Application to auction: Shunya and his team helped an auction platform firm to introduce an auction mechanism for selling used electronic devices. His partner company, Aucnet, shares their experience.

 7. Q&A and closing remark (Fuhito)

Here's my interview with Fuhito