Moral Economics

“The book covers fundamental yet controversial topics and addresses them with depth, intellectual acumen, and an engaging style. It is an important read.”

“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.”

“Roth delivers some eye-opening hard-truths to those who might think moral intuition ought to underpin all regulation and law… This is an entertaining and mind-opening read from start to finish.”

“It is a fascinating and very different economics book.”—The Times (UK)

“Bringing balanced, evidence-based analyses to emotionally fraught debates, Roth reveals the power of markets to inspire solutions. This is trailblazing.”—Publishers Weekly

“Alvin Roth received the Nobel Prize for work in economics that has saved thousands of lives. In Moral Economics, Roth applies his open-minded, evidence-based thinking to controversial issues at the intersection of markets and morals, where his way of thinking could save even more lives.”—Peter Singer, author of Ethics in the Real World

“A surprisingly large part of economics is about things money can't buy, for many good and bad and complicated reasons. This wonderful book by the leading scholar in that area of economics is something else that just money could never buy. It's a labor of love, a testament from a lifetime of thought and research.”—Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Nobel laureates and authors of Poor Economics

“With clarity and compassion, Al Roth explores the transactions society cannot escape—surrogacy, the purchase of body parts, the sale of sex, and a host of ‘repugnant’ relationships. What should be regulated? What should be banned? What are the limits of using price in the marketplace? Be prepared to think in new ways and gain from the insights of a great market designer.”—Claudia Goldin, Nobel laureate and author of Career and Family

“From the right to sell a kidney to the cost of a surrogate birth, our sense of ‘right and wrong’ shapes the economy more than we realize. Nobel laureate Alvin Roth—the world's leading ‘philosopher-economist’—unpacks the hidden moral codes that govern our most intimate transactions. This is a clear-eyed guide to understanding where the market ends, where morality begins, and how we can design a world that honors both.”—Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, Nobel laureates, Stanford University