The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig21 Touko

Al Roth - Moral Economics and Repugnant Transactions

What makes a transaction repugnant? And why does society allow some controversial markets to flourish while banning others that seem far less harmful?

In this episode, Ben sits down with Al Roth, Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Stanford, to explore the hidden moral architecture beneath the markets we take for granted, and the ones we don't allow at all. Drawing on his new book Moral Economics, Al makes the case that good policy can't be built on moral intuition alone.

Topics covered:

What "repugnant" actually means in relation to transactions
Surrogacy, gene editing, and AI companions: where the line between protection and paternalism blurs
The coercion vs. exploitation distinction: is banning a market for poor people's benefit sometimes just denying them an opportunity?
How public opinion and legislation diverge
Why labor markets are fundamentally different from commodity markets
How the internet (and now AI) has flooded job markets with applications and destroyed the information value of applying
What the economics job market's "signaling" system can teach LinkedIn, dating apps, and corporate hiring alike

Al Roth is a Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is the author of Who Gets What — and Why and Moral Economics, and is one of the world's leading researchers in market design and matching theory.

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