By Yew-Kwang Ng
Pages: 220
Pages: 220
Pages: 220
What Markets and Morals; Justifying Kidney Sales and Legalizing Prostitution offers:
- Explores how kidney sales and legalized prostitution in particular would significantly increase social welfare while considering efficiency, equality and morality
- Extends economic analysis to include such effects as the possible crowding out of intrinsic motivation and morality in using the market, thus helping to reduce the anti-market sentiments that might be based on mistaken views
- Argues that the progression of society through higher degrees of division of labor, higher incomes, better education, more liberalism, and more understanding of economics will typically allow a wider scope for using markets
Considering efficiency, equality, and morality, this book argues for qualified market expansion, particularly in legalizing kidney sales and prostitution. Legalizing prostitution will benefit both men and women, as argued in a chapter jointly written with Yan Wang. Blood donation without monetary compensation can still result in adequate blood supply if schools educate children that blood donation can actually benefit a donor's health. As a society becomes more advanced, with higher incomes and a better educated populace, more activities can be subject to market exchange, with gradual popular acceptance. Without serious misinformation and irrationality, inequality/fairness as such cannot be a valid reason for limiting the scope of the market. Markets and Morals; Justifying Kidney Sales and Legalizing Prostitution supports the use of markets to increase efficiency while also increasing the effort to promote equality, making all income groups better off.
Relevant Links
- Podcast with Yew-Kwang Ng about the book, website of The Project for Modern Democracy, 1 April 2019
- Post by Yew-Kwang Ng about the topic of the book, blog of Cambridge University Press, 15 February 2019
- Podcast with Yew-Kwang about his work in welfare economics and more, website of 80.000 Hours, 26 July 2018
Table of Contents of Markets and Morals
- Introduction
- The Well-Known Case of Lateness Fees
- Extending Economic Analysis
- The Anti-Market Sentiment
- The Inequality/Exploitation Case against Commodification Is Invalid
- Repugnance? Similar to 'Honour' Killing
- Crowding Out or Crowding In?
- Market Expansion Is a Mark of Progress
- The Case for Legalising Kidney Sales
- Making Presumed Consent the Default Option
- Blood Donation
- Prostitution (together with Yan Wang)
- Conscription
- Profiteering
- Water: A Typical Case of Under-Pricing
- Fines, Imprisonment, or Whipping?
- Some specific areas (From Slavery to Surrogate Pregnancy / From Vote Trading to Corruption / From Friendship to Nobel Prizes / Paying Others for Line Standing/Sitting / Selling Permits for Hunting Rhinos / Educational Equality, University Admission, Hospital Priority, Jury Service)
- Concluding Remarks
Appendices
- Appendix A - Welfare versus Preference
- Appendix B - Happiness as the Only Ultimate Value: A Moral Philosophical Perspective
- Appendix C - Extending Economic Analysis to Analyze Policy Issues More Broadly
- Appendix D - Immigration Typically Makes Existing Residents Better Off
- Appendix E - A Democratic Decision on COEs: Striking a Balance between Elitism and Populism
About Yew-Kwang Ng
Yew-Kwang Ng is Professor in Economics, Nanyang Technological University;Emeritus Professor, Monash University; Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia; and member of the Advisory Board, Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. He will be Special Visiting Professor at the School of Economics, Fudan University, from mid-2019. In2007, he received the highest award (Distinguished Fellow) of the Economic Society of Australia. He delivered the inaugural Atkinson Memorial Lecture at the University of Oxford in 2018.He has 11.5 papers (joint papers counted fractionally) in the top five journals in economics, including one published when an undergraduate. He has also published more than 30 books and more than 250 refereed journal papers in economics, biology, cosmology, informetrics, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology,including the American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, and The Review of Economic Studies.
