Taboo Trades

Al Roth and I discuss hitmen, drugs, kidneys, paid sex, and other repugnances. We’re joined by co-hosts Madison White and Alex Leseney (both UVA 3Ls), with appearances from UVA 3Ls Thalia Stanberry, Caitlyn Stollings, Jackson Bailey, and Autumn Adams-jack. A good time was had by all!

Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He works in the areas of game theory, experimental economics, and market design, and shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Readings referenced in this episode:
Roth, Alvin E. Who gets what--and why: the new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
Roth, Alvin E. "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets." Journal of Economic perspectives 21.3 (2007): 37-58.
Roth, Alvin E. "Marketplaces, markets, and market design." American Economic Review 108.7 (2018): 1609-58.
Chenlin Gu, Alvin Roth, Qingyun Wu (2022) Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets. Mathematics of Operations Research  Published online in Articles in Advance 28 Jan 2022  . https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2021.1236  

Welcome to Season Two of the Taboo Trades podcast

Pat discusses marijuana legalization and disses on the tax academe

Pat Oglesby is a tax attorney and the founder of the Center for New Revenue,  a tax policy nonprofit. He worked for the Joint Committee on Taxation of the United States Congress from 1982 to 1988, first as a Legislation Attorney and then as the International Tax Counsel.  From 1988 to 1990, under Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, he held the position of Chief Tax Counsel of the Committee on Finance of the United States Senate. 

Link to marijuana billboards discussed in this episode.

Christian explains the rules of financial fair play in European football. Then we argue about why people have sex.

Christian Turner is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia. His areas of interest are legal theory, jurisprudence, the public-private distinction, legal institutions, law and cognition, property law, natural resources law, and the regulation of knowledge and information.

Christian Turner, The Segregation of Markets , 7 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 299 (2020),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1328

The Oral Argument Podcast

Walzer, Michael. Spheres of justice: A defense of pluralism and equality. Basic books, 2008.

Radin, Margaret Jane. Contested commodities. Harvard University Press, 1996.

Nico and Mario discuss their research on blood donation and attitudes toward taboo trades. I fail at zoom. 

Mario Macis is a Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research interests include pro-social behavior, morally controversial transactions, global health, experimental economics, development economics, and labor economics. 

Nico Lacetera is a Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His research concerns the ethical constraints and social support to markets, the motivations for altruistic behavior, and various topics in industrial and innovation economics.

Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Will there be blood? Incentives and displacement effects in pro-social behavior." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4.1 (2012): 186-223.

Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Economic rewards to motivate blood donations." Science 340.6135 (2013): 927-928.

Lacetera, Nicola, Mario Macis, and Robert Slonim. "Rewarding volunteers: A field experiment." Management Science 60.5 (2014): 1107-1129.

Elías, Julio J., Nicola Lacetera, and Mario Macis. "Paying for kidneys? a randomized survey and choice experiment." American Economic Review 109.8 (2019): 2855-88.

Elias, Julio J., Nicola Lacetera, and Mario Macis. "Sacred values? The effect of information on attitudes toward payments for human organs." American Economic Review105.5 (2015): 361-65.

Compliance Policy Guide CPG Sec. 230.150: Blood Donor Classification Statement, Paid or Volunteer Donor, Guidance for FDA Staff

Dhingra, Neelam. "In defense of WHO's blood donation policy." Science 342.6159 (2013): 691-692.

Nancy discusses the limits of consent. I contemplate putting silicone horns on my head.

Nancy Kim is the ProFlowers Distinguished Professor of Internet Studies at California Western School of Law and visiting Professor, Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. Professor Kim is a former chair of both the section on Commercial and Related Consumer Law and the section on Contracts of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the Chair of the Subcommittee on UCC Article 1 of the ABA Business Law Section. Her scholarly interests focus on culture and the law, contracts, women and the law, and technology. She is the author of Consentability: Consent & Its Limits (Cambridge Univ. Press).

Helpful links for this episode:
1. Nancy S. Kim, Consentability: Consent and its Limits https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/contract-law/consentability-consent-and-its-limits?format=PB 
2. Cook, Philip J. and Krawiec, Kimberly D., Kidney Donation and the Consent of the Poor (January 20, 2020). Loyola Law Review, New Orleans, Vol. 66, 2020, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3687419 

Josh makes the case for paying kidney donors and infecting people with Covid-19. We both admit to being bad at big law.

Josh Morrison is the founder of three nonprofit organizations: Waitlist Zero, which envisions an America where no one dies because of a shortage of transplantable kidneys; the Rikers Debate Project, which teaches debate to formerly incarcerated students in six states; and 1 Day Sooner, an organization that advocates on behalf of Covid-19 challenge trial volunteers. Josh was a corporate lawyer when he donated his kidney to a stranger in 2011.

Helpful links for this episode:
1. Waitlist Zero http://waitlistzero.org
2. 1 Day Sooner https://1daysooner.org
3. Rikers Debate Project http://rikersdebateproject.org
4. Linh Chi Nguyen, Christopher W Bakerlee, T Greg McKelvey, Sophie M Rose, Alexander J Norman, Nicholas Joseph, David Manheim, Michael R McLaren, Steven Jiang, Conor F Barnes, Megan Kinniment, Derek Foster, Thomas C Darton, Josh Morrison, 1Day Sooner Research Team, Evaluating use cases for human challenge trials in accelerating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development, Clinical Infectious Diseases, , ciaa935, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa935
5. Josh Morrison, It’s time to treat organ donors with the respect they deserve, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/01/01/its-time-to-treat-organ-donors-with-the-respect-they-deserve/
6. Meagan E. Deming, et. al., "Accelerating Development of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines — The Role for Controlled Human Infection Models", The New England Journal of Medicine, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2020076#article_references
7. Lynch, Holly Fernandez, et. al, Ethical Payment to Participants in Human Infection Challenge Studies, with a Focus on SARS-CoV-2: Report and Recommendations (August 14, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3674548 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3674548
8. Organ Donor Reimbursement Petition, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OfiOEkgPmPBtDx6k38GckXPDndvbKp1HtJPfdnCB2PU/edit?ts=5cbe977c 

Peter makes the case for paid plasma. I commit basketball treason

Peter Jaworski is is an Associate Teaching Professor in Strategy, Ethics, Economics and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He has published in Ethics, Philosophical Studies, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and the Journal of Business Ethics, among others.

Helpful links for this podcast:
1. Peter Jaworski, Bloody Well Pay Them: The Case for Voluntary Remunerated Plasma Collections, https://www.niskanencenter.org/bloody-well-pay-them-the-case-for-voluntary-remunerated-plasma-collections/
2. English, William and Jaworski, Peter M., The Introduction of Paid Plasma in Canada and the U.S. Has Not Decreased Unpaid Blood Donations (July 15, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3653432 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3653432
3. Peter M. Jaworski, "Not compensating Canadian blood plasma donors means potentially risky reliance on foreign plasma", The Conversation,  https://theconversation.com/not-compensating-canadian-blood-plasma-donors-means-potentially-risky-reliance-on-foreign-plasma-143970
4. Peter M. Jaworski, "Canada should not be spending $1 billion on plasma imports; it should be producing enough to export, and for that, we need to pay Canadian donors", Policy Options: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2020/why-isnt-canada-a-net-contributor-to-the-global-plasma-supply/