Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets

In a unique paper exploring the pressure of “repugnance” on economic markets, researcher Alvin E. Roth shows how people’s distaste for certain transactions can have a serious constraint on different types of economic activity. Outlining a wide range of examples, including paying for organ transplants, the “game” of “dwarf tossing,” and the sale and consumption of horse and dog meat, Roth shows how repugnance is culturally ingrained and can sometimes change over time given certain circumstances, or become further entrenched. The paper offers interesting theoretical information for animal advocates who work on issues where “repugnance” may feature.

In his study on how “repugnance” plays a part in constraining market activity, author Alvin E. Roth begins with a provocative statement: “why can’t you eat horse or dog meat in a restaurant in California, a state with a population that hails from all over the world, including some places where such meals are appreciated?” The answer, he says, “is that many Californians not only don’t wish to eat horses or dogs themselves, but find it repugnant that anyone else should do so, and they enacted this repugnance into California law by referendum in 1998.” In that vote, the measure passed 60% to 40%, with over 4.6 million people voting. Elucidating on exactly what was voted for, Roth notes that “this law does not seek to protect the safety of consumers by governing the slaughter, sale, preparation and labeling of animals used for food. It is different from laws prohibiting the inhumane treatment of animals, like rules on how farm animals can be raised or slaughtered, or laws prohibiting cockfights, or the recently established (and still contested) ban on selling foie gras in Chicago restaurants.” Roth explains that it is not illegal to kill horses for food in California, or even to put horse meat in food meant for companion animals. Instead, the public decided that the human consumption of horse meat is repugnant, and placed a limit on transactions that would facilitate it.

Roth uses this exploration of horse meat as a lead in to a much broader examination of the topic of repugnance. “Attitudes about the repugnance or other kinds of inappropriateness of transactions shape whole markets,” he says, “and therefore shape what choices people face. […] Almost whenever I have been involved in practical market design, the question of whether certain kinds of transactions may be inappropriate has come up for discussion.” He spends a large portion of the paper discussing different “repugnant markets,” and focuses on the cash market for organ donations as one particularly illustrative example. He explores how the exchange of money (as opposed to organ donation) affects the perceived ethics of the transaction, as well as how different elements such as coercion may also impact the process. In one particularly telling statement, Roth notes that “although economists see very few tradeoffs as completely taboo, non-economists often decline to discuss tradeoffs at all, preferring to focus on the repugnance of transactions like organ sales.”

How might this exploration be of interest to animal advocates? In addition to the discussion of how repugnance acted as a mechanism in the banning of horse meat sales in California, it is easy to see how many animal issues could be viewed with repugnance as a central dynamic. Though some of the mechanisms of repugnance do not apply to animal issues, many do, and a thoughtful consideration of those dynamics could lead to new avenues for campaign or advocacy work in some areas of animal protection.

Original Abstract:
This essay examines how repugnance sometimes constrains what transactions and markets we see. When my colleagues and I have helped design markets and allocation procedures, we have often found that distaste for certain kinds of transactions is a real constraint, every bit as real as the constraints imposed by technology or by the requirements of incentives and efficiency. I’ll first consider a range of examples, from slavery and indentured servitude (which once were not as repugnant as they now are) to lending money for interest (which used to be widely repugnant and is now not), and from bans on eating horse meat in California to bans on dwarf tossing in France. An example of special interest will be the widespread laws against the buying and selling of organs for transplantation. The historical record suggests that while repugnance can change over time, it can persist for a very long time, although changes in institutions that reflect repugnance can occur relatively quickly when the underlying repugnance changes.