Incentives and Ethics in the Economics of Body Parts

Research shows that properly devised economic incentives increase the supply of blood without hampering its safety; similar effects may be expected also for other body parts such as bone marrow and organs. These positive effects alone, however, do not necessarily justify the introduction of payments for supplying body parts, because these activities concern contested commodities or repugnant transactions. Societies may want to prevent these transactions even if they increase supply, because of ethical concerns. When transactions involve contested commodities, therefore, there often is tension between the efficiency-enhancing effects of trades mediated by a monetary price and the moral opposition to the provision of these payments. In this article, I discuss the current debate on the role of moral repugnance in controversial markets, with a focus on markets for organs, tissues, blood, and plasma. I then report recent research into the trade-offs that individuals face when forming their opinions about how a society should organize certain transactions.