Markets and Morals Justifying Kidney Sales and Legalizing Prostitution

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. The book supports the use of markets to increase efficiency while also increasing the effort to promote equality, making all income groups better off.

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. The well-known case of lateness fees; 3. Extending economic analysis; 4. The anti-market sentiment; 5. The inequality/exploitation case against commodification is invalid; 6. Repugnance? Similar to 'honour' killing; 7. Crowding out or crowding in?; 8. Market expansion is a mark of progress; 9. The case for legalising kidney sales; 10. Making presumed consent the default option; 11. Blood donation; 12. Prostitution Yan Wang and Yew-Kwang Ng; 13. Conscription; 14. Profiteering; 15. Water: a typical case of under-pricing; 16. Fines, imprisonment, or whipping?; 17. Some specific areas; 18. Concluding remarks.

The book is researched and written with strong academic rigor and persuasive argument that also makes it accessible to the general public. Considering efficiency, equality, and morality, it argues for market expansion, particularly in legalizing kidney sales and prostitution. These are highly controversial issues with important public policy significance.

Yew-Kwang Ng is Professor of Economics at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; emeritus professor, Monash University; fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia; and member of the Advisory Board, Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. In 2007, he received the highest award (Distinguished Fellow) of the Economic Society of Australia. He has also been invited to deliver the inaugural Professor Sir Tony Atkinson Memorial Lecture at Oxford University in 2018. He has 11.5 papers (joint papers counted fractionally) in the top five journals in economics, including one published when he was an undergraduate. He has also published more than thirty books and in more than 250 refereed journal papers in economics, biology, cosmology, informetrics, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, including the American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, the Journal of Political Economy, and The Review of Economic Studies.