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At the AEA conference Alvin Roth, a Nobel prizewinner, delivered a lecture on his life-saving work in the field of market design.
在AEA會議上，諾貝爾獎得主艾爾文·羅斯就他在市場設計領域中拯救生命的工作發表了演講。
To donate an organ, one must share a blood-type with the recipient.
要捐獻器官，必須與受贈人共用一種血型。
Someone who would be willing to donate a kidney to a friend or family member might be stymied by a difference in blood-type.
一個愿意捐腎給朋友或家人的人可能會因血型不同而受到阻礙。
Mr Roth circumvented this problem by developing matching markets, in which one person donates to a compatible stranger
羅斯先生通過發展配對市場來回避這個問題，在這個市場中，一個人向一個合適的陌生人捐贈，
and in turn receives another stranger’s compatible organ for use by the donor’s ailing loved-one.
而另一個人反過來會接受另一個陌生人的兼容器官，以供捐贈人生病的愛人使用。
Such swap groups can include scores of donors and recipients, who might otherwise have died awaiting a transplant.
這樣的交換團體可以包括許多捐贈人和受助人，否則他們可能會死于等待移植。
Yet demand for healthy organs vastly outstrips supply.
然而，對健康器官的需求遠遠超過了供給。
Were it legal to buy and sell organs, many more people might donate, helping to alleviate the deadly shortage.
如果買賣器官合法，更多的人可能會捐贈，幫助緩解致命的短缺。
Moral qualms generally discourage governments from legalising the trade.
道德上的不安通常會阻礙政府將這項交易合法化。
This is an example of what Mr Roth calls a “repugnant market”, one which is constrained by popular distaste or moral unease.
這是羅斯先生所謂“令人厭惡的市場”的一個例子，這種市場受到普遍厭惡或道德不安的限制。
Repugnance, he laments, tilts the political playing field against ideas that unlock the gains from trade.
他哀嘆道，反對將交易收益從交易中解放出來的想法，使政治上的競爭變得更加激烈。
He recommends that economists spend more time thinking about such taboos, but mostly because they are a constraint on the use of markets in new contexts.
他建議經濟學家們花更多時間思考這些禁忌，但主要是因為它們是在新語境下運用市場的限制。
These social rules also contain insights.
這些社會規則也包含了深刻的洞見。
In a paper discussing the organ trade Nicola Lacetera, of the University of Toronto,
多倫多大學的尼古拉·Lacetera在一篇探討器官交易的論文中指出，
argues that there may be important reasons for moral objections to repugnant activity, and costs to abandoning such objections.
道德上反對令人厭惡的活動，及放棄這種反對意見的成本，可能是有重要原因的。
譯文來源余興宇
