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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会议上，诺贝尔奖得主艾尔文·罗斯就他在市场设计领域中拯救生命的工作发表了演讲。
To donate an organ, one must share a blood-type with the recipient.
要捐献器官，必须与受赠人共用一种血型。
Someone who would be willing to donate a kidney to a friend or family member might be stymied by a difference in blood-type.
一个愿意捐肾给朋友或家人的人可能会因血型不同而受到阻碍。
Mr Roth circumvented this problem by developing matching markets, in which one person donates to a compatible stranger
罗斯先生通过发展配对市场来回避这个问题，在这个市场中，一个人向一个合适的陌生人捐赠，
and in turn receives another stranger’s compatible organ for use by the donor’s ailing loved-one.
而另一个人反过来会接受另一个陌生人的兼容器官，以供捐赠人生病的爱人使用。
Such swap groups can include scores of donors and recipients, who might otherwise have died awaiting a transplant.
这样的交换团体可以包括许多捐赠人和受助人，否则他们可能会死于等待移植。
Yet demand for healthy organs vastly outstrips supply.
然而，对健康器官的需求远远超过了供给。
Were it legal to buy and sell organs, many more people might donate, helping to alleviate the deadly shortage.
如果买卖器官合法，更多的人可能会捐赠，帮助缓解致命的短缺。
Moral qualms generally discourage governments from legalising the trade.
道德上的不安通常会阻碍政府将这项交易合法化。
This is an example of what Mr Roth calls a “repugnant market”, one which is constrained by popular distaste or moral unease.
这是罗斯先生所谓“令人厌恶的市场”的一个例子，这种市场受到普遍厌恶或道德不安的限制。
Repugnance, he laments, tilts the political playing field against ideas that unlock the gains from trade.
他哀叹道，反对将交易收益从交易中解放出来的想法，使政治上的竞争变得更加激烈。
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.
他建议经济学家们花更多时间思考这些禁忌，但主要是因为它们是在新语境下运用市场的限制。
These social rules also contain insights.
这些社会规则也包含了深刻的洞见。
In a paper discussing the organ trade Nicola Lacetera, of the University of Toronto,
多伦多大学的尼古拉·Lacetera在一篇探讨器官交易的论文中指出，
argues that there may be important reasons for moral objections to repugnant activity, and costs to abandoning such objections.
道德上反对令人厌恶的活动，及放弃这种反对意见的成本，可能是有重要原因的。
译文来源余兴宇
