Alvin Roth

A Nobel Prize-winning economist shows us why we have to deal in trade-offs when we can't agree on what's right and what's wrong. Some of the most intractable controversies in our divided society are, at bottom, about what actions and transactions should be banned. Should women and couples be able to purchase contraception, access in vitro fertilisation, and end pregnancy...

Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth argues that our most important and difficult decisions—about our most controversial issues—require a different calculation of what matters most. Our intuitive and automatic thinking is influenced—in ways we don't always recognise—by strongly-held notions of repugnance. A transaction is repugnant if some people want to engage in it, and others think they shouldn't be allowed to....