Event Details

The Economics Department are delighted to host the Economics Seminar Series

Dorothea Kübler will give a talk on "Repugnant transactions: The role of agency and extreme consequences"

Abstract:

them (e.g., the sale of human organs, surrogacy, and prostitution). It is not well

understood what causes the judgement of repugnance. We study two potential reasons:

lack of agency of the parties and extreme consequences of the transaction. Limited

agency arises, e.g., when one party cannot decide freely because she is not able to

reject the transaction offered, a third person who profits from the transaction takes

the decision on her behalf, or she is forced to proceed with the transaction due to social

pressure. In a laboratory experiment, we ask spectators whether they want to prohibit

a transaction or not. We find that transactions with extreme outcomes (listening to a

painful tone) are more frequently prohibited than those with mild outcomes (waiting

in the laboratory). We also show that lack of agency and extreme outcomes reinforce

each other, since the combination of both properties leads to prohibition rates of up to

80 percent.

Location: Teams