The morality of market exchanges: between societal values and trade-offs

Julio Elias, Nicola Lacetera and Mario Macis

Chapter 12 in Research Handbook on Unethical Behavior, 2026, pp 185-198 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Certain behaviors in markets are unambiguously unethical. In other cases, however, voluntary exchanges that can create gains from trade remain controversial on moral grounds, because of what is traded or of the price at which the exchange occurs. This chapter offers a framework to analyze these contested markets and provides examples of two general instances. We discuss, first, the case of repugnant transactions, i.e. trades that raise ethical questions because of the inherent nature of certain goods or services, such as human organs for transplants or gestational surrogacy. We then focus on price gouging, where it is the pricing of goods or services, particularly in times of crisis or scarcity, that may be considered exploitative or unjust.

Keywords: Repugnant transactions; Price gouging; Market ethics; Market design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035307265
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035307272.00018 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22091_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().