Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHAT MAKES A MARKET? EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND RELIABILITY OR GETTING THE BABIES WE WANT
- PART TWO SPACE AND PLACE: REPRODUCING AND REFRAMING SOCIAL NORMS OF RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND OTHERNESS
- PART THREE SPECTRUMS AND DISCOURSES: RIGHTS, REGULATIONS, AND CHOICE
- PART FOUR THE ETHICS OF BABY AND EMBRYO MARKETS
- PART FIVE TENUOUS GROUNDS AND BABY TABOOS
- Author Bios
- Index
PART ONE - WHAT MAKES A MARKET? EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND RELIABILITY OR GETTING THE BABIES WE WANT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHAT MAKES A MARKET? EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND RELIABILITY OR GETTING THE BABIES WE WANT
- PART TWO SPACE AND PLACE: REPRODUCING AND REFRAMING SOCIAL NORMS OF RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND OTHERNESS
- PART THREE SPECTRUMS AND DISCOURSES: RIGHTS, REGULATIONS, AND CHOICE
- PART FOUR THE ETHICS OF BABY AND EMBRYO MARKETS
- PART FIVE TENUOUS GROUNDS AND BABY TABOOS
- Author Bios
- Index
Summary
Although economists have studied extensively the efforts of government to regulate the economy, public regulation of social and personal life has largely escaped economic attention. With the rapid development of the economic analysis of nonmarket behavior, the conceptual tools necessary for the economic study of social (as distinct from narrowly economic) regulation are now at hand. Nor is there any basis for a presumption that government does a good job of regulating nonmarket behavior; if anything, the negative presumption created by numerous studies of economic regulation should carry over to the nonmarket sphere.
– Elisabeth Landes and Richard PosnerPart One of this book examines the economic contours of baby making and adoption. This section critiques the ways in which market dynamics have become central to creating families. Assisted reproductive technology is now a multibillion-dollar industry, which thrives on market principles. Not to be overlooked, however, are the ways in which adoption is a global industry, promoted and sustained by economic exchanges between individuals, agencies, and foreign governments. To overlook these contours is to ignore the sociocultural nuances of family making in the twenty-first century. Authors in this section consider the upsides and also the pitfalls of baby markets. They examine who benefits from and who is harmed by the ways in which baby creating and baby sharing operate in the United States and globally.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Baby MarketsMoney and the New Politics of Creating Families, pp. 1Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010