Jim F.
On Thu, 02 Dec 1999 10:07:50 -0800 Michael Perelman
<michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:
>Posner, Richard A. 1977. Economic Analysis of Law (Boston: Little
>Brown). 113: "[The baby] shortage appears to be an artifact of
>government regulation, in particular the uniform state policy
>forbidding
>the sale of babies. That there are many people who are capable of
>bearing children but who do not want to raise them, and many other
>people who cannot produce their own children but want to raise
>children
>in their homes, suggests the possibility of a thriving market in
>babies,
>especially since the costs of production by the natural parents are
>typically much lower than the value that many childless people attach
>to
>the possession of children. There is, in fact, a black market in
>babies, with prices as high as $25,000 reported recently, but its
>necessarily clandestine mode of operation imposes heavy information
>costs on the market participants, as well as significant expected
>punishment costs on the middlemen (typically lawyers and
>obstetricians). The result is higher prices and smaller quantities
>sold
>than would be likely in a legal market." 114: "The objections to
>permitting babies to be sold are, first, that there is no assurance
>that
>the adoptive parents who are willing to pay the most money for a child
>will provide it with the best home. But willingness to pay is a
>generally reliable, although not infallible, index of value, and the
>parents who value a child the most are likely to give it the most
>care." 115-6:"Opponents of the market approach also argue that the
>rich would end up with all the babies, or at least all the good babies
>.... Such a result might of course be in the children's best interest
>--but is unlikely to materialize. Because people with high incomes
>tend
>to have high opportunity costs of time, the wealthy usually have
>smaller
>families than the poor, and permitting babies to be sold would not
>change this situation. Moreover, the total demand for children on the
>part of wealthy childless couples must be very small in relation to
>the
>supply of children, even high-quality children, that would be
>generated
>in a system where there were economic incentives to produce children
>for
>purchase by childless couples." 116: "A final objection to baby
>selling is that it involves the spectacle of 'trafficking' in human
>lives. This objection, the basis of which is unclear, may have been
>undermined by the recent changes in public policy concerning abortion.
>Is paying a pregnant woman to carry the child to term so offensive an
>alternative to the abortion of the foetus?"
>
>--
>
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
>Chico, CA 95929
>530-898-5321
>fax 530-898-5901
>
>
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