Alvin Roth
speaker
677 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 11 May
Alvin Roth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But they also say, and it's law in many parts of the world, you can't pay the donors.
You must get blood and plasma from unpaid donors.
Unlike kidneys, there's not a widespread shortage of plasma in the world.
And the reason is you don't have to pay donors where you live.
You can always buy it from the United States because we export tens of billions of dollars of plasma and plasma products every year because we pay donors.
So there's no shortage of plasma here.
And
The people who donate plasma are, on the whole, not as rich as the people who don't donate plasma.
It's something people do to supplement their income.
But some economists who I should remember well enough to name right now, and I don't, but recent papers come out that said, let's look at what happens when a new plasma...
facility opens up that pays people for plasma, what happens to the frequency of payday loans?
And payday loans go down when plasma facilities go up.
That is, some people are living paycheck to paycheck and donating plasma is a way of supplementing their income in ways that substantively help them.
And it also helps not only Americans but people all over the world who have hemophilia or
immunological deficiencies.
You know, your plasma is full of your antibodies.
So it's an unusual situation where in many places they think it's immoral to pay plasma donors.
And besides, you don't have to because you can always buy it from the U.S.
Well, let's come back to paternalism because we should be of two minds about paternalism also.
But, yeah, I think you're right.
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