Repugnance Management and Transactions in the Body.

* Healy: Sociology Department, Duke University, 417 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708 (e-mail: kjhealy@soc. duke.edu); Krawiec: Duke University School of Law, 210 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708 (e-mail: krawiec@law. duke.edu) . † Go to https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.p20171108 to visit the article page for additional materials and author disclosure statement(s). Alvin Roth remarks that, although it often gets in the way of market exchanges, “predicting when repugnance will play a decisive role is difficult, because apparently similar activities and transactions are often judged differently” (Roth 2007, p. 42–43). It certainly took the staff of Space World by surprise. In November of 2016, in the Japanese city of Kitakyushu, the management of the Space World theme park was looking for a way to boost attendance at their ice rink. To this end, they purchased about five thousand fish of various kinds from the local market—sprats, mackerel, rays, and other species—and froze them into the rink in a variety of attractive and whimsical patterns. The park’s management thought that both the innovative display and the prospect of gliding above the suspended fish would surprise and delight visitors to the park all through the winter. People were disgusted. Public reaction was swift, unequivocal, and rapidly international in scale. The rink was condemned as creepy, grotesque, and abusive; an insulting waste of food; and an affront to both human and piscine dignity. Space World’s spokespeople scrambled to react. They apologized profusely. They lamented that they had perhaps not done a good enough job explaining to the public that the fish were already dead when they had been frozen in the rink. (Pointing this out did not seem to help matters.) By the end of the affair, the story was running around the world, the rink was being thawed, and Space World was reportedly considering holding a memorial service for the fish. I. Repugnance as a Constraint on Exchange