Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/21078 
Year of Publication: 
2000
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 231
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In this paper, we analyze the extent to which market forces create an incentive for cloning human beings. We show that a market for cloning arises if a large enough fraction of the clone?s income can be appropriated by its model. Only people with the highest ability are cloned, while people at the bottom of the distribution of income specialize in surrogacy. In the short run, cloning reduces inequality. In the long run, it creates a perfectly egalitarian society where all workers have a top ability if fertility is uncorrelated with ability and if the distribution of ability among sexually produced children is the same as among their parents. In such a society, cloning has disappeared. If the distribution of genes, rather than abilities, is preserved by sexual reproduction, then cloning eliminates ability-reducing genes but does not necessarily eliminate inequality; nor does it disappear in the long run. Finally, if fertility is negatively correlated with ability, in the long run a reproductive caste of bottom ability people coexist with a cloned, worker caste of top ability agents, while intermediate ability types have disappeared.
Subjects: 
Human capital
income distribution
human cloning
overlapping generations
intergenerational mobility
JEL: 
J13
O15
J31
J24
J12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
452.66 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.