Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP2674
Authors: Gilles Saint-Paul
Abstract: In this Paper, we analyse 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.
Keywords: human capital; human cloning; income distribution; intergenerational mobility; overlapping generations
JEL Codes: J12; J13; J24; J31; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Market incentives (D49) | Cloning (C59) |
| Cloning (C59) | Income Distribution (D31) |
| Cloning (C59) | Ability Levels (I24) |
| Cloning reduces inequality in the short run (F62) | Cloning leads to a perfectly egalitarian society (P19) |
| Fertility uncorrelated with ability (J79) | Cloning leads to a perfectly egalitarian society (P19) |
| Distribution of genes preserved through sexual reproduction (C46) | Cloning eliminates genes that reduce ability (D29) |
| Cloning eliminates genes that reduce ability (D29) | Cloning does not necessarily eliminate inequality (J79) |
| Fertility correlates negatively with ability (D29) | Two-class society emerges (P19) |
| Cloning practices (C92) | Worker caste with high abilities and reproductive caste of lower ability individuals (J82) |