published in: Economic Policy, 2003, 18 (36), 73-122
This paper analyses the economic issues associated with human cloning and new
reproductive technologies. We analyze the incentives for human cloning and its implications
for the long run distribution of skills and income. We analyse models of human cloning for
different motives, focusing on those which tend to produce new human beings with improved
ability. We thus ignore purely therapeutic applications, which may well be the most likely
ones to happen in the near future, but have no first-order implications for the long-run
distribution of skills and income.
An important consequence of these models is that if ability is genetically heritable, cloning
tends to increase the proportion of high ability people in society, and that under some
hypothesis the distribution of ability converges to a mass point at the highest possible ability
level. Under weaker assumptions, it is shown that ability-reducing genes are eventually
eliminated. However, if fertility is negatively correlated with ability, cloning leads to a strongly
segregated society with a top-ability caste and a bottom ability one which produces clones of
the top ability one.
The paper also discusses the plausibility of these results in light on the evidence from
economics and other sciences on marriage markets, child selection, assisted reproduction,
and animals.
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