The Morality of Markets

Mathias Dewatripont and Jean Tirole

No 2022-35, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Scholars and civil society have argued that competition erodes supplier morality by offering consumer choice: "If I don't do it, someone else will". This paper establishes a robust irrelevance result, whereby intense market competition does not crowd out consequentialist ethics; it thereby issues a strong warning against the wholesale moral condemnation of markets and procompetitive institutions. Intense competition, while not altering the behavior of protable suppliers, however may reduce the standards of highly ethical suppliers or non-profits, raising the potential need to protect the latter in the marketplace.

Keywords: Competition; consequentialism; replacement effect; non-profits; corporate social responsability; strategic complementarities; race to the ethical bottom. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 p.
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-hpe, nep-mic, nep-reg and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Morality of Markets (2023)
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