The Morality of Markets. A Critique

Grégory Ponthière () and Nicolas Stevens ()
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Nicolas Stevens: Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium

No 3349, LIDAM Reprints CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: Dewatripont and Tirole (2024) defend the morality of markets on the ground of an irrelevance result: the social production of moral actions is independent from competitive pressure on markets. No matter how strong competitive pressure is, markets perform well in diffusing signals about moral values and in coordinating suppliers of moral actions. In this article, we argue, on the contrary, that markets lead to a double crowding out of moral values: first, imperfect transmission of moral values on markets leads to an underproduction of moral actions despite the presence of highly ethical suppliers; second, competitive pressure on markets favors the eviction of highly ethical suppliers by less ethical suppliers. Furthermore, we highlight that this double crowding-out restricts the normative scope of the irrelevance result, and raises the question of what the division of moral labor should be between citizens, firms and States.

Keywords: Competition; markets; morality; crowding out (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D4 D6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12
Date: 2026-01-01
Note: In: Mathematical Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 134, p. 14-19
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvrp:3349

DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2024.12.003

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