 Competition, Monopoly and Fairness in the Korean socioeconomic system: as revealed in the market and entrance examinationHoon Hong
No 2012rwp-46, Working papers from Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute Abstract: This paper purports to show that formal criteria of fairness have limitations in securing fairness in a society in general and in the Korean social economy in particular. For this purpose, it offers equal opportunity, fair play in competition and objective evaluation as the formal criteria of fairness. These are prevalent in the Korean society and at the same time constitute basic tenets of conservative social thought including economics. However, these criteria are alleged to be insufficient to guarantee fairness in Korean markets and entrance examinations. The main reason is that the Korean society relies heavily on social relations and groups which make the subjects or units of competition ambiguous and give rise to monopolist rent-seeking in diverse organizations. It is suggested that, in order to give substance to the formal criteria, the Korean society has to take into account: income and wealth gaps between strata; contents of competition; procedures as well as consequences; decoupling and distortions of formal rules; units of competition; informal organizations. Keywords: competition; fairness; formal criteria; substantive criteria; market; entrance examination (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yon:wpaper:2012rwp-46 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working papers from Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute Contact information at EDIRC. |
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