The Economics of Professional Ethics: Should the Professions Be More Like Business?

Robin C O Matthews

Economic Journal, 1991, vol. 101, issue 407, 737-50

Abstract: Recent government policy has favored making the professions more like business. On this policy, "cheating" (exploitation of asymmetric information or neglect of externalities) is prevented by regulation; drawbacks include high transaction costs of regulation, and consequent dangers of ineffectiveness and adverse selection. This paper considers a possible rationalization of traditional competition-reducing arrangements in the professions, viewed as an alternative policy. These arrangements prohibit practices that offer a temptation to cheating, even at the cost of restricting competition. They rely on the prevalence of a distinctive professional morality in order to prevent restriction of competition from leading to monopolistic exploitation. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0133%2819910 ... 0.CO%3B2-T&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:101:y:1991:i:407:p:737-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Martin Cripps, Steve Machin, Woulter den Haan, Andrea Galeotti, Rachel Griffith and Frederic Vermeulen

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().