 Can market inequalities be justified? The intrinsic shortcomings of meritocracyElena Granaglia Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2019, vol. 51, issue C, 284-290 Abstract: Justifications of market inequalities can appeal to several values. The main ones include efficiency, freedom, and meritocracy. This article focuses on meritocracy and highlights three limits of the meritocratic justification of market inequalities. First, markets cannot be meritocratic: if we abandon the simple economies of independent producers and homogeneous goods, market competition is inevitably lacking, giving rise to non-meritocratic rents. Second, market evaluations of merit present some ethical shortcomings, even if competition could unleash. Third, rewarding merit, no matter where this principle is applied, underrates the element of luck that is present in the individual merit as well as some undesirable consequences of meritocratic rewards. Acknowledging these limits does not deny that merit may have some role in justifying market inequalities. It means, however, to abandon the meritocratic justification. Keywords: D30; D60; D63; Market inequalities; Meritocracy; Distributive justice (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:eee:streco:v:51:y:2019:i:c:p:284-290 DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2019.08.010 Access Statistics for this article Structural Change and Economic Dynamics is currently edited by F. Duchin, H. Hagemann, M. Landesmann, R. Scazzieri, A. Steenge and B. Verspagen More articles in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics from Elsevier |
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