Can competition ever be fair ? Challenging the standard prejudice

Christian Arnsperger and Philippe de Ville
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Christian Arnsperger: UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), FNRS-Belgium,Charie Hoover-UCL-Belgium
Philippe de Ville: UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Philippe R. DeVille

No 2002016, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insuficient as a justification of fairness in competiton, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfair even if the usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness,where "U” stands for the "usual” fairness notion, and S-fairness, where "S” stands for the "sequential” aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom : first of all, there is an "eclipse” of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors’ choices always operate in the sense of increased competitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of an increased effort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfar even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect much deeper aspects of unfairness.

JEL-codes: A13 B41 D50 D63 P10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2002-05-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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