Who is Neoliberal? Durkheimian Individualism and Support for Market Mechanisms

Augustin Landier and David Thesmar

No 29942, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper investigates the drivers of support for market mechanisms (competition and optimizing behavior by agents). We elicit such attitudes using concrete and simplified situations where respondents face a tradeoff between an economically efficient situation and a pro-social objective. We find that support for deviation from efficient solutions achieved through market mechanism is strongly correlated with moral values as defined by Haidt (2013): care, fairness, loyalty and authority. While the traditional left-right divide spans some of this variation, an even bigger role is played by what we label “individualism”, the average support for all 4 values, a moral stance orthogonal to the left-right divide. We ground this measure of individualism in the sociology of Emile Durkheim.

JEL-codes: A11 A13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
Note: CF PE POL
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