Abstract
Scholars and civil society have argued that competition erodes supplier morality. This paper establishes a robust irrelevance result, whereby intense market competition does not crowd out consequentialist ethics; it thereby issues a strong warning against the wholesale moral condemnation of markets and procompetitive institutions. Intense competition, while not altering the behavior of profitable suppliers, may, however, reduce the standards of highly ethical suppliers or not-for-profits, raising the potential need to protect the latter in the marketplace.
Keywords
Competition; consequentialism; replacement logic, non-profits; corporate social responsability; race to the ethical bottom;
JEL codes
- D21: Firm Behavior: Theory
- D43: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
- D6: Welfare Economics
- I11: Analysis of Health Care Markets
- L21: Business Objectives of the Firm
Reference
Mathias Dewatripont, and Jean Tirole, “The Morality of Markets”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 132, n. 8, 2024, pp. 2655–2694.
See also
Published in
Journal of Political Economy, vol. 132, n. 8, 2024, pp. 2655–2694