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March 2022 posts

Oisin Suttle on "The Puzzle of Competitive Fairness"

Ppe coverBy Mark D. White

Forthcoming in Politics, Philosophy & Economics but currently available online (and open access) is "The Puzzle of Competitive Fairness" by Oisin Suttle (Maynooth University), exploring common intuitions about the concept of fairness as it applies to markets. (I find this very welcome, as the vague use of this concept in economics was one of the frustrations that drew me into economics-and-ethics in the first place.)

From the abstract:

There is a sense of fairness that is distinctive of markets. This is fairness among economic competitors, competitive fairness. We regularly make judgments of competitive fairness about market participants, public policies and institutions. However, it is not clear to what these judgments refer, or what moral significance they have. This paper offers a rational reconstruction of competitive fairness in terms of non-domination. It first identifies competitive fairness as a distinctive claim, advanced within markets in turn characterized as antagonistic, instrumental and procedural. It distinguishes competitive fairness from a number of familiar ideals with which it might be confused: legitimate expectation, equality of opportunity, sporting fairness and economic efficiency. While many exponents likely assume competitive fairness can be explained in terms of one of these ideals, in each case there are significant objections to doing so. Instead, the paper argues that the most promising justification of competitive fairness is under the republican ideal of non-domination, which can reconstruct many of the intuitive judgments of competitive fairness that we make in particular cases. However, it concludes, this explanation makes it difficult for exponents to continue to emphasize competitive fairness, given diverse other risks of domination, and to other values, in markets.

Extra points for using Ronald Dworkin's methodology of fit and justification. From Suttle's introduction:

My method throughout is interpretive, in the sense advanced by Ronald Dworkin (Law's Empire: Ch. 2). We begin with a pre-theoretical account of a practice, identifying this inter alia through a number of paradigm instances. We next ask whether there is a principle or set of principles that could both explain and justify the practice, so conceived. To be successful, the required principles must both account for prominent features of the practice, and explain the value realized thereby. We can then return to our paradigm instances, and to any unclear or marginal cases, reassessing these based on our new, principled, understanding of the nature and function of the practice under examination.


Don Ross on economics' convergence with sociology (not psychology)

JemBy Mark D. White

Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Methodology, currently available online (and open access), is a paper from Don Ross (University College Cork) titled "Economics Is Converging with Sociology but not with Psychology." The abstract is as follows:

The rise of behavioral economics since the 1980s led to richer mutual influence between economic and psychological theory and experimentation. However, as behavioral economics has become increasingly integrated into the main stream in economics, and as psychology has remained damagingly methodologically conservative, this convergence has recently gone into reverse. At the same time, growing appreciation among economists of the limitations of atomistic individualism, along with advantages in econometric modeling flexibility by comparison with psychometrics, is leading economists to become more pluralistic than psychologists about the ontology of behavioral causation and structures. This, combined with economists’ growing interest in network models, is drawing economists closer in theory and practice to sociologists who use quantitative or mixed methods.

He elaborates on the second page of the paper:

My talk about economists and sociologists becoming ‘partners’ should not be read as forecasting or advocating institutional amalgamation. I refer only to increasing interest in similar topics, with consequent convergence on some methodological elements because part of what drives methodological evolution in sciences are features of application targets. The pattern whereby, through the rise of behavioral economics after the 1980s, an array of concepts and experimental practices from psychology spread into mainstream economics, is my template here. The main claim I aim to defend is simply that that penetration has passed its high-water mark and gone into recession, but that we should now expect a period of enhanced conceptual and methodological seepage between economics and sociology. This predicts increased cross-citation across the disciplinary line, and increased frequency of both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations. I do not predict that economics departments will start hiring sociologists, or vice-versa.

As always with Ross's work, this is an intriguing and provocative read, with copious references for those new to this line of thought.


New book: Hossein and Christabell, eds., Community Economies in the Global South

Hossein Christabell bookBy Mark D. White

Coming in April 2022 from Oxford University Press is Community Economies in the Global South, edited by Caroline Shenaz Hossein (University of Toronto Scarborough) and Christabell P.J. (Kerala University).

From the publisher's website:

People across the globe engage in social and solidarity economics to help themselves, their community, and society on their own terms.

Community Economies in the Global South examines how people who conscientiously organize rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) bring positive changes to their own lives as well as others. ROSCAs are a long-established and well documented practice, especially those organized by women of colour. Members make regular deposits to a fund as a savings that is then given in whole or in part to each member in turn based on group economics. This book spotlights women in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia who organize and use these associations, composed of ordinary people belonging to similar class origins who decide jointly on the rules to suit the interests of their members. The case studies show how they vary greatly across countries in the Global South, demonstrating that ROSCAs are living proof that diverse community economies do exist and have been around for a very long time. The contributors recount stories of the self-help, activism, and perseverance of racialized people in order to push for ethical, community-focused business, and to hold onto local knowledge, grounded theory, and lived experience, reducing the need to rely on external funding as people find ways to finance sustainable, debt-free business ventures. The first collection on this topic edited by two women of colour with roots in the Global South, this volume is a rallying call to other scholar-activists to study and report on how racialized people come together, pool goods, and diversify business in the Global South.

I'm a little biased toward this one: Caroline is a dear friend of mine, and she edited a magnificent book for my social economics series at Palgrave, The Black Social Economy in the Americas: Exploring Diverse Community-Based Markets. (I also hope she will contribute to this blog before long, hint hint.)