IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v121y2014i3p467-476.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Absurd Tax on our Fellow Citizens: The Ethics of Rent Seeking in the Market Failures (or Self-Regulation) Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Jaworski

Abstract

Joseph Heath lumps in quotas and protectionist measures with cartelization, taking advantage of information asymmetries, seeking a monopoly position, and so on, as all instances of behavior that can lead to market failures in his market failures approach to business ethics. The problem is that this kind of rent and rent seeking, when they fail to deliver desirable outcomes, are better described as government failure. I suggest that this means we will have to expand Heath’s framework to a market and government failures approach. I then try to defuse objections that as a government failure, rent seeking may not appear relevant to what managers ought to do. Solving this conceptual issue will also give us an excuse to revisit a separate conceptual issue: the normatively thick conception of “rent” and rent seeking behavior that some use. This normatively thick conception is problematic, I argue, and I offer the beginnings of a novel, normatively neutral conception that is useful for our purposes in making the ethics of rent and rent seeking behavior more than a merely trivial exercise. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Jaworski, 2014. "An Absurd Tax on our Fellow Citizens: The Ethics of Rent Seeking in the Market Failures (or Self-Regulation) Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 467-476, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:121:y:2014:i:3:p:467-476
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1734-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-013-1734-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-013-1734-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thompson, Dennis F., 1993. "Mediated Corruption: The Case of the Keating Five," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 369-381, June.
    2. Bhagwati, Jagdish N, 1982. "Directly Unproductive, Profit-seeking (DUP) Activities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 988-1002, October.
    3. Robert D. Tollison, 1982. "Rent Seeking: A Survey," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 575-602, November.
    4. Bhagwati, Jagdish N & Srinivasan, T N, 1980. "Revenue Seeking: A Generalization of the Theory of Tariffs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(6), pages 1069-1087, December.
    5. Heath, Joseph, 2006. "Business Ethics without Stakeholders," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(4), pages 533-557, October.
    6. John Boatright, 2009. "Rent Seeking in a Market with Morality: Solving a Puzzle About Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(4), pages 541-552, October.
    7. Tyler Cowen & Amihai Glazer & Henry McMillan, 1994. "Rent Seeking Can Promote The Provision Of Public Goods," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 131-145, July.
    8. Wayne Norman, 2011. "Business Ethics as Self-Regulation: Why Principles that Ground Regulations Should Be Used to Ground Beyond-Compliance Norms as Well," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(1), pages 43-57, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Panibratov, Andrei & Chen, Xinchuan, 2018. "The role of informal institutions in the internationalization process of Chinese and Russian firms," Working Papers 15115, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    2. Casey Carder Rockwell & David Crockett & Lenita Davis, 2020. "Mass incarceration and consumer financial harm: Critique of rent‐seeking by the carceral state," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 1062-1081, September.
    3. Pierre-Yves Néron, 2016. "Rethinking the Ethics of Corporate Political Activities in a Post-Citizens United Era: Political Equality, Corporate Citizenship, and Market Failures," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(4), pages 715-728, July.
    4. Jeffrey Moriarty, 2020. "On the Origin, Content, and Relevance of the Market Failures Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 113-124, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jay S. Coggins, 1995. "Rent Dissipation And The Social Cost Of Price Policy," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 147-166, July.
    2. Mahmudul Anam & Eliakim Katz, 1988. "Rent-seeking and second best economics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 215-224, December.
    3. Tyler Cowen & Amihai Glazer & Henry McMillan, 1994. "Rent Seeking Can Promote The Provision Of Public Goods," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 131-145, July.
    4. Sami Fethi & Hatice Imamoglu, 2021. "The impact of rent‐seeking on economic growth in the six geographic regions: Evidence from static and dynamic panel data analysis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5349-5362, October.
    5. Roe, Terry L. & Yeldan, A. Erinc, 1988. "An Open Economy Model of Political Influence and Competition Among Rent Seeking Groups," Bulletins 7499, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    6. Kamath Shyam J., 1994. "Privatization: A Market Prospect Perspective," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-52, March.
    7. Michael A. Brooks & Ben J. Heudra, 1989. "An Exploration of Rent Seeking," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 65(1), pages 32-50, March.
    8. Douglas Davis & Robert Reilly, 1998. "Do too many cooks always spoil the stew? An experimental analysis of rent-seeking and the role of a strategic buyer," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 89-115, April.
    9. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Eric Langlais & Bruno Lovat & Francesco Parisi, 2007. "Crowding-out in productive and redistributive rent-seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 199-229, October.
    10. Federico Bonaglia & Jorge Braga de Macedo & Maurizio Bussolo, 2009. "How Globalisation Improves Governance," Chapters, in: Linda Yueh (ed.), The Law and Economics of Globalisation, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Jeffery Smith, 2018. "Efficiency and Ethically Responsible Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 603-618, July.
    12. Deepak Lal, 2003. "Free Trade and Laissez Faire: Has the Wheel Come Full Circle?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 471-482, April.
    13. Amihai Glazer, 2008. "Crowding Out Wasteful Activities by Wasteful Activities," Working Papers 080908, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    14. Abraham Singer, 2018. "Justice Failure: Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 97-115, April.
    15. Eaton, Jonathan, 1989. "Monopoly Wealth and International Debt," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 30(1), pages 33-48, February.
    16. Simplice A. Asongu & Joseph Nnanna, 2021. "Globalization, Governance and the Green Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy Thresholds," Working Papers 21/015, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    17. Elie Appelbaum & Eliakim Katz, 1986. "Transfer seeking and avoidance: On the full social costs of rent seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 175-181, January.
    18. Maria Arbatskaya & Hugo Mialon, 2010. "Multi-activity contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 23-43, April.
    19. Mukherjee, Deepraj, 2015. "Did pre-WTO agreements curb corruption?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-10.
    20. Jakob Svensson, 2003. "Who Must Pay Bribes and How Much? Evidence from a Cross Section of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(1), pages 207-230.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:121:y:2014:i:3:p:467-476. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.