Can economics rank slavery against free labor in terms of efficiency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7354064 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lawrence H White (University of Missouri–St. Louis, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 327-340 |
| Publication date | 2008-07-15 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Politics Philosophy & Economics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1470-594X • E-ISSN: 1741-3060 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1470594x08092106 |
| OpenAlex | W2039225416 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The standard allocative efficiency criteria used by economists (Pareto efficiency and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency) are fundamentally unable to rank a slave-labor system against a free-labor system. Given either set of initial property rights assignments the market can reach (or fail to reach) allocative efficiency (that is, allocate resources to their highest-valued uses), but welfare economics provides no meta-framework for ranking initial assignments. This finding underscores the limits to the usefulness of efficiency criteria: they cannot settle all questions, and unfortunately are least decisive just where the stakes are greatest (namely, where wealth effects of alternative assignments are greatest). Explicitly ethical criteria are needed to make the ranking
Allocative efficiency · Economic efficiency · Economics · Mathematical economics · Microeconomics · Operations management · Pareto efficiency · Pareto optimal · Pareto principle · Rank (graph theory · Ranking (information retrieval · Set (abstract data type · Welfare · Computer Science · Economic theories and models · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Mathematics · Taxation and Compliance Studies
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2026 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |