According to the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics, allocative efficiency can be attained through the interaction of consumers and producers in markets, with each freely pursuing their own self-interest — maximizing their 24 Efficiency, Justice and the Standard Approach to Policy Analysis utility in the case of consumers and maximizing their profit in the case of producers. [...] But the question that is of interest for us is what happens to the separa- tion of justice and efficiency if we relax even one of the assumptions while leaving the rest of the edifice intact? Blackorby (1990) argues that in a second- best world one can no longer separate efficiency and justice. [...] A similar concern arises in Rawls’s discussion of education, where the benefits of allocating training resources to those who can make best use of them — in order to produce more for the good of all — must be offset by considerations about creating hierarchies that affect notions of self- respect and the true functioning of a democracy.3 In economics, Akerlof and Kranton (2000) argue that a person. [...] Is the fact that people have a (partly) social nature consistent with the idea of efficiency and justice as separate concerns? The answer to this is found, in part, in experiments that have examined norms of trust and perceptions of fairness. [...] For example, in Crenshaw’s initial work on the topic, she identifies the issues that affect Black women in the US legal system, and how for such women, the intersection of race and gender contributes to forms of oppression and harm, which are distinct from those experienced by women on the basis of their gender and Black men on the basis of their race.
- Pages
- 22
- Published in
- Canada
