Market Participation and Moral Decision-Making: Experimental Evidence from Greenland
Abstract The relationship between market participation and moral values is the object of a long-lasting debate in economics, yet field evidence is mainly based on cross-cultural studies. We conduct rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N = 543), where stark contrasts in market p...
| Published in: | The Economic Journal |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press (OUP)
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac069 https://academic.oup.com/ej/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/ej/ueac069/47161699/ueac069.pdf https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-pdf/133/650/537/51840086/ueac069.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract The relationship between market participation and moral values is the object of a long-lasting debate in economics, yet field evidence is mainly based on cross-cultural studies. We conduct rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N = 543), where stark contrasts in market participation within villages allow us to examine the relationship between market participation and moral decision-making, holding village-level factors constant. First, we document a robust positive association between market participation and moral behaviour towards anonymous others. Second, market-integrated participants display universalism in moral decision-making, whereas non-market participants make more moral decisions towards co-villagers. A battery of robustness tests confirms that the behavioural differences between market and non-market participants are not driven by socioeconomic variables, childhood background, cultural identities, kinship structure, global connectedness and exposure to religious and political institutions. |
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