What money ought not to buy: Review of what money can’t buy, the moral limits to markets

Abstract

Michael Sandel is quite right that some things are best left outside the market system, says M S Sriram, reviewing this profoundly moral book on modern capitalism

Sandel is a well-known professor of Harvard University and the author of the iconic book Justice. He is also known for making his course of the same name available freely, both online and on television. His latest book continues his argument that the world has become more marketised and financialised but maybe, at some point, we should stop arguing that the markets know best.

In the process of examining the moral fabric of society and trying to poke holes in the rationality of the economic world, he takes on his colleague N Gregory Mankiw as well as Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt, authors of Freakonomics. Although he does not discuss the work of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of Poor Economics fame — in which they argue for testing human behaviour based on market-based incentives through randomised control trials — he does give us enough thought to view their work from a moral lens. Read more at: https://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/what-money-ought-not-to-buy-112072100016_1.html