Happy Shoes II

At the end of the previous post it
looked as if, so long as enough consumers  are prepared to
pay a premium for ethically-produced goods, Happy Shoes should be able
to make a profit, pay its workers better than Sweatshoes, and satisfy
customers all at the same time.

But — contrary to what Potter & Heath claim — it is difficult for companies to make money by selling
"shoes made by happy workers" because "ethical production" is a credence good.  When you buy shoes, you can tell if your new shoes fit well, you
can tell what they are made of, and you can tell whether you like the style. But you can’t tell what the person making them got paid.
Like the benefits of fluoridated toothpaste and organically-grown vegetables,
it’s something you basically have to take on trust.

This lack of information provides an opening for unscrupulous
vendors. To understand this market we have to think not only about Sweatshoes
offering their $100 shoes and about Happy Shoes offering their $120 pair, but
also about a third company. "Ethical Feet" comes to town
with some fine-sounding words about their commitment to fairness and decency,
offering to sell you an ethically made pair of shoes for $115 — $5 less than
Happy Shoes. It sounds like a good deal — the benefit of ethical consumption, and an extra $5 left in your pocket.

But the difference is that Ethical Feet doesn’t
actually pass on any of the extra $15 you pay to the people making the
shoes. It just keeps your money. Ethical Feet would sell the shoes
cheaper than Happy Shoes, but make more profit — $25 profit per pair
rather than $20.

It looks like Ethical Feet may drive Happy Shoes out of
business by making unverifiable false promises, but the story does not stop here. This is not a tale of corporate trickery and consumer
stupidity. As George Akerlof writes: this problem of trust is "as old
as markets themselves. It concerns how horse traders respond to the natural
question: "if he wants to sell that
horse, do I really want to buy
it?"

Smart consumers who are
prepared to pay more for ethically produced goods are still not
prepared to be suckers. We are not going to pay $115 or even $120 for a
pair of shoes just because a company says they
are made by happy workers — a claim we cannot verify. In a market of
smart consumers wanting to buy shoes made by happy people, the $115 Ethical Feet shoes and the $120
Happy Shoes 
– stay on the shelf.  As consumers we can’t tell the difference between Ethical Feet and Happy Shoes, and we know that a company that carried out its promises is vulnerable to unscrupulous competition.

The company that stays in business is Sweatshoes. It pays cheaply and
sells cheaply, and as consumers we pay $100. We may not feel good about
this, but at least we are not being tricked. The end result is just the
same as if we didn’t care about the salaries at all. As consumers, it
seems we are not sovereign when it comes to ethical production.

The next post will probably deal with ways around this problem.

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19 Comments

  1. I’m not sure about the premise; I think Ethical Feet could do quite nicely. Ten or fifteen years ago, a shop called Shared Earth opened in Manchester, selling ethnic ornaments and whatnot. Their main competitors were Oxfam and Christian Aid – both charities. Shared Earth may have done their bit to route some of Manchester’s disposable cash into the Third World, they may even have done so on a fair trade basis, but they weren’t a charity. But they did all right; they even got kids to volunteer to work on the till. (Free labour!)
    The other, unrelated, point that comes to mind is that you seem to be assuming that ethical shopping is a luxury – which is certainly the situation now, but I think it’s a problematic one. A while ago I overheard a couple of people cooing over a purchase from a clothes shop specialising in fairly-traded gear –
    “Their stuff’s very expensive”
    “Yes, but it’s *worth it*”
    The warm glow of ethical shopping – like the warm glow of organic food shopping – seems to be less about changing the world & more about self-congratulation. And it’s a warm glow which would be pretty rapidly dowsed by the pang of wondering what that purchase did to the prospect of finding next month’s rent.
    I’m reviewing the book for a political studies journal, btw.

  2. What if Bono decides to promote “ethical production”? He has a choice between promoting Ethical Shoes and Happy Shoes. He does not want to be associated with an unscrupulous company so he has team of fashionable minions do the leg work to evaluate the ethical claims of each company.
    Which company will Bono choose? Assuming Bono concludes Happy Shoes is worth the extra $20 because of their commitment to ethical production and throws a press conference saying so, do we still have a credence good scenario?
    People use many heuristics to determine the validity of any claim.

  3. Tim, I’d be /really/ interested to know if you think that the process of modern democracy (as we currently know it in the Western world) might also reasonably be characterised as a market (?) which exhibits features of significant information asymmetry.

  4. Graham – I’ve never thought of it that way. It is certainly true that there is information asymmetry. On the other hand, it’s not really a market of course. It sounds as if you have some thoughts how to pursue that analogy – I’d be interested to hear them.

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