The facets of Exploitation

Working paper de Marc Fleurbaey

This paper proposes four concepts of exploitation that encapsulate common uses of the word in social interactions: unfair advantage, unequal exchange, using persons as means, free-riding. It briefly discusses how these concepts appear in the literature (the first two are prominent in Roemer's classical work), and then examines how these forms of exploitation are related and how they can occur.

The author

Marc Fleurbaey is Robert E. Kuenne Professor at the University of Princeton (USA) and holds the Chaire “Welfare Economics and Social Justice” at the Collège d’études mondiales (Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris). His research in economics and philosophy has been devoted to normative economics, distributive justice, and the evaluation of public policy. The main areas of application are the measurement of social welfare, climate policies, health prioritizing, and optimal taxation. He has been professor of economics and CNRS researcher in France.