Virgil Henry Storr and Ginny Seung Choi explore perennial concerns and accusations that markets—though perhaps driving widespread prosperity—are animated by vice and abet its cultivation. Storr and Choi deny this charge and respond to their book’s title in the negative. They conclude that the evidence supports finding markets not guilty of corruption. Following this verdict come recriminations of market restrictions’ being, themselves, morally deleterious. En route to this countercharge, however, the authors offer a thoughtful intellectual history of the original indictments: that markets are morally corrupt and corrupting. They also recount and assess prior defenses of markets. Storr and Choi’s argument builds along two lines: first, that the greater wealth, health, happiness, and connections of people in market societies support a better state of living, a conclusion, which for the authors, carries moral weight; and second, that virtue supports markets, and markets, in turn, reward virtue.

In Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? a market is conceived of as a locus of exchange, whether a physical space for buying and selling or an abstract space, such as the labor or housing markets. Societies in which markets function with, at most, slight interference are designated as market societies, of which respect for property rights, enforcement of contracts, and rule of law are also attributes. In the book, designation as a market or nonmarket society is relative. Specifically, a country earns the designation “if its scores were in the top two-fifths of the range of possible scores in each of the indices for which a score was available for that particular country” (252).Footnote ¹ The application of the designation to certain countries may surprise some readers. For instance, as highlighted by the authors, the Nordic countries (i.e., Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), despite extensive government-funded social programs, are deemed market societies because they boast “strong property rights, reliable contract enforcement, and low barriers to trade” (10).

Chapter 1 opens with passages from Adam Smith that exemplify a worry held even by proponents of markets: markets exact a moral tax from participants. Smith reckoned, however, that the material benefits of market societies outweigh their levy on morals. Nevertheless, the admission of this cost aligns Smith with a succession of market critics, as outlined by Storr and Choi. They trace the ancestry of morals-based market criticisms back to Aristotle, through Aquinas, and on to Marx. Storr and Choi then note contemporary scholarship that likewise prosecutes markets for moral corruption. Having established that criticisms of markets are perennial, the authors also explore whether it matters if markets are morally corrupting and review defenses by market apologists. Storr and Choi find most of these defenses wanting, since they fail to challenge, and sometimes even admit, the moral corruption of markets.

Chapter 2 reviews in greater detail criticisms of markets on moral grounds and notes the authors’ strategy for responding to these criticisms. Popular tropes of markets and capitalists as corrupt and corrupting monsters head the chapter and lead into a delineation of some principal arguments against markets. A common resonance is discerned in Aquinas’s, Rousseau’s, and Marx’s critiques of trade: “Participation in the market corrupts our morals by engendering antisocial and overly self-interested sentiments, attitudes, and behaviors” (32). The authors find a similar reverberation of sentiments in contemporary scholarship which argues that “markets grow at the expense of communities and that markets promote selfishness, greed, and other vices” (33). Some scholars worry that markets encroach on communities and pervert their values—self-interested rivalry displaces loyalty and social harmony. Since claims that markets are morally corrupting are both theoretical and empirical in nature, Storr and Choi lay out a strategy of evaluation based on “theoretical understanding of how markets can and should work” and on “evidence regarding how markets do in fact work” (43).

Chapter 3 rehearses common defenses of markets. Storr and Choi explore in detail what could be termed the “alchemy defense” of markets: the base metal of private vice is transformed into the gold of public benefit; looked at another way, public benefit outweighs private vice. The “amorality defense” also receives consideration: markets promote neither vice nor virtue. Finally, a defense by way of comparison is fielded: immorality may rightly be associated with markets, but greater immorality is associated with other contexts. Storr and Choi judge these three defenses as inept against charges of immorality, since each at least implicitly concedes that markets are morally corrupt or corrupting.

In chapter 4, Storr and Choi develop their first line of argument in defense of markets. In their analysis, markets carry moral weight because of the material prosperity wrought by them. This argument rests on a correlation of markets with increases in desirable outcomes, namely, wealth, health, happiness, and interpersonal connections. To illustrate the correlation, the authors draw on stories of Bahamian slaves from the colonial era, on the Estonian experience during and after Soviet rule, and on contrasts between North and South Korea. The authors contend that the greater wealth, health, happiness, and interpersonal connections enjoyed by people in market societies preclude numerous moral dilemmas that they might otherwise face. For people with surplus resources, many trolley-like problems seem to evaporate, such as choosing between providing for oneself and one’s family. Furthermore, the authors argue that the more abundant resources found in market societies provide better positioning for improving the lives of others.

The second line of argumentation is developed over the next two chapters. Chapter 5 argues that virtue, rather than vice, nurtures markets. While admitting that market participants need not be angelic, Storr and Choi conclude, based on theoretical and empirical evidence, that better functioning markets result from the participation of virtuous people. This conclusion runs contrary to frequent depictions of market participants in Anglophone literature and media. Storr and Choi provide a several-page excursus on the vices of Antonio and Shylock, the protagonist and antagonist of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Whereas greedy Shylock idolizes money and intends to exploit Antonio’s insecure finances, Antonio imprudently borrows despite the precariousness of his finances and risks his own life as collateral. Examples from Anglophone African and Caribbean literature supplement these negative portrayals of market participants. American television and movies are replete with similarly negative portrayals. The title of chapter 5—“Markets Are Moral Spaces”—contrasts starkly with the viciousness frequently associated with markets and those who participate in them. Storr and Choi insist that markets depend on prudent individuals to function. In addition to prudence, the authors also adopt the remaining six “bourgeois virtues” outlined by Deidre McCloskey, namely, the other three cardinal virtues (i.e., courage, justice, and temperance) and the three theological virtues (i.e., faith, hope, and love). Practice of these virtues is—for Storr and Choi, as well as McCloskey—not only compatible with and beneficial to markets but essential for markets to thrive. Furthermore, Storr and Choi provide empirical evidence of a tendency in market societies for greater altruism, higher instances of cosmopolitanism, trust, and trustworthiness, but fewer instances of materialism and corruption.

Chapter 6 builds on the compatibility of markets and virtue to argue that markets cultivate virtue rather than vice. The authors introduce several of Aesop’s fables as illustrations of moral lessons that can be learned through market interactions, and draw on their own lab experimentation as evidence of the potential for moral learning through trade. Joseph Schumpeter’s contention that markets self-destruct also frames the chapter’s discussion. Applied to morals, the contention becomes that markets may drive moral erosion among participants, thereby destroying a necessary basis for the very existence of markets. Storr and Choi also argue that markets change people, but for the better. Moral improvement (as well as moral corruption) of market participants relies on the possibility of moral change into adulthood. The authors sustain hope of this possibility through interaction with the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Through an economic experiment based in game theory, Storr and Choi investigated whether adults can discover the trustworthiness of other market participants through trade interactions, and thereby whom to reward or punish. Based on the results of their experiment, Storr and Choi suggest that real-world market participants may very well be able to “discover whom to trust, to reward trustworthiness, and to develop market friendships” (212). The authors also discuss how their findings resonate with scholarship that describes the market in terms of a discovery process. They adapt this literature to the discovery of other peoples’ virtues or vices. Since repeated interaction is the norm in markets (and reputation often plays a similar role), people in markets can respond to virtue or vice of other market participants in subsequent interactions. Better and more numerous trades reward the virtuous, and worse and fewer trades punish the vicious. In sum, Storr and Choi’s account suggests that markets in general do not prey on virtue; rather, the relationship of markets and virtue is a symbiosis in which virtue promotes markets and markets reward virtue and punish vice.

At the same time, however, the authors distance their findings from the debate on the existence of noxious markets, in which moral censure is placed on trade in certain goods and services. Storr and Choi believe that their findings hold regardless of the possibility of noxious markets. Chapter 7 finds the authors likewise deliberately silent on the importance of democracy in moral formation. Despite these silences, the authors provide handy reviews of the scholarly discussion of both topics. In addition to these reviews, chapter 7 also advances a moral case against market restrictions in general: if (most) markets are conducive to virtue, then restriction of markets may exact moral costs. In effect, the authors challenge detractors of markets to respond to the reverse of book’s titular question, not “do markets corrupt our morals?” but “do market restrictions corrupt our morals?” Perhaps a sequel is forthcoming from Storr and Choi.

Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? concludes with an appendix laying out the authors’ methodology, data, and data analysis. A critical admission about the limits of the empirical methodology is noted: outwardly virtuous behavior can be measured, but intention often eludes empirics. An uptick in good behavior does not necessarily correlate with rising virtue. Seemingly virtuous behavior could skyrocket, while virtue itself takes a hit.

Among the contributions made by Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? are its literature reviews. Readers will find useful, though sometimes repetitive, summaries of arguments in the debates about markets and morality. The authors argue convincingly that popular defenses of markets fail in addressing the core worry and charge that markets corrupt morals. At the same time, the authors display appropriate caution in estimating their own defense of markets, from the admission in the preface that their arguments and evidence are “suggestive rather than conclusive” (vi) to their caveats in the appendix. Nevertheless, the book promises to be an essential text for future scholarship on virtue and the market. Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? not only encapsulates the debate, it drives it forward.

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