This article reviews and criticizes Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics. Our criticism is organized into three sections. First, we argue that, even under the ideal assumptions of perfect competition, when markets generate Pareto-efficient distributions, Heath’s approach does not rule out significant harms. Second, we show that, under nonideal conditions, the MFA is either too demanding, if efficiency is to be attained, or not sufficiently demanding, if the goal of Pareto efficiency is abandoned. Finally, we argue that Heath’s appeal to regulations and specific moral requirements as a remedy for market failures is unlikely to safeguard efficiency and exposes a number of general worries regarding the moral force of the MFA. We end this article with a constructive suggestion on how to adjust the MFA to avoid these problems while preserving its contractualist and Paretian spirit.

本文回顾并批评了约瑟夫·希思 (Joseph Heath) 的商业道德市场失灵方法 (MFA)。我们的批评分为三个部分。首先，我们认为，即使在完全竞争的理想假设下，当市场产生帕累托有效分布时，希思的方法也不排除重大危害。其次，我们表明，在非理想条件下，如果要达到效率，MFA 要么要求太高，要么如果放弃帕累托效率的目标，要求不够充分。最后，我们认为希思诉诸法规和具体道德要求作为市场失灵的补救措施不太可能保障效率，并暴露了对外交部道德力量的一些普遍担忧。我们以关于如何调整 MFA 以避免这些问题，同时保留其契约主义和帕累托精神的建设性建议来结束本文。