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The Moral Economists: Understanding the Human Element in Economic Decisions
Introduction:
Ever wonder why people sometimes make seemingly irrational economic choices? Why do individuals prioritize fairness over maximizing profit, or altruism over self-interest? This isn't a flaw in economic theory; rather, it's a crucial piece often missing from traditional models: the moral dimension. This post delves into the fascinating world of "The Moral Economists," exploring how ethical considerations, social norms, and cultural values significantly impact economic behavior. We'll uncover the insights offered by this evolving field and how it reshapes our understanding of markets, policy, and human interaction within the economic sphere.
H2: Beyond Rational Choice: The Limitations of Traditional Economics
Traditional economic models frequently rely on the assumption of homo economicus – a rational, self-interested individual solely driven by profit maximization. While this model offers valuable insights, it often fails to explain real-world phenomena. People regularly act against their own perceived financial gain, prioritizing factors like fairness, reciprocity, and social responsibility. This gap highlights the need for a more nuanced perspective, one that incorporates the moral and ethical dimensions of economic decision-making.
H3: The Rise of Behavioral Economics and its Moral Turn
Behavioral economics emerged to address the shortcomings of traditional models, incorporating psychological insights into economic analysis. However, even behavioral economics initially focused primarily on cognitive biases and heuristics. The "Moral Economists" take this further, emphasizing the crucial role of morality, ethics, and social norms in shaping economic choices. This isn't just about individual biases; it's about the deeply ingrained moral frameworks that guide our interactions within economic systems.
H2: Key Principles of Moral Economics
Moral economics investigates various interconnected principles:
H3: Fairness and Reciprocity: The Foundation of Trust
Fairness and reciprocity are fundamental to economic exchange. Trust, a cornerstone of any thriving market, is built upon the expectation of fair treatment and mutual benefit. When individuals perceive unfairness or exploitation, they're more likely to reject profitable opportunities, even at a personal cost. This demonstrates the powerful influence of moral considerations on economic behavior.
H3: Social Norms and Institutional Embeddedness
Economic activity doesn't occur in a vacuum. It's deeply embedded within social structures, cultural norms, and institutional contexts. These factors significantly shape individual preferences and expectations. What's considered "fair" or "acceptable" can vary drastically across cultures and societies, underscoring the importance of understanding local norms when analyzing economic behavior.
H3: Altruism and Cooperation: Beyond Self-Interest
Altruism and cooperation, while seemingly contradictory to self-interest, are prevalent in many economic interactions. People often contribute to public goods, engage in charitable giving, and participate in collective action, even when there's no direct financial incentive. Moral economists explore the motivations behind such prosocial behavior, revealing the complex interplay between self-interest and altruistic impulses.
H2: Implications for Policy and Market Design
Understanding the moral dimensions of economics has profound implications for policymaking and market design.
H3: Designing Fair and Equitable Systems
Ignoring the moral aspects of economic decisions can lead to policies that are inefficient and socially unjust. By incorporating moral considerations into policy design, policymakers can create systems that are both economically efficient and ethically sound, fostering greater trust and cooperation.
H3: Addressing Market Failures Through Moral Frameworks
Market failures, such as externalities and information asymmetry, often stem from a lack of consideration for ethical implications. Moral economics can help identify and address these failures by promoting transparency, accountability, and socially responsible behavior within markets.
H2: The Future of Moral Economics
The field of moral economics is constantly evolving, integrating insights from various disciplines like sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Future research will likely focus on:
H3: The Impact of Technology on Moral Decision-Making
The digital age presents new challenges and opportunities for moral economists. Issues like algorithmic bias, data privacy, and the ethics of artificial intelligence require careful consideration within the context of economic interactions.
H3: Globalization and the Convergence/Divergence of Moral Norms
Globalization has led to increased interaction between diverse cultures with varying moral norms. Studying how these norms converge or diverge in the global economic landscape is crucial for understanding future economic trends.
Conclusion:
The Moral Economists offer a critical counterpoint to traditional economic thinking. By acknowledging the significance of ethical considerations, social norms, and cultural values, they provide a more realistic and comprehensive understanding of human behavior within economic systems. This perspective is not merely academic; it's essential for creating more just, efficient, and sustainable economic policies and markets.
FAQs
1. What is the difference between behavioral economics and moral economics? Behavioral economics focuses on cognitive biases and heuristics, while moral economics emphasizes the role of morality, ethics, and social norms in shaping economic decisions. Moral economics builds upon behavioral economics but goes further in exploring the ethical dimensions.
2. How can moral economics inform policy decisions? Moral economics can help policymakers design more equitable and efficient policies by considering the ethical implications of their choices. It can help identify and address market failures caused by a lack of ethical considerations.
3. Does moral economics suggest that people are always altruistic? No, moral economics acknowledges the complexities of human motivation. It recognizes that individuals are often driven by a mix of self-interest and altruistic impulses, with moral considerations playing a significant role in shaping their economic decisions.
4. How does culture influence moral economic behavior? Cultural norms and values strongly influence what is considered "fair," "just," or "acceptable" within a society. These cultural factors shape individual preferences and expectations, significantly impacting economic choices.
5. What are some future research areas in moral economics? Future research will likely focus on the impact of technology on moral decision-making, the influence of globalization on moral norms, and the development of more sophisticated models that integrate moral considerations into economic analysis.
| the moral economists: The Moral Economists Tim Rogan, 2019-03-19 A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens What’s wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another critical tradition, developed across the twentieth century in Britain, in which material deprivation was less important than moral or spiritual desolation. Tim Rogan focuses on three of the twentieth century’s most influential critics of capitalism—R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Making arguments about the relationships between economics and ethics in modernity, their works commanded wide readerships, shaped research agendas, and influenced public opinion. Rejecting the social philosophy of laissez-faire but fearing authoritarianism, these writers sought out forms of social solidarity closer than individualism admitted but freer than collectivism allowed. They discovered such solidarities while teaching economics, history, and literature to workers in the north of England and elsewhere. They wrote histories of capitalism to make these solidarities articulate. They used makeshift languages of “tradition” and “custom” to describe them until Thompson patented the idea of the “moral economy.” Their program began as a way of theorizing everything economics left out, but in challenging utilitarian orthodoxy in economics from the outside, they anticipated the work of later innovators inside economics. Examining the moral cornerstones of a twentieth-century critique of capitalism, The Moral Economists explains why this critique fell into disuse, and how it might be reformulated for the twenty-first century. |
| the moral economists: The Moral Economy Samuel Bowles, 2016-05-28 Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends. |
| the moral economists: A/moral Economics Claudia C. Klaver, 2003 A/Moral Economics is an interdisciplinary historical study that examines the ways which social science of economics emerged through the discourse of the literary, namely the dominant moral and fictional narrative genres of early and mid-Victorian England. In particular, this book argues that the classical economic theory of early-nineteenth-century England gained its broad cultural authority not directly, through the well- known texts of such canonical economic theorists as David Ricardo, but indirectly through the narratives constructed by Ricardo's popularizers John Ramsey McCulloch and Harriet Martineau. By reexamining the rhetorical and institutional contexts of classical political economy in the nineteenth century, A/Moral Economics repositions the popular writings of both supporters and detractors of political economy as central to early political economists' bids for a cultural voice. The now marginalized economic writings of McCulloch, Martineau, Henry Mayhew, and John Ruskin, as well as the texts of Charles Dickens and J. S. Mill, must be read as constituting in part the entities they have been read as merely criticizing. It is this repressed moral logic that resurfaces in a range of textual contradictions--not only in the writings of Ricardo's supporters, but, ironically, in those of his critics as well. |
| the moral economists: What Money Can't Buy Michael J. Sandel, 2012-04-26 Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life-medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In What Money Can't Buy, Sandel examines one of the biggest ethical questions of our time and provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honour and money cannot buy? |
| the moral economists: Altruism, Morality, and Economic Theory Edmund S. Phelps, 1975-05-21 Presents a collection of papers by economists theorizing on the roles of altruism and morality versus self-interest in the shaping of human behavior and institutions. Specifically, the authors examine why some persons behave in an altruistic way without any apparent reward, thus defying the economist's model of utility maximization. The chapters are accompanied by commentaries from representatives of other disciplines, including law and philosophy. |
| the moral economists: The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior David C. Rose, 2011-11-25 It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who possess them to be regarded as trustworthy. |
| the moral economists: Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy Daniel Hausman, Michael McPherson, Debra Satz, 2017 This book shows how careful attention to moral reasoning can enrich economic understanding and clarify the importance and the limits of an economic analysis of policy problems. |
| the moral economists: The Moral Case for Profit Maximization Robert White, 2020-04-01 The Moral Case for Profit Maximization argues that profit maximization is moral when businessmen seek to maximize profit by creating goods or services that are of objective value. Traditionally, profit maximization has been defended on economic grounds. Profit, economists argue, incentivizes businessmen to produce goods and services. In this view, businessmen do not need to be virtuous as long as they deliver the goods. It challenges the traditional defense of profit maximization, arguing that profit maximization is morally ambitious because it requires businessmen to form normative abstractions and to cultivate a virtuous character. In so doing, the author also challenges the moral basis of corporate social responsibility. Proponents of CSR argue that businessmen can do good while doing well. This book argues that businessmen already do good by maximizing profit, drawing upon the histories of the wheel, the refrigerator, and the shipping container, as well as the biographies of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison to demonstrate the role of values in the creation of material goods and the role of the virtues in value creation. The author challenges readers to rethink the relationship between profit, value, and virtue. |
| the moral economists: Moral Hazard Juan Flores Zendejas, Norbert Gaillard, Rick J. Michalek, 2021-12-30 Moral Hazard is a core concept in economics. In a nutshell, moral hazard reflects the reduced incentive to protect against risk where an entity is (or believes it will be) protected from its consequences, whether through an insurance arrangement or an implicit or explicit guarantee system. It is fundamentally driven by information asymmetry, arises in all sectors of the economy, including banking, medical insurance, financial insurance, and governmental support, undermines the stability of our economic systems and has burdened taxpayers in all developed countries, resulting in significant costs to the community. Despite the seriousness and pervasiveness of moral hazard, policymakers and scholars have failed to address this issue. This book fills this gap. It covers 200 years of moral hazard: from its origins in the 19th century to the bailouts announced in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the ethics and other fundamental issues connected to moral hazard. Part II provides historical and empirical evidence on moral hazard in international finance. It examines in turn the role of the export credit industry, the international lender of last resort, and the IMF. Finally, Part III examines specific sectors such as automobile, banking, and the US industry at large. This is the first book to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of moral hazard and explain why addressing this issue has become crucial today. As such, it will attract interest from scholars across different fields, including economists, political scientists and lawyers. |
| the moral economists: Moral Discourse in the History of Economic Thought Laurent Dobuzinskis, 2022-06-23 Providing an account of the development of economic thought, this book explores the extent to which economic ideas are rooted in moral values. Adopting an approach rooted in ‘pragmatism’, the work explores key questions which have been considered by economists since the classical political economists. These include: what degree of priority ought to be granted to property rights among all individual liberties; whether uncertainties in economic life justify investing political authorities with the power to stabilize business cycles; whether it is better to trust entrepreneurial initiatives to resolve societal dilemmas or to centralize policy-making in the hands of a benevolent government. The chapters argue that economic thought has evolved from an emphasis on sympathy (as defined by Adam Smith) and that there has more recently been a rediscovery of the significance of sympathy reinvented as fair reciprocity in the wake of the emergence of behavioural economics and its connection to evolutionary psychology. This key book is of great interest to readers in the history of ideas, political and moral philosophy, and political economy. |
| the moral economists: Words, Objects and Events in Economics Peter Róna, László Zsolnai, Agnieszka Wincewicz-Price, 2020-09-03 This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent. |
| the moral economists: Moral Markets Paul J. Zak, 2010-12-16 Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy. |
| the moral economists: "Are Economists Basically Immoral?" Paul T. Heyne, 2008 Art Economists Basically Immoral? and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion is a collection of Heyne's essays focused on an issue that preoccupied him throughout his life and which concerns many free-market skeptics - namely, how to reconcile the apparent selfishness of a free-market economy with ethical behavior. Written with the nonexpert in mind, and in a highly engaging style, these essays will interest students of economics, professional economists with an interest in ethical and theological topics, and Christians who seek to explore economic issues.--BOOK JACKET. |
| the moral economists: Economics as Moral Science Bernard Hodgson, 2001 Economics as Moral Science investigates the problem of the ethical neutrality of mainstream economic theory within the context of the methodology of economics as a science. Against the conventional wisdom, the author argues that there are serious moral presuppositions to the theory, but that economics could still count as a scientific or rational form of inquiry. The basic questions addressed - the ethical implications of economics, its status as a scientific mode of theory-construction, and the relation between these factors - are absolutely fundamental ones for an understanding of contemporary economics, the philosophy of the human sciences, and our current market culture. Moreover, the study provides a thorough philosophical analysis of the critical issues at stake from the inside, from the credible perspective of a particular, but foundational economic theory - the neoclassical theory of rational choice. |
| the moral economists: Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy Daniel M. Hausman, Michael S. McPherson, 1996-03-28 Discusses how standard economics may be improved by an understanding of moral philosophy. |
| the moral economists: Ethics, Rationality, and Economic Behaviour Francesco Farina, Frank Hahn, Stefano Vannucci, 1996 The connection between economics and ethics is as old as economics itself, and central to both disciplines. The essays included in the present volume provide an analysis of the connections between ethics and economics as viewed from several different - oft |
| the moral economists: The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith, 1761 |
| the moral economists: Economics and the Virtues Jennifer A. Baker, Mark D. White, 2016 A volume by leading economists and philosophers that explores the contributions that virtue ethics can make to economics. Provides historical and modern insights in both economics and philosophy and offers suggestions for incorporating the ethics of virtue into economics to make it more applicable to moral dilemmas in the world outside the models. |
| the moral economists: Moral Sentiments and Material Interests Herbert Gintis, 2005 Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of strong reciprocators in a social group. Presenting an overview of research in economics, anthropology, evolutionary and human biology, social psychology, and sociology, the book deals with both the theoretical foundations and the policy implications of this explanation for cooperation. Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing.) |
| the moral economists: The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics Mark D. White, 2019 This Oxford Handbook explores the various ways ethics can, does, and should inform economic theory and practice. With esteemed contributors from economics and philosophy, it highlights the close relationshop between ethics and economics in the past and lays a foundation for further integration going forward. |
| the moral economists: Unnecessary Suffering Maurice Glasman, 1996 They have a dream - a dream of a world where everything and everybody can be bought and sold, a world run efficiently by managers, a world where 'freedom' means the free market. Maurice Glasman argues that this dream is an unrealisable utopia - or a nightmare if put into practice. He takes the management-speak cliches of the New Right, and New Labour alike and turns them on their head: managers are not efficient, they are a barrier to work and production; 'liberal democracy' - which now means the free market and the strong state - should be turned upside down, with democracy at the level of the economy and liberalism at the level of the state. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, Glasman argues that there is no need to surrender solidarity and human rights to the march of the managers and the market. There is another tradition, represented by the labour movement and the Catholic church in West Germany, which defended democracy in the workplace and reined back the savageries of capitalism. It was the tradition that Solidarity in Poland could have looked to after 1989, instead of allowing itself to be hijacked by the New Right and statist communitarianism. Unnecessary Suffering examines this tradition and issues a call that cries out that human beings and the environment cannot, should not, and will not be treated as commodities. |
| the moral economists: Cents and Sensibility Gary Saul Morson, Morton Schapiro, 2018-09-25 In Cents and Sensibility, an eminent literary critic and a leading economist make the case that the humanities—especially the study of literature—offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and just. Arguing that Adam Smith’s heirs include Austen, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as much as Keynes and Friedman, Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith’s great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The authors contend that a few decades later, Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. More than anyone, the great writers can offer economists something they need—a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture, and narrative. Original, provocative, and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a dialogue between economics and the humanities and also shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself. Featuring a new preface, this book brings economics back to its place in the human conversation. |
| the moral economists: The Economics and the Ethics of Constitutional Order James M. Buchanan, 1991 Nobel Laureate James Buchanan questions how people can live together in peace, prosperity, and justice |
| the moral economists: Law, Economics, and Morality Eyal Zamir, Barak Medina, 2010 This work examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. |
| the moral economists: Humanomics Vernon L. Smith, Bart J. Wilson, 2019-01-24 Articulates Adam Smith's model of human sociality, illustrated in experimental economic games that relate easily to business and everyday life. Shows how to re-humanize the study of economics in the twenty-first century by integrating Adam Smith's two great books into contemporary empirical analysis. |
| the moral economists: Rumours of a Moral Economy Christopher Lind, 2010 Since the beginning of capitalism--with its mathematical equations and laws of supply and demand--its champions have claimed that studying the moral aspects of the theory interfere with its natural function. Yet, as this ethicist and theologian argues, economies are always deeply integrated in social relationships, in morality, and in ethics. Using historical examples, the book argues that when economically hard-pressed people come together to defend their common rights, they are giving voice to the principle of a moral economy that does not cheat the lower classes. Particular attention is paid to the 18th-century English food riots, the spontaneous resistance of 20th-century Malaysian farmers, and the North Americans who picketed the homes of Wall Street bankers in 2008 and 2009. |
| the moral economists: The Economist's Oath George F. DeMartino, 2011-01-26 Economics is today among the most influential of all professions. Economists alter the course of economic affairs and deeply affect the lives of current and future generations. Yet, virtually alone among the major professions, economics lacks a body of professional ethics to guide its practitioners. Over the past century the profession consistently has refused to adopt or even explore professional economic ethics. As a consequence, economists are largely unprepared for the ethical challenges they face in their work. The Economist's Oath challenges the economic orthodoxy. It builds the case for professional economic ethics step by step-first by rebutting economists' arguments against and then by building an escalating positive case for professional economic ethics. The book surveys what economists do and demonstrates that their work is ethically fraught. It explores the principles, questions, and debates that inform professional ethics in other fields, and identifies the lessons that economics can take from the best established bodies of professional ethics. George DeMartino demonstrates that in the absence of professional ethics, well-meaning economists have committed basic, preventable ethical errors that have caused severe harm for societies across the globe. The book investigates the reforms in economic education that would be necessary to recognize professional ethical obligations, and concludes with the Economist's Oath, drawing on the book's central insights and highlighting the virtues that are required of the ethical economist. The Economist's Oath seeks to initiate a serious conversation among economists about the ethical content of their work. It examines the ethical entailments of the immense influence over the lives of others that the economics profession now enjoys, and proposes a framework for the new field of professional economic ethics. |
| the moral economists: Ethics Out of Economics John Broome, 1999-02-18 Many economic problems are also ethical problems: should we value economic equality? how much should we care about preserving the environment? how should medical resources be divided between saving life and enhancing life? This book examines some of the practical issues that lie between economics and ethics, and shows how utility theory can contribute to ethics. John Broome's work has, unusually, combined sophisticated economic and philosophical expertise, and Ethics Out of Economics brings together some of his most important essays, augmented with an updated introduction. The first group of essays deals with the relation between preference and value, the second with various questions about the formal structure of good, and the concluding section with the value of life. This work is of interest and importance for both economists and philosophers, and shows powerfully how economic methods can contribute to moral philosophy. |
| the moral economists: Economics and Ethics of Private Property Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 2006 |
| the moral economists: Economics of Good and Evil Tomas Sedlacek, 2011-07-01 Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the Young Guns and one of the five hot minds in economics by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. Even the most sophisticated mathematical model, Sedlacek writes, is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us. Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value. |
| the moral economists: The Morality of Radical Economics Ron P. Baiman, 2016-08-31 This book is in equal parts a treatise on morality and economics, a critique of neoclassical orthodoxy, a brief for replacing mainstream economics with a radical political economics, and an argument for the abandonment of neoliberal capitalism in favor of democratic socialism. It includes a detailed proposal for a demand and cost alternative to supply and demand analysis and an in-depth technical critique of both neoclassical high theory and applied microeconomic analysis demonstrating that these are not only infeasible or immoral, but have directly contributed to public policy disasters. Further, the book suggests that only a moral economics in the form of radical political economy can address the looming economic and environmental crises of today’s world. Baiman begins with an introduction to morality and ethics in both general sciences and in economics in particular. He then guides readers through evidence of how neoclassical economics has not only failed to remain objective and value-free, but has become an ideology of apologetics protecting an immoral system. In addition to breaking down real-world examples to demonstrate his assertions, Baiman analyzes a theoretical Utopia design exercise. He concludes by arguing that the only form of economics that supports widely shared human values—such as social equity, democracy, and solidarity—is so-called radical economics, and that all true economics science should be directed toward achieving more socially productive economic activity. An invaluable guide to morality and economics, this book will appeal to researchers and teachers looking to change the way we think about economics, policy, and society. |
| the moral economists: Moral Dimension Amitai Etzioni, 2010-05-11 Blending elements of psychology, philosophy, and sociology with economics, Etzioni presents a bold new vision of the social sciences - one which proposes that broader moral, social and political concerns modify economic behaviour and shape individual decision-making. In establishing the necessitary of moral and social considerations in economic behaviour, he provides a provocative new framework for a more comprehensive, ethical and realistic approach to the social sciences today. |
| the moral economists: The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics George F. DeMartino, Deirdre N. McCloskey, 2016-01-04 For over a century the economics profession has extended its reach to encompass policy formation and institutional design while largely ignoring the ethical challenges that attend the profession's influence over the lives of others. Economists have proven to be disinterested in ethics. Embracing emotivism, they often treat ethics a matter of mere preference. Moreover, economists tend to be hostile to professional economic ethics, which they incorrectly equate with a code of conduct that would be at best ineffectual and at worst disruptive to good economic practice. But good ethical reasoning is not reducible to mere tastes, and professional ethics is not reducible to a code. Instead, professional economic ethics refers to a new field of investigation-a tradition of sustained and lively inquiry into the irrepressible ethical entailments of academic and applied economic practice. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics explores a wide range of questions related to the nature of ethical economic practice and the content of professional economic ethics. It explores current thinking that has emerged in these areas while widening substantially the terrain of economic ethics. There has never been a volume that poses so directly and intensively the question of the need for and content of professional ethics for economics. The Handbook incorporates the work of leading scholars and practitioners, including academic economists from various theoretical traditions; applied economists, beyond academia, whose work has direct and immense social impact; and philosophers, professional ethicists, and others whose work has addressed the nature of professionalism and its implications for ethical practice. |
| the moral economists: The Future of Capitalism Paul Collier, 2018-10-04 *FEATURED IN BILL GATES'S 2019 SUMMER READING RECOMMENDATIONS* From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of Britain and other Western societies: thriving cities versus the provinces, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit and the return of the far right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts - economic, social and cultural - with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervour of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world's most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself - and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the 20th century. |
| the moral economists: Economy and Society: Selected Writings Karl Polanyi, 2018-06-29 Few figures are more crucial to understanding the upheavals of our contemporary era than Karl Polanyi. In a world riven by social and economic crises, from rising inequality to the decay of democratic institutions and profound technological disruption, Polanyi’s path-breaking account of the dynamics of market capitalism and his defence of society and nature against the dangerous tendencies of the market capitalist system are more relevant than ever. This book brings together Polanyi’s most important articles and essays to give a unique selection of his essential shorter writings, mixing classic texts with significant but previously little-known pieces. It highlights the coherence and richness of Polanyi’s theoretical and political approach, making it indispensable for understanding his overarching intellectual contribution. The volume includes his interwar writings, which deal with the world economic crisis and the socialist alternative to conservative and fascist developments; his reflection on political theory and the international situation after the war; and his comparative studies of economic institutions. Polanyi’s political writings are complemented and supported by the critique of economic determinism and what he termed ‘our obsolete market mentality’. This book is an invaluable companion to Polanyi’s masterpiece, The Great Transformation, and an essential resource for students and scholars of political economy, sociology, history and political philosophy. |
| the moral economists: Economics for Humans Julie A. Nelson, 2018-12-11 At its core, an economy is about providing goods and services for human well-being. But many economists and critics preach that an economy is something far different: a cold and heartless system that operates outside of human control. In this impassioned and perceptive work, Julie A. Nelson asks a compelling question: given that our economic world is something that we as humans create, aren’t ethics and human relationships—dimensions of a full and rich life—intrinsically part of the picture? Economics for Humans argues against the well-ingrained notion that economics is immune to moral values and distant from human relationships. Here, Nelson locates the impediment to a more considerate economic world in an assumption that is shared by both neoliberals and the political left. Despite their seemingly insurmountable differences, both make use of the metaphor, first proposed by Adam Smith, that the economy is a machine. This pervasive idea, Nelson argues, has blinded us to the qualities that make us work and care for one another—qualities that also make businesses thrive and markets grow. We can wed our interest in money with our justifiable concerns about ethics and social well-being. And we can do so if we recognize that an economy is not a machine, but a living thing in need of attention and careful tending. This second edition has been updated and refined throughout, with expanded discussions of many topics and a new chapter that investigates the apparent conflict between economic well-being and ecological sustainability. Further developing the main points of the first edition, Economics for Humans will continue to both invigorate and inspire readers to reshape the way they view the economy, its possibilities, and their place within it. |
| the moral economists: ECONOMIC SENTIMENTS Emma Rothschild, 2013-02-04 A benchmark in the history of economics and of political ideas, Rothschild shows us the origins of laissez-faire economic thought and its relation to political conseratism in an unquiet world. |
| the moral economists: Economic Life in the Real World Charles Stafford, 2020-01-02 This clearly written and engaging book brings together anthropology, psychology and economics to show how these three human science disciplines address fundamental questions related to the psychology of economic life in human societies - questions that matter for people from every society and every background. Based around vivid examples drawn from field research in China and Taiwan, the author encourages anthropologists to take the psychological dimensions of economic life more seriously, but also invites psychologists and economists to pay much more attention than they currently do to cultural and historical variables. In the end, this intrinsically radical book challenges us to step away from disciplinary assumptions and to reflect more deeply on what really matters to us in our collective social and economic life. |
| the moral economists: The Acquisitive Society R. H. Tawney, 2023-06-09 The Acquisitive Society was written by R. H. Tawney and published in 1920. Tawney herein criticizes the selfish individualism of modern industrial societies. He argues that capitalism corrupts via the promotion of economic self-interest, leading to aimless production in response to greed and insatiable acquisitiveness, and hence to perversions of industrialism. He attests further that, by extension, nationalism leads to the perversion of imperialism and to a necessarily failed balance of power strategy, resulting in unnecessary wars. It is a commonplace that the characteristic virtue of Englishmen is their power of sustained practical activity, and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles. They are incurious as to theory, take fundamentals for granted, and are more interested in the state of the roads than in their place on the map. And it might fairly be argued that in ordinary times that combination of intellectual tameness with practical energy is sufficiently serviceable to explain, if not to justify, the equanimity with which its possessors bear the criticism of more mentally adventurous nations. It is the mood of those who have made their bargain with fate and are content to take what it offers without re-opening the deal. It leaves the mind free to concentrate undisturbed upon profitable activities, because it is not distracted by a taste for unprofitable speculations. Most generations, it might be said, walk in a path which they neither make, nor discover, but accept; the main thing is that they should march. The blinkers worn by Englishmen enable them to trot all the more steadily along the beaten {2} road, without being disturbed by curiosity as to their destination. |
| the moral economists: Reckoning with Markets James Halteman, Edd S. Noell, 2012-02-02 Undergraduate economics students begin and end their study of economics with the simple claim that economics is value free. Only in a policy role will values and beliefs enter into economic work; there can be little meaningful dialogue by economists about such personal views and opinions. This view, now well over 200 years old, has been challenged by heterodox thinkers in economics, and philosophers and social scientists outside the discipline all along the way. However, much of the debate in modern times has been narrowly focused on philosophical methodological issues on one hand or theological/sectarian concerns on the other. None of this filters down to the typical undergraduate even in advanced courses on the history of economic thought. This book presents the notion that economic thinking cannot escape value judgments at any level and that this understanding has been the dominant view throughout most of history. It shows how, from ancient times, people who thought about economic matters integrated moral reflection into their thinking. Reflecting on the Enlightenment and the birth of economics as a science, Halteman and Noell illustrate the process by which values and beliefs were excluded from economics proper. They also appraise the reader with relevant developments over the last half-century which offer promise of re-integrating moral reflection in economic research. With the advent of interdependency concepts and game theory, behavioral economics and the infusion of other social sciences, especially psychology, into economic considerations, the door is once again open to moral reflection. It is a sensitive subject that can be divisive for many and there is little if any assessable literature on the topic at the undergraduate level. One way to approach the subject is to follow the path of the great thinkers of the past and observe how they worked through economic issues from a set of values that was foundational to their thinking. This places moral thinking in a context illuminating the complexity and importance of moral reflection and illustrating its impact on the culture of the times. Reckoning with Markets follows this method with a deliberate effort to cast the material in terms that will engage the undergraduate student. A number of vignettes which apply the perspectives of key figures in the history of economic thought to modern values and policy questions are provided. |
Moral economics - Wiley Online Library
today motivate economists and our fellow citizens. The problem – that a moral economics would have to address – is not about our values, but instead our continued use of an anachronistic …
The Principal Agent Problem: Moral Hazard - Boston University
The moral hazard problem is interesting only if A is risk-averse (i.e., there is a need for P to insure A, but perfect insurance will create an incentive problem: A will exercise too little e ort), …
Moral economy: Rethinking a radical concept - diposit.ub.edu
original moral economists point at nothing other than a historical shift from a particular moral economy of capitalism to a new moral economy. Following this line of thought, our article runs …
Book Review: Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and …
that economists can learn from moral philosophy. Part 4 of the book is devoted to “moral mathematics,” with one chapter outlining social choice theory and another game theory. Given …
THE MORAL ECONOMY AND ISLAMIC ECONOMICS: …
To him, it refers to the “the moral economists’ effort to develop a normative theory of the economy together with a related critique of the market” (Booth, 1994, 653). Starting primarily with …
Economists as Worldly Philosophers - American Economic …
conceived of their discipline more broadly, and more in terms of moral imperatives, than most economists seem to do today. I. Examples Adam Smith was a professor, not of economics but …
Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy. By Daniel M.
McPherson seek to demonstrate to an audience of economists how moral questions arise in economics and how possessing some knowledge of ethics might improve their understanding …
Citizenship, Identity and Social History - Cambridge …
Brass, "Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements, and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-)Modernized (Middle) Peasant", Journal of Peasant Studies, 18 (1991), pp. 173- …
The Journal of Economic Perspectives Fall 2013
Economics and Moral Virtues Michael J. Sandel, “Market Reasoning as Moral Reasoning: Why Economists Should Re-engage with Political Philosophy” Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden, …
Citizenship, Identity and Social History
Brass, "Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements, and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-)Modernized (Middle) Peasant", Journal of Peasant Studies, 18 (1991), pp. 173 …
Moral Views of Market Society - Sociology
First, economists still endorse the doux com-merce thesis and generally emphasize the pos-itive effect of market institutions on civil soci-ety, politics, and culture. ... www.annualreviews.org • …
The rational peasant - Springer
The moral economists see the shift from precapitalist corporate villages to open villages and the change from feudal, diffuse, multi-stranded ties between agrarian elites and peasants to' single …
Liberty University Helms School of Government
Moral Arguments of Aid Proponent Economists It would be of little surprise to hear a philosopher, politician, activist, or aid worker lobby for increased aid flows from the more developed to less …
The German controversy on the methods of moral statistics …
German economists discussed and contributed to moral statistics especially in the second half of the 19th century. It seems natural for German ethical-historical economists to be drawn to …
The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P.
The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism Tim Rogan Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017 (280 pages) Before Adam …
Laissez-faire, Economists and - Springer
growth rate. However, some economists saw the case for laissez-faire as primarily a moral one, linked to arguments from evangelical Christian theology. Where Ricardo and many other …
Leslie L Boden Monica Galizzi* - rutgerslawreview.com
Mar 9, 2018 · The Moral Hazard Blinders Economists are frequently driven by a search for efficient solutions.6 As a consequence, when they study workers' compensation 3. Id. at 1061 …
Amartya Sen and the Revival of Ethical Tradition in …
largely deprived economics of the moral compass that was once one of its hall-marks. In this regard, Sen made a signicant contribution in placing ethics back into ... Nonetheless, despite …
called moral economy approach. Moral economists argue …
thesis of the moral economists, and new evidence of the complexity of revolution in Asia. The Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A. WILLIAM J. DUIKER LE CAMBODGE ET LA …
Annual Review of Economics Moral Boundaries - Benjamin …
moral boundaries using experiments,large-scale surveys,observational data,and natural language ... Economists and psychologists conceptualize and measure people’s moral boundaries in …
The Political and Moral Economies of Neoliberalism: Mises …
This article compares the political and moral economies of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, the two most important Austrian economists in the twentieth cen tury. It moves beyond …
Financial crises and the challenge of “Moral hazard” - Springer
lectures about moral-hazard from well-meaning economists." And finally, George Soros avers that: "The IMF is part of the problem, not the solution." Perhaps other social scientists besides …
Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy
importance they do” (p. 3). This laudatory modesty about the role of moral theo-rizing in influencing moral practice contrasts sharply with the more grandiose view that an ethical …
The Role of Moral Sentiments in Economic Decision Making
moral character, namely, the standards of absolute moral perfection versus mere adherence to social convention. In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, for example, Adam Smith (1759, p. 29 …
How Economists Use Literature and Drama - University of …
to economists is whether economists use these materials, because as Jacob Viner pragmatically defined the field, “Economics is what economists do.”’ That test is the primary purpose of this …
CHAPTER 7: ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR AND RATIONALITY
optimistic light—including those of economists, whom he assumed were motivated by a desire to improve the human condition. He specifically focused on the reduction of poverty so as to …
Economics as a Moral Science - JSTOR
Economics as a Moral Science By A. B. Atkinson Nuffield College, Oxford Final version received 10 March 2008. Economists frequently make judgments about economic welfare, but there is …
The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Peasant …
tions made by moral economists. Moral Econom 1 Peasant protests frequently accompany state making, commercialization of agriculture, and colonialism. Moral economists link these …
(Why) do selfish people self-select in economics?
individual economists with respect to a normative moral standard; and the abundance of value judgments, which reflects a level of emotional involvement that surpasses the typical …
Chapter 2: Thinking like an Economist Principles of …
Moral hazard and adverse selection. b. The single most important purpose of this book (course) is to help you learn the economist’s way of thinking. ... Economists use models to learn about …
Is There A Moral School of Economics? The Profundity and …
Economists, for example, would seem to gain little by formally engag - ing CV. If they assent to its unique and insightful reasoning, it seems to implicate their own teaching and scholarship as …
On Moral Hazard and Macroeconomics - home.uchicago.edu
On Moral Hazard and Macroeconomics Roger B. Myerson "A model of moral-hazard credit cycles" Journal of Political Economy 120(5):847- ... economists still need to learn more. I'd …
The Moral Effects of Economic Teaching - JSTOR
The Moral Effects of Economic Teaching1 Amitai Etzioni2 ... With a few exceptions, these studies find the economists and economics students are more likely to exhibit a range of "debased" …
The Journal of Economic Perspectives Fall 2013
Economics and Moral Virtues Michael J. Sandel, “Market Reasoning as Moral Reasoning: Why Economists Should Re-engage with Political Philosophy” Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden, …
MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH: …
MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE JOHN R. COMMONS LECTURE, 2006* by Benjamin M. Eriedman** I feel highly honored to receive this distin-guished award …
On Moral Hazard and Macroeconomics - University of Chicago
On Moral Hazard and Macroeconomics Roger B. Myerson Brigham Young University March 2012 "A model of moral-hazard credit cycles" Journal of Political Economy 120(5):847-878 ...
Merging Moral Economics - JSTOR
from the moral economist's perspective, has escaped the control of the community (Booth, 1994; Polanyi, 1957). Moral economists work from a tradition begun by Aristotle (Nicomachean …
The Vested Interests and the Evolving Moral Economy of the …
Abstract: The British historian E.P. Thompson (1971) developed the concept of “moral economy” to analyse the food riot in eighteenth-century England. The current paper aims at elaborating …
Moral Economy and Development Economics Introduction
'Moral economy' is a form of inquiry that examines how ordinary economic practices and relationships embody or affect moral dispositions, evaluations, rules, values, customs and …
Forging the Consumption Paradigm: A Morally Neutral Moral …
It makes moral demands while simultaneously claiming to make no norma-tive demands, out of respect for the positive/normative divide. We have already seen in previous chapters how …
Self-Interest: The Economist’s Straitjacket - Harvard …
1.2 Economists as Tribes The capitalist model presented above has captured the interest of a variety of economists and moral philosophers. Building on theories of supply and demand, …
Markets and Morality: How Does Competition Affect Moral …
2007). Economists and non-economists alike hotly contest the proper scope of markets (Templeton 2008). Economists have tended to focus on the boundary between markets and …
The 'Moral Economy' of the Pre-Revolutionary French …
Proponents of the moral economy conception emphasize that the French economy was primarily agricultural, that markets were limited and that peasants were primarily subsistence producers …
Words of Praise for Economics: From the Dismal Science to …
Thus, the economist has a moral responsibility to help society see where it might go. Today, the moral dilemma facing society, and thus economists, is not to defend the status quo with …
The Moral Wrestler: Ignored by Maslow - Springer
updated economists’ conception of human nature, between volunteeringandwatchingTV,makingadonationandremov-ing cash from the passing plate, …
The Moral Behaviour of Ethicists: Peer Opinion - Gwern
following: moral reflection tends to promote moral behaviour, and professional ethicists are on average both more prone to and more skilled at moral reflection than non-ethicists. On the …
Lectures in Labor Economics
Moral Hazard with Limited Liability, Multitasking, Career Concerns, and Applications 85 1. Limited Liability 85 iii. Lectures in Labor Economics 2. Linear Contracts 89 ... to skills (even if these …
Welfare Economics and the Moral Relevance of Culture
The obvious moral claim: individual well-being The objectives and techniques of all types of market-based approaches can be best categorised under the broad heading of neoclassical …
Market Reasoning as Moral Reasoning: Why Economists …
Moral Entanglements Economists have not always understood their subject in this way. The classical economists, going back to Adam Smith, conceived of economics as a branch of …
