In Defense of Deontology and Kant: A Reply to van Staveren

In this note, I respond to a recent article by Irene van Staveren (2007) in this journal, where she presents a case for virtue ethics, rather than deontology or consequentialism, as the most appropriate philosophical foundation for economics. Rather than taking issue with her positive arguments for virtue ethics, I argue in defense of deontology – or, more specifically, the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I argue that, when properly understood, Kantian ethics should not be associated solely with formal rules and obligation, but that Kant's moral system can accommodate many of the concerns of virtue ethics, such as social relations, real-world context, and human fallibility, as well as embodying a unique emphasis on human dignity and judgment.     

Beyond Utilitarianism and Deontology: Ethics in Economics

Abstract

This article starts from a methodological position that fact and value are mutually related, both in the real world and in economic analysis. It then discusses deontological ethics. This approach is concerned with equality and dignity, as expressed in right and norms, and how these rights and norms constrain individual choices. Deontology is thus different from the utility maximisation of utilitarian ethics, where ethics appears in utility functions as moral preferences. The paper then argues that, although deontology does better than utilitarianism in analysing ethics in economics, it has its own weaknesses. These weaknesses require another theory of ethics for economics, virtue ethics, which emphasises the interrelatedness of agents and commitment to shared values beyond the rules that a society has institutionalised. Virtue ethics internalises morality not as a preference or a constraint, but through the practices in which agents are related in their pursuit of value added.     

Problems of Emergency Arbitration

This paper explores ethical burdens facing the economics profession which are associated with epistemic features of economic practice. Economists exert power over those they purport to serve by virtue of epistemic asymmetry between themselves and others, i.e., the intellectual monopoly they enjoy over a vitally important body of knowledge. But they also face the problem of epistemic insufficiency, which implies that they may do substantial harm as they try to do good. The paper explores the ethical entailments of the epistemic features of economics, and argues that managing the ethical challenges requires a new field of inquiry, the field of professional economic ethics, and not just a code of conduct.     

Space for virtue in the economics of Kenneth J. Arrow,Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom

Virtue ethics interprets human action as pursuing good ends through practices that develop qualities internal to those final goals. The philosophical approach has been identified as critical of economics, leading in turn to the innovative response that by viewing the market as mutually beneficial exchange, economic practice is in fact defendable on virtue ethics grounds. This defends economics using arguments drawn from virtue ethics, but there is a need also to explore space for virtue ethics within economic theory. Examining key contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom, the article notes that virtue ethics’ appreciation of persons’ communicability of ends is increasingly being relied upon within economics, though sometimes under different names. Its strength to interdisciplinary work between economics and philosophy lies in presenting a methodology able to capture how human beings are capable of, though not fixated on, cooperation.     

On the ethics of environmental economics as seen from textbooks

This survey analyses a number of textbooks in environmental economics, from the earliest ones to recently published, with respect to their treatment of ethical issues. The findings are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, some of the books have a narrow view of environmental ethics. The ethics is usually expressed in the fashion of utilitarism (utility functions) and is without exception anthropocentric. However, on the other hand, some increase in both the depth and the space devoted to ethics is visible and an increase in the ethical self-consciousness of environmental economics may be noted.     

Judgment: Balancing Principle and Policy

Judgment is an element of decision-making that is of critical importance to both ethics and economics but remains underappreciated in both. In this paper, I describe one conception of moral judgment, drawn from the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the legal philosophy of Ronald Dworkin, in which an agent weighs and balances the various moral duties and principles relevant to a choice situation in a way that maintains the integrity of her moral character. After explaining the foundations and uses of judgment in ethics, I discuss its importance to two areas of economic modeling, individual choice and policy-making, both of which can be enhanced by incorporating judgment alongside more basic ethical motivations and concerns.     

The Role of Ethics in Economics and Management: Galbraith–Drucker approaches

Ethics has been linked to virtue, considering it within an individual sphere. It has also been related to good social behaviour or even religious factors, and so on. In general, economic thinkers have not questioned some of the basic principles which help to shape the fundamental ethical criteria in economic behaviour. The pursuit of individual interest has been identified as pecuniary profit maximization and, in this sense, Peter Drucker states that this has been the fundamental motivation of any economic agent, even before capitalism was born and Galbraith pointed out that the lack of consideration of other motivations, apart from earning money, has been one of the biggest mistakes in economics. The main goal of this paper is to analyse the Drucker and Galbraith approaches on ethics.      

The economist’s oath: a review Essay

George DeMartino’s 2011 monograph, The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic Ethics, provides an excellent basis for the development of a discourse on the ethics of economists. This review focuses on the way in which mainstream economists’ arguments against consideration of ethics follow from their presentation of economics as a purely technical subject, and the implication that this pretense itself is unethical. The complexity of ethical issues within a pluralist approach to economics is explored, ranging from the institutional environment within which economists practice to epistemological questions.     

The ethics behind efficiency

The normative elements underlying efficiency are more complex than generally portrayed and rely upon ethical frameworks that are generally absent from classroom discussions. Most textbooks, for example, ignore the ethical differences between Pareto efficiency (based on voluntary win-win outcomes) and the modern Kaldor-Hicks efficiency used in public policy assessments (in which winners gain more than losers lose). For the latter to be ethically palatable, society must have in place basic institutions of justice, transparency, and accountability. Normative economics thus requires a pluralist approach that includes considerations of virtue and duty, closer to Adam Smith's Enlightenment conceptions. This surprising finding should embolden economics teachers to engage students with critical thinking problems that are controversial and relevant, and which better prepare students for a complex world.     

经济与伦理结合的镜像:经济的伦理与伦理的经济

伦理不能脱离经济而存在,经济也不能离开伦理而独立发展.利益是经济与伦理结合的中介,经济的伦理和伦理的经济是经济与伦理结合的现实镜像.经济与伦理的互动和融合,需要经济学与伦理学的交流和合作.     

Pigou on philosophy and religion

Abstract

This article discusses a group of essays on ethical issues written by Pigou between 1900 and 1908. It is argued that they contain the foundations of his economic philosophy. Pigou's research on the meaning and content of the good merged into his definition of welfare, and his interest in religion as a subjective experience resurfaced in the subjective framework of his economics. A methodological pragmatism informed his economics as well as his ethics; moreover, the endorsement of interpersonal comparisons of the good in the ethical texts was consistent with Pigou's adoption of utility comparisons in welfare economics. Pigou's philosophical pessimism was reflected in his analysis of the economic evils of society, eventually leading to his advocacy of governmental intervention to foster economic welfare. The article contends that Pigou's philosophy derived not only from Sidgwick, as commonly believed, but also from G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica.     

Homo Economicus,AIs, humans and rats: decision-making and economic welfare

ABSTRACT

Critics of economics often highlight two related issues: the empirical falsity of the ‘homo economicus’ assumption of rational, self-interested maximisation; and the ethical consequences of models based on this assumption. Yet many experiments in biology show non-human creatures often seem to behave as if they were rational maximisers, suggesting that context rather than cognitive capacity is important for determining behaviour. The critique of rational choice poses a less serious methodological challenge to economics than is sometimes thought. However, economists do need to respond to the ethical critique that decisions and policies based on the assumption of rational self-interested maximisation change the norms of individual behaviour for the worse. This paper argues that economics has become divorced from ethics because for a century it has dealt only with ordinal, not cardinal, welfare rankings and has thus ruled out interpersonal comparisons. While enabling economists to separate normative from positive analysis, this separation protocol has left welfare economics both internally contradictory and unable to address major societal decisions, even though welfare economics is used constantly in limited ways, such as cost-benefit analysis. This separation reflects empirically inaccurate assumptions concerning preference formation and the conditions of supply and demand (but not the rational choice assumption) in the foundational welfare economic theorems. Economics must urgently revisit welfare economics, particularly in the context of modern economies in which individuals are increasingly interdependent, and the assumptions required for the fundamental welfare theorems therefore increasingly invalid.     

气候变化伦理研究评述

气候变化日益成为国际社会的一个热门话题。关于对气候变化问题的国际辩论经历了一个从科学、经济学和政治学争论到伦理争论的历程。气候变化是一个典型的＂全球伦理问题＂,气候变化伦理问题的关键是利益冲突。要解决＂缓解＂和＂适应＂气候变化、碳排量分配的合理性、发展中国家的发展空间及其补偿等一系列问题,必须要对气候公正原则、共同而有区别的责任等问题获得共识。     

Research Ethics Education in Economics

Abstract

In this paper, we report the findings from the data we collected from a survey in order to measure how common research ethics education in economics is. We have found out that (1) research ethics is taught in only a very few economics departments around the globe; (2) topics related to research ethics are not taught in courses on economics and ethics; and (3) the number of papers published in specialised peer-reviewed journals on economics education is only a tiny fraction of the number of papers published in these journals. There has been no evidence in economics showing that economics departments have taken strong initiative on teaching research ethics to undergraduate and graduate students.     

Can We—and Should We—Measure Well-Being?

In this article, I argue that recent criticisms of happiness research in economics can be extended to any conception of well-being used for scientific or policymaking purposes. These criticisms are both practical and ethical: well-being is not only impossible to define, measure, or implement, but its use also offends human dignity through unjust distribution of harm and value substitution. On this basis, I recommend the abandonment of welfare economics and urge social economists to propose new approaches to addressing social problems that are more focused and respect the dignity of persons.     

Class Debates in Intermediate Microeconomics: Social Economics and Pluralist Perspectives

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of class debates in an intermediate-level microeconomics course to introduce early to mid-career undergraduate students to socially embedded and pluralist perspectives, political-economic processes, and policy analyses. Using data from three semesters of class debates in an intermediate microeconomics course, we argue that this activity is a beneficial way to stimulate student interest in social economics, especially in the ethical, political economy, and economic justice aspects of economics and policy. We carried out three allied activities: participation in the debate, a learning self-assessment survey, and a five-page memo providing a balanced analysis of the policy conundrums surrounding the issue under discussion. We discuss three aspects of these class debates relevant to social economists: student attention to processes of knowledge construction, cognizance of power in socioeconomic life, and engagement with economic justice and ethics.     

Economics: Unfit for Purpose

This paper is a shortened and revised version of the Closing Plenary given to the World Congress of the Association of Social Economics, and Cairncross Lecture, University of Glasgow, June 2012. Mainstream economics is seen as unfit for purpose because of deficiencies that have long been criticised by a marginalised heterodoxy. These include the taking out of the historical and social even if bringing them back in on the basis of a technical apparatus and architecture that is sorely inappropriate. These observations are illustrated in passing reference to social capital but are particularly appropriate for understanding the weakness of ethics within mainstream economics. An alternative is offered through taking various “entanglements” (such as facts and values) as critical point of departure, leading to the suggestion that ethical systems are subject to the 10 Cs—Constructed, Construed, Conforming, Commodified, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective and Chaotic.     

The Property System in Austrian Economics: Ronald Coase's Contribution

This paper argues that contrary to Roy Cordato's claim, Ronald Coase's work on the problem of social cost is an important contribution to Austrian economics. Coase identified a criterion that can be used to establish initial legal rights to control actions that have external effects. In other words, he discovered a criterion that, in some cases, can be directly applied to help establish a property system when there is none. The criterion also helps a government adapt, or maintain, a property system in light of continuing changes that are characteristic of the entrepreneur economy. Cordato's anti-state ethical economics, which he used to criticize Coase, is a deviation from the century-old tradition of Austrian economics. Menger, Mises and Hayek saw economics as a body of logical knowledge that is value free. In addition they recognized a role for government in defining legal rights and in maintaining the property system in light of changing conditions. Accordingly, it is wrong to invoke Austrian economics, properly understood, to criticize this aspect of Coase's work. In this paper, I argue that Cordato has followed a deviant and troubling path by trying to construct an Austrian economics based on ethics, that he has failed to understand that a changeable property system is a prerequisite for the market economy, and that he has correspondingly failed to recognize Coase's contribution to the problem of how to maintain the property system in light of continuing change.     

隔裂，还是融合？——阿马蒂亚·森论伦理学与经济学的关系

阿马蒂亚·森在其《伦理学与经济学》一书中提出并强调了经济学和伦理学应相互贯通、相互融合的思想。他认为,经济学和伦理学长期分离的历史事实对这两门学科的发展危害严重,在此基础上他提出了重新贯通经济学和伦理学之内在联系的观点。这一思想不仅具有特别重要的理论意义,而且有着不可忽视的现实价值。