Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation
Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White
Abstract
While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and computational methods. But recent financial crises in the real world have reignited discussions on the importance of ethics to economics, including growing calls for a new approach to incorporating moral philosophy in economic theory, practice, and policy. Ironically, it is the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristotle and Adam Smith that may lead to the most promising way of developing an economics tha ... More
While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and computational methods. But recent financial crises in the real world have reignited discussions on the importance of ethics to economics, including growing calls for a new approach to incorporating moral philosophy in economic theory, practice, and policy. Ironically, it is the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristotle and Adam Smith that may lead to the most promising way of developing an economics that emphasizes the virtues, character, and judgment of the agents it models. In Economics and the Virtues, editors Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White have brought together fourteen leading scholars in economics and philosophy to offer ' to 'This book offers'. delete 'With insights that are novel as well as rooted in time-tested ethical thought, Economics and the Virtues will be of interest to economists, philosophers, and other scholars in the social sciences and humanities, as well as professionals and policy-makers in the fields of economics and finance, and makes an invaluable contribution to the ongoing discussion over the role of ethics in economics.'
Keywords:
economics,
ethics,
virtue,
virtue ethics,
markets,
choice,
theory,
history,
methodology
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198701392 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198701392.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jennifer A. Baker, editor
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, College of Charleston
Mark D. White, editor
Chair and Professor, Department of Philosophy, College of Staten Island/CUNY
More
Less
