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Introduction To "The Oxford Handbook Of Ethics And Economics", Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Economics and ethics are both valuable tools for analyzing the behavior and actions of human beings and institutions. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, considered them two sides of the same coin, but since economics was formalized and mathematicised in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the fields have largely followed separate paths.

The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics provides a timely and thorough survey of the various ways ethics can, does, and should inform economic theory and practice. The first part of the book, Foundations, explores how the most prominent schools of moral philosophy relate to economics; …

On The Relationship Between Economics And Ethics, Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Economics and ethics have been linked since the days of Adam Smith, but this connection became tenuous after the formalization of economic theory in the twentieth century, the success of which in academia, government, and business serves to insulate it from ethical critique. Nonetheless, a field of “economics and ethics” has developed to restore this connection, albeit in two directions with disparate methodological approaches: one applying mainstream economic theory, primarily based in utilitarian ethics, to topics of ethical concern, and the other incorporating alternate forms of ethics, such as deontology and virtue ethics, to enrich economic analysis.