Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Ethics and Political Philosophy
Ethics And Critical Thinking, Jonathan B. Wight
Ethics And Critical Thinking, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
This chapter seeks to demonstrate that investigations in positive economics rely on ethical perspectives and practices, and further, that critical thinking requires a wider ethical viewpoint than normative economics generally permits. Positive economics generally relies, for example, on the unsung virtues of the investigator who demonstrates honesty and transparency in the search for truth. Ethical failures in this regard are not uncommon (DeMartino, 2011). But another unstated ethical perspective appears in the worldview from which a researcher sets out to model behavior. Modelers almost always assume that rationality requires that an economic actor undertake an action in pursuit of a …
Moral Markets: The Critical Role Of Values In The Economy By Paul J. Zak (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Moral Markets: The Critical Role Of Values In The Economy By Paul J. Zak (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
This volume contains the fruits of a two-year seminar on ethics and economics funded by the John Templeton Foundation and administered through the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. Participants came from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, and included Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and other figures such as Frans de Waal, Herbert Gintis, Robert Frank, and Robert Solomon (for whom the book is dedicated in memoriam). The book’s editor, Paul Zak, is a pioneer in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which uses medical technology to discover the physiological manifestations of cooperative and altruistic behavior. A theme of …
Teaching Economics, Jonathan B. Wight
Teaching Economics, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
Ethical considerations intersect with economics education on a number of planes. Nonetheless, in terms of curricula, only a handful of economics departments offer courses specifically focused on ethics. This chapter addresses the ways in which instructors can incorporate ethical components into teaching principles and field courses in order to broaden economic understanding and to enhance critical thinking. It examines three pedagogical issues: the artificial dichotomy between positive and normative analysis; the limiting scope of efficiency in outcomes analyses; and the incorporation of alternative ethical frameworks into public policy debates.
The Ethical Lacunae In Friedman's Concept Of The Manager, Jonathan B. Wight, Martin Calkins
The Ethical Lacunae In Friedman's Concept Of The Manager, Jonathan B. Wight, Martin Calkins
Economics Faculty Publications
This article challenges along two lines Milton Friedman's injunction that the sole role of the business manager is to maximize profits for shareholders using all legal and ethical means. First, it shows how Friedman overly narrows the manager's moral duties to consequentialist profit maximization and thereby fails to account for a wide range of values and virtues necessary for good management. Second, it illustrates how more oblique approaches to management as well as Adam Smith's virtue-based model better capture the moral imagination and relational aspects of leadership that are critical to good management today. In the end, this article suggests …
Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics: The Principles Course, Jonathan B. Wight
Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics: The Principles Course, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
When we analyze the source of humor, one ingredient is surely incongruity, the juxtaposition of opposites. So when Tom Lehrer, the consummate Harvard mathematician, openly calls for plagiarism, this is funny because it is exactly the opposite of what we expect - it is absurd. And yet, from the viewpoint of modern economics, is plagiarism really so absurd? We teach our students to maximize short-term profits (in a moral vacuum). We drill them that producers minimize private costs of production (without reference to ethical codes of conduct). We expect economic agents to operate with atomistic selfishness, assuring them that this …
Adam Smith And Greed, Jonathan B. Wight
Adam Smith And Greed, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
The virtues of greed have been widely promoted by some economists in the 20th century. Allegedly it is Adam Smith who provides this new dignity to greed (Lerner, 1937, ix). Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn in the General Equilibrium Analysis (1971), for example, implicitly assume that Adam Smith's self-interest is the greed that promotes economic efficiency (quoted in Evensky, 1993, 203). Walter Williams (1999), a devoted follower of Smith, writes in his column that, "Free markets, private property rights, voluntary exchange, and greed produce preferable outcomes most times and under most conditions." These pronouncements have become part of the cultural …
Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics, Jonathan B. Wight
Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
Some economists consider their discipline a science, and thereby divorced from messy ethical details, the normative passions of right and wrong. They teach in a moral vacuum, perhaps even advocating economic agents' operating independently and avariciously, asserting that this magically produces the greatest good for society.