Timothy Taylor — Economics and Morality

ECONOMISTS prefer to sidestep moral issues. They like to say they study trade-offs and incentives and interactions, leaving value judgments to the political process and society.

But moral judgments aren’t willing to sidestep economics.

Critiques of the relationship between economics and moral virtue can be grouped under three main headings: To what extent does ordinary economic life hold a capacity for virtue? Is economic analysis overstepping its bounds into zones of behavior that should be preserved from economics? Does the study of economics itself discourage moral behavior?

IMF
Economics and Morality
FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, June 2014, Vol. 51, No. 2
Timothy Taylor | Managing Editor of the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives