Edited by Jan Teil and Irene van Staveren
The Handbook of Economics and Ethics portrays an understanding of economic methodology in which facts and values, though distinct, are closely interconnected in a variety of ways. From theory building to data collection, and from modelling to policy evaluation, this encyclopaedic handbook is at the intersection of economics and ethics.
Irene van Staveren and Jan Peil bring together 75 unique and original papers to provide up-to-date insights on topics such as markets, globalization, human development, rationality, efficiency, and corporate social responsibility. The book presents contributions from an array of international scholars using methodological and theoretical approaches, and convincingly demonstrates the death of the positive/normative dichotomy that so long held economics in its grip.
This invaluable resource will strongly appeal to students of economics and economic methodology, philosophy of science and ethics. It will also be of great benefit to academics and policy-makers involved in economic policies and ethics.
"Peil’s and van Staveren’s Handbook is a very ambitious undertaking. In it the editors packed seventy-five articles from seventy-two contributors with the explicit intent to “contribute to the expansion of a critical mass of theoretical and empirical research that challenges the still common beliefs and practices of positivism in much of today’s economics” (xvii). They reject the fact-value dichotomy of the mainstream way of thinking on the grounds that values are part of economic analysis, and call for “a revival of economics as a moral science” (xvi). Their problem was to find a balance between the breadth and depth of the collection. [...] While the overall scope of the collection is its strength, it is its weakness as well. Entries are short and do not provide the coverage that many of the subjects require. [...] To compensate for this weakness, each entry is strengthened by a reading list. Thus, the entries whet the appetite but do not satisfy. For that reason, the Handbook will appeal more to the reader who is comparatively new to the normative dimensions of economics or the fact-value dichotomy and is looking for direction or to the specialist who would like to know more about areas outside his domain of specialization. [...] I was more than a little disappointed that there were no entries in the index for instrumental value, leisure, economic personalism, credit, collectivism, capital, or investment, and very little on work or the common good. [...] It simply does not help to reintroduce the normative dimension into a cohesive and coherent body of economic theory and analysis any more than a pile of jigsaw pieces represents a completed puzzle. It is quite telling that the collection does not have a final entry from the editors as to what has been accomplished or what difference it makes in the way we think about and teach economic affairs."
Table of Contents
- Altruism (Jonathan Seglow)
- Thomas Aquinas (Odd Langholm)
- Aristotle (Ricardo Crespo)
- Jeremy Bentham (Marco E.L. Guidi)
- Buddhist Economics (Juliana Essen)
- Capability Approach (Ingrid Robeyns)
- Catholic Social Thought (Albino Barrera)
- Code of Ethics for Economists (Robin L. Bartlett)
- Consumerism (Peter N. Stearns)
- Corporate Social Responsibility (Rhys Jenkins)
- Deontology (Mark D. White)
- Dignity (Mark D. White)
- Discrimination (Deborah M. Figart)
- Economic Anthropology (Jeffrey H. Cohen)
- Efficiency (Irene van Staveren)
- Egoism (John O’Neill)
- Epistemology (Edward Fullbrook)
- Equity (Bernard Hodgson)
- Ethics of Care (Kari Wærness)
- Fact/Value Dichotomy (Vivian Walsh)
- Fairness (Tom De Herdt and Ben D’Exelle)
- Feminism (Drucilla K. Barker and Darla Schumm)
- Freedom (Nicolas Gravel)
- Game Theory (Ken Binmore)
- Globalization (George DeMartino)
- Global Financial Markets (Gary A. Dymski and Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky)
- Happiness (Luigino Bruni)
- Hedonism (Johannes Hirata)
- Hinduism (Narendar Pani)
- Homo Economicus (Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert)
- Human Development (Des Gasper)
- Humanism (Mark A. Lutz)
- Identity (John B. Davis)
- Income Distribution (Rolph van de Hoeven)
- Individualism (John B. Davis)
- Inequality (Serge-Christophe Kolm)
- Institutions (Anne Mayhew)
- Islam (Rodney Wilson)
- Justice (Serge-Christophe Kolm)
- Immanuel Kant (Mark D. White)
- Labour Standards (Günseli Berik)
- Market (John O’Neill)
- Karl Marx (Jack Amariglio and Yahya M. Madra)
- Minimum Wages (Ellen Mutari)
- Needs and Agency (Lawrence Hamilton)
- Needs and Well-being (Des Gasper)
- Pluralism (Esther-Mirjam Sent)
- Positive-Normative Distinction in British History of Economic Thought (Samuel Weston)
- Positive versus Normative Economics (Eric van de Laar and Jan Peil)
- Postmodernism (David F. Ruccio)
- Poverty (Andy Sumner)
- Prices (Paul Downward)
- Protestant Ethics (William Schweiker)
- Rationality (Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap)
- John Rawls (Hilde Bojer)
- Realism (Andrew Mearman)
- Religion (Robert H. Nelson)
- Rhetoric (Arjo Klamer)
- Rights (Stephen D. Parsons)
- Joan Robinson (Prue Kerr)
- Scarcity (Rutger Claassen)
- Self-interest (Johan J. Graafland)
- Amartya Sen (Sabina Alkire)
- Sin (Samuel Cameron)
- Adam Smith (Jan Peil)
- Social Capital (John Field)
- Social Economics (Mark A. Lutz)
- Solidarity (Patrick J. Welch and Stuart D. Yoak)
- Sustainability (J.B. (Hans) Opschoor)
- Teaching Economics (Jonathan B. Wight)
- Trust (Bart Nooteboom)
- Utilitarianism (Johan J. Graafland)
- Thorstein Veblen (William Waller)
- Virtue Ethics (Irene van Staveren)
- Max Weber and the Protestant Work Ethic (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart)
