In his Ethics, Aristotle argued that human beings try to further a variety of values by balancing them, stating that people try to find a middle road between excess and deficiency. The Values of Economics develops and applies this idea to the values of economics, arguing that in the economy freedom, justice and care are also balanced to further ends with scarce means. Freedom is furthered through market exchange, justice through a redistributive role of the state, and care through mutual gifts of labor and sharing of resources in the economy. The book argues that economics is, and has always been, about human values, which guide, enable, constrain and change economic behavior.

Table of Contents of The Values of Economics

1. The Missing Ethical Capabilities of Rational Economic Man
2. Paradoxes of Value
3. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
4. Beyond the Highway of Modern Economics
5. Hypotheses on Economic Role Combination
6. Toward an Aristotelian Economics
7. Institutional Mediation Between Value Domains

About Irene van Staveren

At the moment of writing this book Irene van Staveren was still a lecturer in labour market economics of developing countries at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. She won the Gunnar Myrdal Prize 2000 for her dissertation Caring for Economics: An Aristotelian Perspective, from which this book evolved. Currently, she is professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam.