Philosophy & Ethics

Smith did not advocate a single-minded pursuit of profit

How a bleak Christian theology influenced the development of the dismal science

What are the 100 most pertinent economic questions facing our global societ?

Facebook engaged in an elaborate bait and switch on user data: Privacy disappeared when competition did. Laws governing competition could change that.

Rob Johnson and Michael Sandel discuss the limits of rational choice

Greg Mankiw says there should be a market for kidneys, but not for paying drug addicts to get sterilized.

LSE Director Minouche Shafik says that for democracy to work, we must keep the market out of certain domains

Young scholars in the fields of behavioral and experimental economics, philosophy, and related disciplines will be given the opportunity to present their work at a workshop in New York. Samuel Bowles (Santa Fe Institute), Shaun Hargreaves Heap (King’s College London) and Mario Rizzo (New York University) will also present their work and give feedback to the young scholars.

YSI is hosting sessions at the 2018 STOREP conference.

From 28-30 June the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy will be gathering in Genova to ask the question “Whatever has happened to political economy?”.  Before the start of the conference, Rethinking Economics and the YSI Philosophy of Economics Working Group will host a workshop to discuss a related question: “Whatever happened to economics?”. Professor Geoffrey Hodgson will participate in our discussion.

To mark the release of INET’s “What Money Can’t Buy” with professor Michael Sandel, the YSI Philosophy of Economics Working Group and and Finance, Law and Economics Working Group invite young scholars working on issues related to the core issues in Michael Sandel’s lectures to present their work in a series of webinars. Professor Sandel will join the webinars to answer questions about the topics raised in his book, the video lectures and to give comment on the presentations.

To celebrate the release of our new series “What Money Can’t Buy” join Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel and INET for a live conversation exploring the role of money and morals in today’s world.

The vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years later, and the relevance of his economic ideas today

Veiling among Muslim women is modeled as a commitment mechanism that limits temptation to deviate from religious norms of behavior. 

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

The History of Economic Thought and the Philosophy of Economics working groups are organising a Young Scholars Workshop on the methods and approaches to the history of economics that have consolidated during the last two decades.  

The Role These Factors Play in Shaping Economic Knowledge and Behavior

YSI Philosophy of Economics working group is organising a workshop preceding the INEM conference.

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

Economics is not, nor can it be, value-free.

A transition from the conventional policy of “redistributing income” to “redistributing membership”, could promote economic integration across communities and intergenerational mobility.

Eurocentric modernism has unhinged us from our human nature, argues Rajani Kanth in his new book

Policies based on faith in the “market” as a principle of social organization have wrought havoc with a founding principle of American democracy

A presentation from The Economics of Post-Factual Democracy, the first annual conference of The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) at The University of Copenhagen

Young Scholars from the YSI working groups on Innovation, Complexity Economics, Philosophy of Economics and Financial Stability will present their research at a one-day workshop following The Economics of Post-Factual Democracy conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Extract from the keynote speech by the Rev. Dr. William Barber III at the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference on race and economics in Detroit on November 11

Notes from the Institute’s Director of Research on some significant papers and contributions produced in 2016 under the INET rubric 

In his keynote address to our #EconOfRace conference in Detroit, Rev. Dr. William Barber III issued a blistering critique of structural inequality in the United States, and urged economists to recognize their responsibility to the poor.

Pernicious cultural norms inside American banks and regulatory agencies have crowded out fundamental moral principles. Ed Kane proposes an antidote.

Since Aristotle the question about the potential relationship between economic inequality and democratic changes has been studied and debated – but scientifically our ability as researchers to assess and understand how such complex social phenomena may be related is much more limited than recognised.

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

News about a wonderful workshop, “Knowledge Transfer and Its Contexts”

Inequality, racism, and violence are the real killers in America.

How do we create a “change in culture”?

Most sociologists believe that formal and informal institutions are more critical in explaining the rising inequality observed in advanced economies. In this light, changing institutions such as the ascendance of shareholder-centered corporate governance model, finance-friendly policies since the late 70s, credentialism, and deunionization all contribute to the earnings dynamics at different parts of the distribution.

In much of Europe, the social rights and social protections won in the first post-war decades, by labour movements in particular, have subsequently been seriously eroded, and are further threatened by neoliberal austerity.

A recent New York Times article observed that Americans want action to address inequality. 2016 presidential candidates from both parties also acknowledge that inequality is a pressing concern. But not one of the candidates has proposed to do anything meaningful about it, sharing wealthy Americans’ (understandable) opposition to any solution (Scheiber 2015). Perhaps nothing has been done because there is nothing to do about it.

This text is part of a research project still in working progress that collects different contributions by the author and rewrite and reanalyse some reflections, already present, in a different form, in some publications:

This research project explores the underlying limits—especially of the social and economic sciences—in identifying causalities including, among other aspects, the strong epistemological and statistical limitations of and assumptions behind the methods applied.

The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. This survey serves two purposes – it is backward-looking in that it traces the historical and sociological origins of this field, and it is forward-looking in that it examines the insights and research themes that are offered by economists to investigate religion globally in the modern world.

Can we learn something from philosophy students?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out non- market norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?

What happens when a market-based economy becomes a market-based society?

“You are now leaving the world as you know it.”

The current economic and financial crisis has given rise to a vigorous debate about the state of economics, and the training which graduate and undergraduates economics students are receiving. Importantly, among those arguing most strongly for a change in the way that young economists are trained are the ultimate employers of these students, in both the private and the public sector. Employers are increasingly complaining that young economists don’t understand how the financial system actually works, and are ill-prepared to think about appropriate policies at a time of crisis.

Friedrich von Hayek described the economist’s task as demonstrating how little we really know about what we imagine we can design

What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?

what is economically correct must always be balanced with what is morally right.

Changing the incentives for how economists determine both the content of the subject and their approach to scientific research could increase the range of thinking in the profession

Economic theories are powerful things, to be used and misused. Those who write economic theory and do economic policy need to be aware of the consequences of what they are doing.

“Four men sat at a table. Raised sixty floors above the city, they did not speak loudly as one speaks from a height in the freedom of air and space; they kept their voices low, as befitted a cellar.”

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many of our policy makers and top economists are still stumbling in the dark.

What is the purpose of economics?

What happens when there’s no leader in the global economy?

This research project shows what economists can learn from political philosophers in thinking about economic inequality while also investigating the philosophical significance of recent empirical work on inequality, within economics and elsewhere.

Can economics be morally centered? And perhaps more importantly, should it be?

This research projects aims to understand Buddhist thinking in rational choice terms and apply that to some important contemporary economic problems.