The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

by George F. DeMartino, Deirdre N. McCloskey

Overview

For over a century the economics profession has extended its reach to encompass policy formation and institutional design while largely ignoring the ethical challenges that attend the profession's influence over the lives of others. Economists have proven to be disinterested in ethics. Embracing emotivism, they often treat ethics a matter of mere preference. Moreover, economists tend to be hostile to professional economic ethics, which they incorrectly equate with a code of conduct that would be at best ineffectual and at worst disruptive to good economic practice. But good ethical reasoning is not reducible to mere tastes, and professional ethics is not reducible to a code. Instead, professional economic ethics refers to a new field of investigation-a tradition of sustained and lively inquiry into the irrepressible ethical entailments of academic and applied economic practice.

The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics explores a wide range of questions related to the nature of ethical economic practice and the content of professional economic ethics. It explores current thinking that has emerged in these areas while widening substantially the terrain of economic ethics. There has never been a volume that poses so directly and intensively the question of the need for and content of professional ethics for economics. The Handbook incorporates the work of leading scholars and practitioners, including academic economists from various theoretical traditions; applied economists, beyond academia, whose work has direct and immense social impact; and philosophers, professional ethicists, and others whose work has addressed the nature of "professionalism" and its implications for ethical practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199766635
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Pages:	800
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.90(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

George F. DeMartino is a Professor of International Economics and Co-Director of the program in Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Deirdre N. McCloskey is UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics and History, Professor of English, and Professor of Communication, Emerita, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword
William Easterly

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction, or Why This Handbook?
George F. DeMartino and Deirdre N. McCloskey


PART II: UNCERTAINTY, RISK AND PROFESSIONAL ECONOMIC ETHICS

2. The Skin in the Game Heuristic for Protection Against Tail Events
Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Constantine Sandis

3. The Ethics of Economic Decision Rules
Sven Ove Hansson

4. In Praise of Imperfect Commitment: An Ethic of Power, Professionalism, and Risk
Sharon D. Welch

5. 'Econogenic Harm': On the Nature of and Responsibility for the Harm Economists Do as They Try to Do Good
George F. DeMartino


PART III: THE ETHICAL NATURE OF ECONOMIC PRACTICE

6. About Doing the Right Thing as an Academic Economist
Erwin Dekker and Arjo Klamer

7. The Social Responsibility of Economists
Peter J. Boettke and Kyle W. O'Donnell

8. The Ethical Economist: Duty and Virtue in the Scientific Process
Jonathan B. Wight


PART IV: THE ETHICAL ENTAILMENTS OF ECONOMIC THEORY

1. General Issues

9. Ethics in Relation to Economics, Ecology, and Eschatology
Herman Daly

10. Poisoning the Well, or How Economic Theory Damages Moral Imagination
Julie A. Nelson

11. Economists' Odd Stand on the Positive-Normative Distinction: A Behavioral Economics View
John B. Davis

12. The Complex Ethical Consequences of "Simple" Theoretical Choices
Robert H. Frank

13. Good, Evil, and Economic Practice
Tomas Sedláek

2. Economic Theory and the Great Recession

14. Alternative Ethical Perspectives on the Financial Crisis: Lessons for Economists
Irene van Staveren

15. Economists' Ethics in the Build-Up to the Great Recession
Robert H. Wade

PART V: ETHICAL ISSUES IN ECONOMIC RESEARCH

1. Experimental Economics

16. Ethics and Advances in Economic Science: The Role of Two Norms
Jingnan Chen, Angelina Christie, and Daniel Houser

17. The Meaning of Deceive in Experimental Economic Science
Bart J. Wilson

2. Econometrics

18. Honesty and Integrity in Econometrics
Thomas Mayer

19. Lady Justice v. Cult of Statistical Significance: Oomph-less Science and the New Rule of Law
Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey

3. Field Research

20. Balancing Risk and Benefit: Ethical Tradeoffs in Running Randomized Evaluations
Rachel Glennerster and Shawn Powers

21. Conducting Ethical Economic Research: Complications from the Field
Harold Alderman, Jishnu Das, and Vijayenera Rao

22. The Unprincipled Randomization Principle in Economics and Medicine
Stephen T. Ziliak and Edward R. Teather-Posadas

4. Conflict of Interest

23. Professional Disequilibrium: Conflict of Interest in Economics
Dennis F. Thompson

24. Considerations on Conflicts of Interest in Academic Economics
Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth and Gerald Epstein


PART VI: ETHICAL ISSUES IN APPLIED ECONOMICS

1. Development

25. Ethics, Economic Advice, and Economic Policy
Joseph E. Stiglitz

26. Neoclassical Economics as the New Social Engineering: The Debacle of the Russian Post-Socialist Transition
David Ellerman

27. The Ethics of Economic Development and Human Displacement
Des Gasper

28. How Can We Better Address the Gaps in our Knowledge about Development Effectiveness?
Martin Ravallion

2. Economic Advising in Government and Beyond

29. Confessions of a Policy Analyst
Robert Nelson

30. Ethics and the Government Economist
Susan Offutt

31. The Ethics Problem: Toward a Second-Best Solution to the Problem of Economic Expertise
David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart

32. First Tell No Untruth
Alan Freeman

3. Forensic Economics

33. Ethical Issues in Forensic Economics
Robert J. Thornton and John Ward

VII. ETHICAL ISSUES IN ECONOMIC EDUCATION

34. Exposure and Dialogue Programs in the Training of Development Analysts and Practitioners
Ravi Kanbur

35. Ethics and Learning in Undergraduate Economics Education
Robert F. Garnett, Jr.

VIII. LOOKING AHEAD

36. Creating Humble Economists: A Code of Ethics for Economists
David Colander

37. Codes of Ethics for Economists, Pluralism, and the Nature of Economic Knowledge
Sheila C. Dow

Editorial Reviews

"The editors have assembled an all-star team of academics, economists, and others to castigate the economics profession for, in their words, "ignoring ethical challenges" and "being hostile to professional economic ethics." The individual contributions are grouped by general topic: ethical issues in economic research, economic theory, conflicts of interests, codes of conduct, economic development, serving as policy advisers, forensic economics, and economic education." — A. R. Sanderson, University of Chicago, CHOICE

From the Publisher