The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

Edited by George F. DeMartino and Deirdre N. McCloskey

Oxford Handbooks

The first comprehensive examination of the field of professional economic ethics
Brings together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore economic ethics from the perspective of philosophy, economics, and other social sciences
Provides ample real life examples of economic ethics in practice

The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

Edited by George F. DeMartino and Deirdre N. McCloskey

Description

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.

The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

Edited by George F. DeMartino and Deirdre N. McCloskey

Oxford Handbooks

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 Sedlá?ek
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

The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics

Edited by George F. DeMartino and Deirdre N. McCloskey

Oxford Handbooks

Author Information

Edited by George F. DeMartino, Associate Professor of International Economics, University of Denver, and Edited by Deirdre N. McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago

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.

Contributors:

Harold Alderman
Peter J. Boettke
Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth
Jingnan Chen
Angelina Christie
David Colander
Herman Daly
Jishnu Das
John B. Davis
Erwin Dekker
George F. DeMartino
Sheila C. Dow
William Easterly
David Ellerman
Gerald Epstein
Robert H. Frank
Alan Freeman
Robert F. Garnett, Jr.
Des Gasper
Rachel Glennerster
Sven Ove Hansson
Daniel Houser
Ravi Kanbur
Arjo Klamer
David M. Levy
Thomas Mayer
Deirdre N. McCloskey
Julie A. Nelson
Robert H. Nelson
Kyle W. O'Donnell
Susan Offutt
Sandra J. Peart
Shawn Powers
Vijayendra Rao
Martin Ravallion
Constantine Sandis
Tomáš Sedlá?ek
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Edward R. Teather-Posadas
Dennis F. Thompson
Robert J. Thornton
Irene van Staveren
Robert H. Wade
John O. Ward
Sharon D. Welch
Jonathan B. Wight
Bart J. Wilson
Stephen T. Ziliak