San Antonio College Library

May you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified,...

This book explains why moral beliefs can and likely do play an important role in the development and operation of market economies. It provides new arguments for why it is important that people genuinely trust others-even those whom they know don't particularly care about them-because in key circumstances institutions are incapable of combating opportunism. It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who...

"In Ethics in Economics, Jonathan B. Wight provides an overview of the role that ethical considerations play in economic debates. Whereas much of the field tends to focus on welfare outcomes, Wight calls for a deeper examination of the origin and evolution of our moral norms. He argues that economic life relies on three interrelated ethical systems: outcome-based, duty- and rule-based, and virtue-based. Integrating contemporary theoretical and applied...

At its core, an economy is about providing goods and services for human well-being. But many economists and critics preach that an economy is something far different: a cold and heartless system that operates outside of human control. In this impassioned and perceptive work, Julie A. Nelson asks a compelling question: If our economic world is something that we as humans create, aren't ethics and human relationships--dimensions of a full and rich life--intrinsically...

"The modern world is the marriage of morals and markets. Marital frictions between these two seemingly divergent forces can bring financial meltdowns, environmental disasters, criminal gangs, terrorism and war. Yet sometimes the marriage works well and spreads health and wealth across the globe. The book draws on recent academic research in evolutionary game theory and behavioral economics, and tells familiar stories like the rise of Google as well...

Publisher description: Little offers a new defence of a rule-based utilitarianism as a basis for assessing the role of the State and explains how the three disiplines of philosophy, economics and politics can be integrated to provide guidance on issues of public policy.

This highly accessibly book explores the relationships between economics, philosophy, and public policy.

"From almost its beginnings economics has been shadowed by 'anti-economics'; a negative twin, which has mocked, denigrated and wished ill on the ideas of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Walras, Keynes, Hicks and current economic thinkers. This book tells the story of anti-economics from the eighteenth century to the present day, and analyses its many forms: Right, Left, nationalist, historicist, irrationalist, moralist and environmentalist."--Jacket.

Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between the material and the spiritual world, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics before investigating the attitudes of three major religions toward this interplay. Exploring the contrasts and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition...