This work examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models.

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics. This volume explores a variety of issues implicating morality for both individual commercial activity and economic public policy. Issues examined include price controls, the living wage, the lemons problem, short selling, and Ronald Coase's seminal theories on negative externalities. To provide an analytic framework for the study of these issues, the work first delineates the normative theories behind the concept of economic morality for welfare economics and Jewish law, and presents a case study illustrating the deontological nature of Jewish law. The book introduces what for many readers will be a new perspective on familiar economic issues. Despite the very different approaches that welfare economics and Jewish law take in evaluating the worthiness of an economic action, the author reveals a remarkable symmetry between the two systems in their ultimate prescriptions for certain economic issues.

Law, Economics, and Morality examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. However, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is normatively objectionable. Moderate deontology prioritizes such values as autonomy, basic liberties, truth-telling, and promise-keeping over the promotion of good outcomes. It holds that there are constraints on promoting the good. Such constraints may be overridden only if enough good (or bad) is at stake. While moderate deontology conforms to prevailing moral intuitions and legal doctrines, it is arguably lacking in methodological rigor and precision. Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina argue that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. They discuss various substantive and methodological choices involved in modeling deontological constraints. Zamir and Medina propose to determine the permissibility of any act or rule infringing a deontological constraint by means of mathematical threshold functions. Law, Economics, and Morality presents the general structure of threshold functions, analyzes their elements and addresses possible objections to this proposal. It then illustrates the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, antidiscrimination law, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism.

This text introduces readers to the relationship between economics and ethics and to the application of economic ethics in the evaluation of the market. The insights it provides help to develop the reasoning and analytical skills needed to criticize economic analysis as well as to apply ethical concepts to moral issues in economic policy.

Examining inequality through the lenses of moral traditions Rising inequality has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years from scholars and politicians, but the moral dimensions of inequality tend to be ignored. Is inequality morally acceptable? Is it morally permissible to allow practices and systems that contribute to inequality? Is there an ethical obligation to try to alleviate inequality, and if so, who is obligated to take that action? This book addresses these and similar questions not through a single lens of morality but through a comparative study of ethical traditions, both secular and religious, Western and non-Western. The moral and political traditions considered are: liberalism, Marxism, natural law, feminism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Confucianism. The types of inequality examined include property, natural resources, products, wealth, income, jobs, and taxation. The editors open the book with an introduction providing information on contemporary dimensions of the problem of economic inequality, and the book concludes with a summary of the perspectives represented. Economic Inequality and Morality is unusual in that it addresses similarities and differences on the questions of inequality within and across moral traditions. Authors of the individual studies answer a common set of topic-related questions, giving the reader a broad perspective on how a broad range of traditions view and respond to inequality.

Economic theory in its neoclassical form is sometimes regarded as free from values; it is simply the theory of economic exchange. This can only hold true if we accept the idea of "Homo Economicus" and the equilibrium economy. But in the real world, away from neoclassical models, there is no intrinsic stability as such. Instead, stability is created by the surrounding social, cultural and political structures. Clearly, it is imperative that ethics features in the analysis of these economic and socio-political structures. Drawing on Aristotle, Kant, Hume and others, this book conceptualizes the analysis of ethics and economic and social structures. It first considers the key philosophical underpinnings and categories which frame the discussion of ethics in economic theory and then considers individual ethics, social action, financial structures and war. Throughout, ethics are examined in a multicultural context with structural complexities, and the difficulties in finding a coherent set of ethics which provides social cohesion and an open society are considered. A key part of this is the comparison of two ethical principles which can be adopted by societies: ius soli or loyalty to constitution, and ius sanguinis or loyalty to "Blood and Soil". The latter is argued to lead to problems of Us and the Other. Introducing the possibility of integrating microscopic ethics into socio-political structures and proposing the eventual existence of a global ethics, this volume is a significant contribution to the emerging literature on economics, social structures and ethics. It will be of particular interest to those working in business and public administration and who have an education in socio-economic areas, but it also has a broad appeal to students and academics in the social sciences.

The UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA) holds a conference each year to bring together academics and practitioners, lawyers and environmental experts from other disciplines - within both science and social science. It is a unique event providing a forum for discussion of the most pressing issues of environmental regulation, and provides a unique combination of analysis and practical application. These articles, presented as papers at the Cardiff Conference in 2001, provide an accessible and informative collection addressing the conference theme of economics, ethics and the environment, including such issues as: how we can use traditional economic devices such as taxation, trading and insurance to assist in environmental regulation; how we treat and protect the natural world; how we might cope with the growing problem of waste; and how we should react to safeguard the environment in the face of risks and scientific uncertainties. The collection forms a topical and wide ranging discussion of key issues for legal practitioners, academics and students and will also be of great interest to a wider range of disciplines relating to the environment

Examining one of the most crucial issues in the modern world: human induced climate change, this book provides a refreshing interdisciplinary perspective and an up-to-date and informative analysis of the key issues facing society today.

How do Chinese and Western ethical traditions interact today? In this collection of articles both Chinese and Western scholars carefully examine the issue, one of fundamental importance for the mutual understanding between China and the West. The volume is the result of the second symposium which focused on a dialogue between China and the West on questions of ethics, in particular concerning their commensurability and a possible common ground. The first part of the book discusses general problems of ethics in a cross-cultural context, followed by articles on ethical bases of Chinese and Western societies respectively. Further topics range from moral traditions in the context of social transformation in China today to developments in Western societies, politics, education and religion. The last part deals with controversial issues such as human rights vs. human duties and medical ethics.