Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation

Economics and the Virtues contains thirteen original essays by leading economists and philosophers that explore the contributions that virtue ethics can make to economics. Compared to other major systems of ethics such as utilitarianism and deontology that focus on the rightness or wrongness of actions, virtue ethics focuses on individuals and the virtues, character, and judgment that lead them in act morally. For this reason, virtue ethics provides a unique ethical perspective on the behavior of the individuals in economic models, a perspective which has become invaluable following recent financial events in the real world. The chapters in Economics and the Virtues provide historical and modern insights in both economics and philosophy and offer novel suggestions for incorporating the ethics of virtue into economics in order to make it more applicable to moral dilemmas in the world outside the models.