August 15, 2003

Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics

By JONATHAN B. WIGHT

Some economists consider their discipline a science, and thereby divorced from messy ethical details, the normative passions of right and wrong. They teach in a moral vacuum, perhaps even advocating economic agents' operating independently and avariciously, asserting that this magically produces the greatest good for society.

Never mind that such a view woefully misinterprets Adam Smith's "invisible hand"; it also belies economists' own instinctive experience, even if we do not often

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