The Economist and Moral Values

Abstract

It is easy to show that economists are involved in questions with moral aspects. It is harder to show that any of the involvements arise within economic theories and harder still to show that the problems are capable of being dealt with by extensions of those theories. In this article, I shall try to show how and in what ways economists inevitably become involved in certain moral questions, and to do so in a way which will suggest how they might be tackled within what might reasonably be regarded as economic theories.