The Moral Conditions Of Economic Efficiency

Schultz argues that markets are not moral-free zones, and that achieving the economic common good does indeed require morality.

Economic analysis of law is an interesting and challenging attempt to employ the concepts and reasoning methods of modern economic theory so as to gain a deeper understanding of legal problems. According to Richard A. Posner it is the role of the law to encourage market competition and, where the market fails because transaction costs are too high, to simulate the result of competitive markets. This would maximize economic efficiency and social wealth. In this work, the lawyer and economist Klaus Mathis critically appraises Posner’s normative justification of the efficiency paradigm from the perspective of the philosophy of law. Posner acknowledges the influences of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, whom he views as the founders of normative economics. He subscribes to Smith’s faith in the market as an ideal allocation model, and to Bentham’s ethical consequentialism. Finally, aligning himself with John Rawls’s contract theory, he seeks to legitimize his concept of wealth maximization with a consensus theory approach. In his interdisciplinary study, the author points out the possibilities as well as the limits of economic analysis of law. It provides a method of analysing the law which, while very helpful, is also rather specific. The efficiency arguments therefore need to be incorporated into a process for resolving value conflicts. In a democracy this must take place within the political decision-making process. In this clearly written work, Klaus Mathis succeeds in making even non-economists more aware of the economic aspects of the law.

Economic Efficiency in Law and Economics is an interesting and worthwhile book. Megan Richardson, Economic Record Zerbe s new book is high-powered and potentially important. Bill Goodman, Monthly Labor Review In this path-breaking book, Richard Zerbe introduces a new way to think about the concept of economic efficiency that is both consistent with its historical derivation and more useful than concepts currently used. He establishes an expanded version of Kaldor Hicks efficiency as an axiomatic system that performs the following tasks: the new approach obviates certain technical and ethical criticisms that have been made of economic efficiency; it answers critics of efficiency; it allows an expanded range for efficiency analysis; it establishes the conditions under which economists can reasonably say that some state of the world is inefficient. He then applies the new analysis to a number of hard and fascinating cases, including the economics of duelling, cannibalism and rape. He develops a new theory of common law efficiency and indicates the circumstances under which the common law will be inefficient. The book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in the concept of economic efficiency and how it should be applied to law and economics.

This clear and incisive book provides the ideal critical synthesis of the best thinking on one of the most important moral, social, and political issues of our time: the role of the market as a basic institution of social organization. It articulates the two main types of arguments for and against the market--efficiency arguments and ethical arguments--and examines their conceptual, empirical, and moral presuppositions, as well as their implications for capitalist, socialist, and market-socialist economic arragements. Among the many striking features of the argument is Buchanan's contention that the allegedly purely technical notions of efficiency current in the social science literature rest on unexamined ethical assumptions and that the ethical arguments offered by philosophers and political theorists depend upon unexamined assumptions about efficiency. Buchanan also contends that the problem of relativism for judgments comparing social systems is no less serious for efficiency claims than for ethical claims. This short, accessible book will raise the quality of the debate in both philosophy and the social sciences. It is an ideal introduction to its subject for students in political and social theory, economics, comparative politics, and philosophy.

After operationalizing the concept of "the effect of a choice on economic efficiency," this Article explains the basis of its author's conclusion that ours is a liberal, rights-based society as well as the implications of that conclusion for the structure and content of the analysis of moral rights in our culture, the analysis of what an individual or the State ought to do when the relevant choice is neither required nor prohibited by our society's moral-rights commitments, and the analysis of various types of legal rights?legal rights that are based on moral rights, legal rights that arise from legislation that is designed to secure various legitimate social goals, or legal rights that are created by legislation designed to further the narrowly-defined self-interest of its supporters. The Article then explains that economic efficiency is not an ultimate value (that increasing economic efficiency is not a goal that is desired in itself), that the fact that a choice increases economic efficiency does not guarantee its consistency with our rights-commitments, that the fact that a choice decreases economic efficiency does not guarantee its inconsistency with our rights-commitments, that these last two conclusions partly reflect the inability of economic-efficiency analysis to identify the creatures that are moral-rights' holders and partially reflects the insensitivity of economic-efficiency analysis to many factors that are relevant to the consistency of a choice with the moral rights of moral-rights holders, that the fact that a choice will increase (decrease) economic efficiency is not a necessary or sufficient condition for its desirability (undesirability) from any legitimate personal-ultimate-value perspective (rights-considerations aside), and partly for reasons that relate to the foregoing conclusion that the analysis of economic efficiency is also not an algorithm for the determination of legal rights of any kind (except in the rare instances in which the alleged legal right was created by a statute that contains ambiguous or open-textured language and was passed to achieve the possible proximate goal of increasing economic efficiency).

This work tackles economic rationalism from a moral perspective. Firstly, in non-technical language, it reviews the economic arguments for economic rationalism. It then examines the ethical defences for economic rationalism and considers its many criticisms.

This book explores how moral factors exert influence on economy from an economic and philosophical point of view. The book takes an in-depth look at topics such as efficiency and coordination, fairness and identification, law and self-discipline and the third distribution, which have long been the focus of public attention. As expounded in this book, in places where regulation by market or government does work, there are still some gaps that the two modes of regulation cannot reach owing to the limitations of their influence. Each does compensate for the other’s limitations, but only up to a point. The gap can only be filled by custom and morality. In this sense, regulation by custom and morality can be viewed as a regulatory mode beyond market and government. In a market economy, market regulation of resource allocation as a basic mode can be called “primary regulation” and government regulation, as a high-level mode, “secondary regulation.” Regulation that relies on the force of custom and morality, a regulation beyond market and government, can be called “the third regulation.” A variety of causes can give rise to market failure or government paralysis, rendering regulation by market or government ineffective or extremely limited. But even in such circumstances, custom and morality still exist and continue working as normal. What affects resource allocation, socio-economic operations and living standards is not just the power of market or government, but that of custom and morality. This book is one of the three published writings that best reflect Professor Li Yining’s academic standpoint. Although written in economic language, the book also incorporates sociology, history and philosophy and will help the reader make better judgment calls in the face of changing market conditions and economic policies.

Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.

John Maynard Keynes wrote to his grandchildren more than fifty years ago about their economic possibilities, and thus about our own: "I see us free, there fore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misde meanour. . . . We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful" ("Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," pp. 371-72). In the year 1930 Keynes regarded these prospects as realizable only after a time span ofone hundred years, ofwhich we have now achieved more than half. The pres ent book does not share Keynes's view that the possibility of an integration of ethics and economics is dependent exclusively on the state of economic devel opment, though this integration is certainly made easier by an advantageous total economic situation. The conditions of an economy that is becoming post of ethics, cultural industrial and post-modern are favorable for the unification theory, and economics. Economic development makes a new establishment of economic ethics and a theory ofethical economy necessary. Herdecke and Hanover, October 1987 P. K. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword v Introduction . 0. 1. Ethical Economy and Political Economy . . 0. 1. 1. Ethical Economy as Theory ofthe Ethical Presuppositions of the Economy and Economic Ethics 3 0. 1. 2.

Selected papers from the Second Annual International Conference on Socio-Economics, held at George Washington U., Washington, DC, March 1990, provide a snapshot of the current state of research being pursued across a range of established academic disciplines with respect to this emerging movement, formally launched by the publication of Amitai Etzioni's book The moral dimension in 1988. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR