Ethics, Rationality, and Economic Behaviour

The connection between economics and ethics is as old as economics itself, and central to both disciplines. It is an issue that has recently attracted much interest from economists and philosophers. A number of influential contemporary approaches to ethics advocate decision-theoretic or game-theoretic foundations of some sort for moral principles, while several economic theorists are now taking into account the ethical dimensions of rational decisions. The essays included in the present volume provude a detailed analysis of the connections between ethics and economics as viewed from several different - sometimes conflicting - perspectives. There are three main themes: the validity of utilitarianism much used by economists, the notion of fairness and equity, and the coherence of the rationality postulate of economics. The book does not reach any final conclusions, but it greatly illuminates the exact areas of possible disagreement and indeed the open-ended nature of ethical reasoning.