History of Science Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization : Vol. XIV. Natural and Cultural Sciences (CONSSAVY): Part III. Markets and Morals: Ethical Issues in Economics Book

Contents: General Introduction/D.P. Chattopadhyay. I. Introductory: 1. Introduction to ethics and economics: a preliminary survey of the issues/Ashok S. Guha. II. Ethics and the economist: historical notes on the ethical: 2. The humanist context in political economy, economics and social choice/Tapas Majumdar. 3. John Stuart Mill and Non-Welfaristic welfare economics/Prasanta K. Pattanaik. III. Theories of Justice: 4. On some macro and micro theories of distributive justice/Rajat Deb. 5. Fair and lovely : some theoretical considerations in the equitable allocation of resources/Arunava Sen. IV. Problems of implementation: 6. Strategy proofness: an introduction/Bhaskar Dutta. 7. Institutionalizing virtue: how morality may survive the rate race/Ashok S. Guha. V. Capitalism and ethics: 8. Capitalism and morality/Deepak Lal. 9. The economics of corporate social responsibility/Maitreesh Ghatak. 10. Ethics and the market/Ashok S. Guha and Brishti Guha. 6. Section VI. Ethics, economics and evolution: 11. How Sapient is Homo economicus?/Kaushik Basu and Ashok S. Guha. Index.

The volumes of the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization aim at discovering the main aspects of India’s heritage and present them in an interrelated way. In spite of their unitary look, these volumes recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers and writers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. The project is marked by what may be called methodological pluralism. Inspite of its primarily historical character, this project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is for the first time that an endeavour of such a unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization.

Should economists, as members of a tribe who pride themselves as practitioners of a scientific discipline, confine their enquiries to analyzing the world as it is or should they also pontificate about what ought to be? The fact that this debate has never been satisfactorily resolved constitutes the justification for this book, which explores various aspects of the interface of economics and ethics.

Some of the issues that the various contributors to this volume discuss are (1) what constitutes a just allocation of economic resources, (2) what is meant by fairness in exchange, (3) what mechanisms exist, or can be designed, to ensure fairness at the micro or justice at the macro-level.

Part of the book is devoted to a related, but not identical, issue. Empirical evidence strongly suggests the presence in most populations of a degree of honesty and a sense of fairness well beyond what would be expected in a world of narrowly selfish maximizers. Homo economists, it seems, does not rule in most societies. But how do values like intrinsic honesty survive the competitive environment of the market an institution based as Adam Smith famously declared not on the benevolence of the participants but on their self interest.

More generally, is there a morality that evolves spontaneously out of the interactions of our species? What light can economists throw on the evolutionary origins of ethical concepts like reciprocity, which underlie the whole process of exchange? This volume represents a brief exploration of such questions.