George DeMartino

A Professional Ethics Code for Economists

Perhaps economists would not need a professional ethics code if they knew with certainty what the outcomes of their policies would be. But they do not, and therefore they should abide by a higher standard of conduct.

Epistemic Aspects of Economic Practice and the Need for Professional Economic Ethics

This paper explores ethical burdens facing the economics profession which are associated with epistemic features of economic practice. Economists exert power over those they purport to serve by virtue of epistemic asymmetry between themselves and others, i.e., the intellectual monopoly they enjoy over a vitally important body of knowledge. But they also face the problem of epistemic insufficiency, which implies that they may do substantial harm as they try to do good. The paper explores the ethical entailments of the epistemic features of economics, and argues that managing the ethical challenges requires a new field of inquiry, the field of professional economic ethics, and not just a code of conduct.

Ethical Economic Engagement in a World beyond Control

Political projects are often grounded in theoretical analyses that present themselves as adequate to the world they hope to transform. This is true of many projects on the right as well as many on the left. In contrast, J. K. Gibson-Graham refuse any such notion of adequacy. Their refusal substantially complicates the ethical dimensions of academic practice, especially for those scholars who seek to promote projects of economic emancipation and justice. Gibson-Grahams practice provides a challenging vision of how we can engage ethically a world we cannot control. It is a practice based on what theologian Sharon Welch calls an “ethic of risk” rather than an “ethic of control.”

The Economic Crisis and the Crisis in Economics

In many quarters, it has long been accepted that the discourses economists construct when theorizing do not simply mirror the external world but also define it and influence its course in fundamental ways (Gibson-Graham 1996; Ruccio and Amariglio 2003). But this insight tends to be of little interest to most economists, who hold fast to much more conventional epistemological presumptions. As every economist worth his salt knows, the world out there is what it is, for better or worse. That we might like it to be other wise — that we might prefer a world in which people acted on altruistic rather than egoistic motivations, say—is of no theoretical relevance. In this account, good theory provides a faithful representation of the world as it is, not as the economist would like it to be. And when two theories seem to do the job equally well, economists are trained to choose that alternative that is most elegant, parsimonious and tractable. Moreover, the economist’s epistemology induces the comforting belief that theoretical knowledge improves over time, yielding explanatory models that do a better and better job of capturing the world. This is an epistemology that generates faith in theoretical progress. Hence there is little need to expend time and energy examining the macro-theory of the 1930s when surely the macro-theory of the 1990s has overtaken its predecessor in its explanatory power and verisimilitude.

Economic integration in an uneven world: an internationalist perspective

This paper discusses two progressive schools of thought that have evolved in response to international neoliberalism and the consequent competitive pressures in global markets emanating from the low-cost conditions obtained in many less developed countries. The paper identifies these as the ‘competitiveness-enhancing’ and the ‘competition-reducing’ approaches. The former is shown to be ill-suited to present circumstances of the global economy and, in any event, nationalist. The latter seeks to minimize the adverse consequences of international neoliberalism, and comprises proposals for expansive social charters and social tariffs. The paper provides a theoretical basis for this approach, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each of these proposals. The paper then develops and defends a new multilateral, rule-based trade proposal, called the ‘social index tariff structure’ (SITS), which would reward nations for high levels of development achieved relative to their economic means. Drawing on human ...

On Marxism, Institutionalism, and the Problem of Labor Exploitation

In Are Worker Rights Human Rights? Ric McIntyre explores the unintended manner in which rights discourse may impede the project to empower labor in todays globally integrated economy, while offering a synthesis of critical insights from the institutionalist and Marxian traditions. In his synthesis McIntyre draws on the related concepts of convention and class, on the one hand, and reasonable value and exploitation, on the other. This essay pursues that synthesis, and raises questions about what is gained and what is lost in the development of a theoretical account that respects the contributions of both traditions.

Editor’s Introduction, FSE Papers and Proceedings

I am pleased to edit this special issue of the FSE which includes selected papers from the annual meetings of the Association for Social Economics (ASE) at the Allied Social Sciences Meetings in Philadelphia in January. This is the second year in which the papers and proceedings have been edited by the ASE President-Elect, who is also responsible for the ASE program. The format allows the President-Elect to construct the program with an eye toward curating the collection of papers that will appear in the FSE. The theme for this year’s meetings was “The Democratic Crisis and the Responsibility of Economics.” As stated in the Call for Papers (CfP), “both the Brexit vote and the subsequent election of President Trump can be read in part as rejections of the authority and privileges of experts who advise democratic governments in pursuit of economic wellbeing and other valued goals.” The CfP prompted scholars to consider whether, to what degree, and in what ways the economics profession contributed to the rise of what is now commonly referred to as “populism” in the US, Britain, the European continent, and beyond. After many decades in which the ideologies of political and economic liberalism (including global neoliberalism) appeared to be secure and immune to challenges from the left or right, and during which the authority of economists was widely if grudgingly accepted, a wave of angry, nationalist, nativist, anti-intellectual movements now threatens the liberal project and the relevance of the economics profession. Those suffering the consequences are not the 1% targeted by the popular, progressive movements of just a few years ago. To date the financial elite are the primary beneficiaries, at least in the US where there is a pronounced move toward regressive tax reform.

Harming Irreparably: On Neoliberalism, Kaldor-Hicks, and the Paretian Guarantee

Abstract The global neoliberal project, which entailed inter alia financial liberalization that accelerated financialization of the world economy, was advocated by leading Austrian, Chicago School neoclassical, and New Keynesian economists, despite awareness that the project would harm many members of society even as it benefitted others. To the extent that they were efficacious in their advocacy, economists contributed to the imposition of serious harm. Often the harm befell the most vulnerable members of society. At least some of the harm was avoidable. This paper examines critically the Kaldor-Hicks compensation test, a primary criterion used in defense of the neoliberal project. The paper finds that the best existing defense of Kaldor-Hicks is Paretian rather than Benthamian in nature: it focuses on the long-run rather than on each individual policy innovation, and claims that all agents benefit by a series of Kaldor-Hicks consistent innovations even if some are harmed in each individual instance. The paper finds that the Paretian case is deficient on grounds other than those commonly invoked against Kaldor-Hicks. The critique focuses on the neoclassical consequentialist welfarism that grounds the Paretian case, and the related presumption that all harms are reparable and, indeed, compensable.

The Entailments of Entailments

In Market Sense: Toward a New Economics of Markets and Society, Philip Kozel examines the intellectual “entailments” that infuse the work of Marxian and non-Marxian scholarship on globalization and the market economy. Kozel illuminates the ways in which entailment thinking interferes with complex social analysis and efficacious political interventions. This essay examines the contributions of the book, and explores some of the many forms in which entailments appear in contemporary political economy. It then raises the question whether it is possible to envision social theory in the absence of all entailments.

Free Trade or Social Tariffs

During the 1990s a controversy emerged over incorporating labour and human rights and environmental protections in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade agreements. Trade economists were universally opposed to ‘fair trade’ measures, arguing that international differences in labour and environmental standards represented another natural source of comparative advantage. Today there is much greater concern among economists about the adverse impacts of free trade, and increasing openness to the idea of fair trade. This chapter explores the theoretical aspects of the debate, changing sentiments in the economics profession regarding fair trade, and various fair-trade measures that deserve economists’ attention.