Moral behavior in the marketplace

Abstract

The object of this paper is to understand how morality and the market are related. Morality is classically regarded as the study of how men ought to behave. This study has been inextricably linked with the way in which institutions shape behavior, or in which way ethical behavior can be achieved through the design of institutions. The virtuous life for Plato and Aristotle could only be achieved in the polis, the city state. In economics this tradition is largely lost because men are posited as naturally defined maximizing creatures and talk about morality is discarded as moral philosophy. In this paper I would like to argue that to come to a good understanding of moral behavior and its relation to markets, we have to resurrect this tradition in economic thought.