84554 - ETHICS AND MARKETS

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course students are aware and are able to understand the ethical and strategic implications, complexity and dilemmas of corporate responsibility and sustainability. They learn about motivations in markets, ethics of individual actions and their effect in societies and the tensions between markets and distributive justice.

Course contents

The course is an attempt to reclaim economics as a moral science. It argues that ethics is a relevant and inseparable aspect of all levels of economic activity. Taking ethical considerations into account is needed in explaining and predicting the behaviour of economic agents as well as in evaluating and designing economic policies and mechanisms. A number of cases and references to major recent phenomena will complement the theoretical landscape.

Schedule of topics.

1. The nature of moral agency. Modes of agency. A social cognitive theory of morality.

2. Neuroethics and the corporate world. The corporation as a moral agent. Is business ethics relevant?

3. Finance, arbitrage and ethics. The ethical limits of arbitrage. Arbitraging regulatory and market structures.

4. The legislator's dilemma. A mandate for Aristotle's Legislator

5. Is bribery without a remedy? The forgotten law of lobbying. The anticorruption principle and the working of competitive markets.

Readings/Bibliography

A. Bandura (2016), Moral Disengagement, New York, MacMillan

M. O'Hara (2016), Something for nothing. Arbitrage and Ethics on Wall Street, New York, Norton

S. Bowles (2016), The moral economy, New Haven, Yale University Press

P. Rona, L. Zsolnai (eds.), (2017), Economics as a moral science, Berlin, Springer

Z. Teachout (2014), Corruption in America, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press

 

Teaching methods

Lectures and in class discussions

Assessment methods

A 6,000 words final paper on a topic freely chosen by the student among those dealt with in the course.

Office hours

See the website of Stefano Zamagni