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Contents
Contents
Mark D. White
The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics
Edited by Mark D. White
Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

Online Publication Date: Jun 2019
(p. iv) Contents
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
Page 1 of 2
Contents
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Page 2 of 2
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Mark D. White

(p. v) Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Adam Swallow at Oxford University Press for his indefatigable sup
port and help with getting this project off the ground and completed; his associate Katie
“Hawkeye” Bishop for her invaluable editorial assistance; and all of the contributors to
this volume for their fantastic chapters and cooperation throughout the process.
For their unending inspiration, I extend special gratitude to Amartya Sen, Amitai Etzioni,
and Deirdre McCloskey.
Page 1 of 1
List of Figures
List of Figures
Mark D. White

(p. x) (p. xi) List of Figures

4.1 Multiple approaches to understanding right from wrong 79
9.1 Results of the baseline treatment in the die-cup experiment 185
12.1 Shifting processes of work in the four sector-model 261
13.1 The model of five spheres 272
16.1 Supply and demand 344
16.2 Exercising market power 345
16.3 Competition among suppliers 347
16.4 Direct normative prescription vs. adversarialism 353
27.1 Contours of equal goodness 601
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List of Tables
List of Tables
Mark D. White

(p. xii) (p. xiii) List of Tables

9.1 Payoffs of the players in each treatment in Gneezy (2005) 184
10.1 The mainstream and social economic visions of ethics and economics 213
10.2 The mainstream economic vision: Society embedded in the economy 218
10.3 Four different types of individual advantage and associated moral values 222
10.4 Positions regarding the pervasiveness of moral values in economic life 224
19.1 Types of well-being comparisons 406
19.2 Invariance to rescalings of the well-being measure 408
20.1 Utilitarianism vs. fairness 424
20.2 Do ex post inequalities matter? 424
20.3 Enriched description of consequences 428
20.4 Pareto vs. inequality aversion 429
20.5 Ex post egalitarianism vs. separability 434
20.6 Implications of separability 435
20.7 Pareto for equal risk, separability and statewise dominance vs. inequality aver
sion 435
20.8 Prevention vs. vaccination 436
21.1 Risky 451
21.2 Certain 451
21.3 Distributional Sensitivities, Prospect Values, and Parameters 454
21.4 Restrictive Intervention and Intervention for All 455
21.5 Single-Cause and Multiple-Cause 456
21.6 No Screening and Screening 457
21.7 Vaginal Birth and C-section 458
21.8 Overview 460
21.9 Prevention and Treatment 461
21.10 Protecting 99 Sheep and Saving One Sheep 462
21.11 Safe Detonation and Lethal Bomb 463
(p. xiv) 21.12 One Lives One Dies and Coin Flip 465
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List of Tables
21.13 Adler’s Objection 466

21.14 Utilities in Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s Example 467
21.15 Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s Objection to Prioritarianism 468
21.16 Sen’s Libertarian Paradox 469
21.17 Gibbard’s version of the Libertarian Paradox 469
22.1 Compensable vs. noncompensable harm 482
22.2 A taxonomy of harmed or harmful conditions 484
26.1 Results of an employment audit 570
Page 2 of 2
Notes on Contributors
Mark D. White

(p. xv) Notes on Contributors

Matthew D. Adler
is the Richard A. Horvitz Professor of Law and Professor of Economics, Philosophy and
Public Policy at Duke University. He was previously the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law at
the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. His scholarship is interdisciplinary, drawing
from both welfare economics and normative ethics. Adler’s current research focuses on
the theoretical foundations and practical implementation of prioritarianism. With Ole
Norheim, he is the founder of the “Prioritarianism in Practice” research network. Adler is
the author of New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis (Harvard, 2006, with Eric Pos
ner); Well-Being and Fair Distribution: Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis (Oxford, 2012), and
Measuring Social Welfare (Oxford, 2019), and is the editor (with Marc Fleurbaey) of the
Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy (2016). Adler was until 2017 an editor
of the journal Legal Theory, and is currently an editor of Economics and Philosophy.
Ali al-Nowaihi
is Emeritus Professor of Economics in the School of Business at Leicester University.

Since 2000, his main area of research has been in behavioral economics. His main coau
thor in this enterprise has been Sanjit Dhami; he has also published with Livio Stracca,
Andrew Colman, Briony Pulford, David Omtzigt, Maxine Wei, and Cass Sunstein. Other ar
eas he has published in include algebra, oligopoly theory (with Paul Levine), monetary
policy (with Paul Levine and with Sanjit Dhami), and public economics (with Clive Fraser
and with Sanjit Dhami). Ali graduated in mathematics from Cairo University in 1971, ob
tained his MSc also in mathematics from London University in 1973, and obtained his
PhD in oligopoly theory in 1976 from the South Bank Polytechnic (now University). Ali has
taught in two secondary schools, the South Bank Polytechnic (now University), Thames
Polytechnic (now Greenwich University), and at Leicester University. He has also super
vised six successful PhD students.
Page 1 of 9
Jennifer A. Baker
is Professor of Philosophy at the College of Charleston. Her focus is on updating ancient

virtue ethics for use today. Her published articles include “Who is Afraid of a Final End?
The Omission of Traditional Practical Rationality from Contemporary Virtue Ethics,”
“Virtue Ethics and Practical Guidance,” and “Virtue and Behavior.” Her co-edited collec
tion of work on virtue and economics (with Mark D. White) was published by Oxford Uni
versity Press in 2016. She is at work applying Stoic virtue ethics to business ethics as
well as current-day policing.
Constanze Binder
is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Co-Director of the Eras

mus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, and Programme Director of the Research
Master programme in Philosophy and Economics at Erasmus (p. xvi) University Rotter
dam. Constanze studied economics and environmental system science at Graz University
and obtained a PhD in philosophy at the University of Groningen. She previously taught in
the Philosophy Departments of Groningen and Leiden University, worked at the Econom
ics Department of the University of Osnabrück, and contributed to projects for the Austri
an Federal Ministry of the Environment and the Austrian Human Dimensions Program.
Constanze’s research is on the interface of philosophy and economics, with a particular
focus on the analysis of freedom, responsibility, and distributive justice in political philos
ophy and welfare economics, as well as on the ethics of individual and collective decision-
making in politics and economics.
Peter J. Boettke
is University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University and Di
rector of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Econom
ics at the Mercatus Center. He received his PhD in economics from George Mason Univer
sity in 1989. Before joining the faculty at George Mason University in 1998, Boettke
taught at New York University. He currently serves as the President of the Mont Pelerin
Society and was the President of the Southern Economics Association from 2015–17. His
publications include Why Perestroika Failed: The Politics and Economics of Socialist
Transformation, Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Polit
ical Economy, Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington
School, Robust Political Economy for the 21st Century, and Living Economics: Yesterday,
Today and Tomorrow.
Luc Bovens
(PhD University of Minnesota) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Car

olina at Chapel Hill and is core faculty in its PPE program. He was a Professor of Philoso
phy in the University of Colorado at Boulder (1990–2003) and in the London School of
Economics and Political Science (2004–2017). He is joint author of Bayesian Epistemology
Page 2 of 9
(Oxford, 2003). His areas of research are philosophy of economics, philosophy and public
policy, formal epistemology, rationality, and moral psychology.
John Broome
is Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and a fel
low of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Australian
National University. Before moving to Oxford, he was Professor of Philosophy at the Uni
versity of St Andrews, and before that Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol.
He works on rationality and normativity, and also on value theory. As an application of his
work on value theory, he is involved in the philosophy of climate change. He was a Lead
Author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. His books include, on value theory, Weighing Goods, Weighing Lives, and Ethics
Out of Economics; on climate change, Climate Matters; and on rationality and normativi
ty, Rationality Through Reasoning.
John B. Davis
is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Marquette University, USA, and Professor Emeritus

of Economics, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is the author of Keynes’s Philo
sophical Development (Cambridge, 1994), The Theory of the Individual in Economics
(Routledge, 2003), Individuals and Identity in Economics (Cambridge, 2011), co-author
with Marcel Boumans of Economic Methodology: Understanding Economics (p. xvii) as a
Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and co-author with Robert McMaster of Health Care
Economics (Routledge, 2017). He is a former editor of the Review of Social Economy, is
co-editor with Wade Hands of the Journal of Economic Methodology, and is the editor of
the Routledge Advances in Social Economics book series.
George F. DeMartino
is Professor of Economics in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University

of Denver, where he co-directs the MA in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integra
tion. He has published Global Economy, Global Justice: Theoretical Objections and Policy
Alternatives to Neoliberalism (Routledge) and The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for and
Content of Professional Economic Ethics (Oxford University Press). He is co-editor with
Deirdre N. McCloskey of The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics. He is
now working on The Tragedy of Economics: Harm, Economic Harm, and the Harm Econo
mists Do as They Try to Do Good.
Sanjit Dhami
is Professor of Economics at the University of Leicester. He studied at the Delhi School of

Economics for his MPhil and the University of Toronto for his Masters and PhD degrees in
economics. He has previously taught at the Universities of Toronto, Essex, and Newcas
tle. His research has mainly focused on behavioral economic theory and its applications.
He is the author of Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis published by Oxford Uni
versity Press in 2016, possibly the most comprehensive graduate treatment of the sub
Page 3 of 9
ject. His research spans several areas in behavioral economics, which include but are not
restricted to behavioral decision theory, other-regarding preferences, time preferences,
behavioral game theory, and judgment heuristics.
Marc Fleurbaey
is an economist, a professor in the Woodrow Wilson School and Center for Human Values
at Princeton University, and a member of the Collège d’Etudes Mondiales (Paris FMSH).
He is the co-author of Beyond GDP (with Didier Blanchet, Cambridge, 2013), A Theory of
Fairness and Social Welfare (with François Maniquet, Cambridge, 2011), and the author
of Fairness, Responsibility and Welfare (Oxford, 2008). He was a coordinating lead author
for the IPCC 5th Report, and one of the initiators of the International Panel on Social
Progress.
Gerald Gaus
is the James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where he di
rects the program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. His books include Value
and Justification (Cambridge, 1990), Justificatory Liberalism (Oxford, 1996), and The Or
der of Public Reason (Cambridge, 2011). His most recent book is The Tyranny of the
Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society (Princeton University Press, 2016). He is currently writ
ing a book on morality, complexity, and evolution to be published by Oxford University
Press. His papers can be found at www.gaus.biz.
Stefanie Haeffele
is a Senior Research Fellow, the Deputy Director of Academic and Student Programs, and
a Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics,
and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is the co-author
of Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster: Lessons in Local Entrepreneurship
(Palgrave), and the editor of Knowledge and Incentives in (p. xviii) Policy: Using Public
Choice and Market Process Theory to Analyze Public Policy Issues (Rowman and Little
field International).
Daniel M. Hausman
earned his philosophy PhD in 1978 at Columbia University, and has taught at the Univer
sity of Maryland at College Park, Carnegie Mellon University, and since 1988 at the Uni
versity of Wisconsin-Madison; he has visited at the Institute for Advanced Studies, the
London School of Economics, and the Université de Cergy-Pontoise. His research focuses
on issues at the boundaries between economics and philosophy. With Michael McPherson,
he founded the journal Economics and Philosophy. He is the editor of The Philosophy of
Economics: An Anthology (3rd edn, 2007). His books include Capital, Profits, and Prices,
The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics, Causal Asymmetries, Preference, Value,
Choice and Welfare, Valuing Health: Well-being, Freedom, and Suffering, and Economic
Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy (3rd edn, 2017, co-authored with Michael
Page 4 of 9
McPherson and Debra Satz). In 2009, Daniel Hausman was elected to the American Acad
emy of Arts and Sciences.
Joseph Heath
is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Public Policy and Gover
nance at the University of Toronto. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the
Trudeau Foundation, Heath is the author of several books, both popular and academic.
His most recent, Morality, Competition and the Firm (Oxford, 2014), is a collection of pa
pers on business ethics and the normative foundations of market economies. He is also
the author of Enlightenment 2.0, which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political
Writing in 2015.
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
is Professor in Management at Loughborough University London. He is the author of sev

eral books, including Conceptualizing Capitalism (2015, winner of the Schumpeter Prize),
From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities (2013), Darwin’s Conjecture (with Thorb
jørn Knudsen, 2010), and How Economics Forgot History (2001). He is the author of 150
articles in academic journals, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics,
and Secretary of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research.
Arjo Klamer
is a professor of cultural economics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He is the

past president of the Association of Cultural Economists. He has developed a value-based
approach and introduced the notion of shared goods. Among his publications are Doing
the Right Thing: A Value Based Economy (2017) and Speaking of Economics: How to Be in
the Conversation (2007).
Ulrike Knobloch
is Assistant Professor of Economics and Gender at the University of Vechta, Germany, and
lecturer at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and the University of Gießen, Ger
many. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, as
well as a diploma in economics and an intermediate diploma in philosophy from the Uni
versity of Freiburg, Germany. She is a long-time active member of the following networks:
efas – economics, feminism and science; European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS);
International Association for Feminist Economics (p. xix) (IAFFE); and Network Caring
Economy (which she co-founded in 1992). Her academic research focuses on the norma
tive foundations of pluralist feminist economics, feminist economic ethics, regulatory
ethics from a gender perspective, economics of provisioning and systems of provisioning
in comparison, feminist critical thinking in social economy, and household economics. Her
most recent publications include the edited volume Economics of Provisioning: Contribu
tions to the Plurality of Feminist Economic Theory (2019 in German; English translation
planned).
Page 5 of 9
Michael S. McPherson
served as President of the Spencer Foundation for fourteen years before retiring in 2017.
Earlier he was President of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, for seven years. He
is a nationally known economist whose expertise focuses on the interplay between educa
tion and economics. McPherson is co-author or editor of several books, including Lesson
Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education, Crossing the Finish Line:
Completing College at America’s Public Universities, The Student Aid Game, and Econom
ic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy (with Daniel Hausman and Debra Satz).
McPherson was founding co-editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy (with Haus
man). He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Mellon Foundation and a non-resi
dent Fellow at the Urban Institute.
Barak Medina
is the Justice Haim H. Cohn Professor of Human Rights at the Faculty of Law, The He
brew University of Jerusalem. He currently serves as Rector of the Hebrew University, af
ter serving as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2009 to 2012. His scholarly work focuses
on human rights law and economic analysis of law. He has served as a visiting professor
at the law schools of Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley.
Brendan O’Flaherty
is Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Most of his work is about homeless

ness, crime, race, and Newark, New Jersey. His books include Shadows of Doubt: Stereo
types, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice (with Rajiv Sethi), The Economics of Race in the
United States, How to House the Homeless (with Ingrid Gould Ellen), City Economics, and
Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness.
James R. Otteson
is Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics and Professor of Economics at

Wake Forest University. He received his BA from the University of Notre Dame and his
PhD from the University of Chicago. He specializes in political economy, moral philoso
phy, and the history of economic thought, and his publications include Adam Smith’s Mar
ketplace of Life (2002), Actual Ethics (2006), Adam Smith (2013), and The End of Social
ism (2014). His most recent book, Honorable Business: A New Framework for Business in
a Just and Humane Society, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.
Julian Reiss
is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and co-director of the Centre for Human
ities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS). He has a degree in economics and finance
from the University of St. Gallen and a PhD in philosophy from the London School of Eco
nomics. His main research interests are methodologies of the (p. xx) sciences (especially
causality and causal inference, models, simulations and thought experiments, and coun
terfactuals), philosophy of economics, and science and values. He is the author of Error in
Page 6 of 9
Economics: Towards a More Evidence-Based Methodology (2008), Philosophy of Econom

ics: A Contemporary Introduction (2013), Causation, Evidence, and Inference (2015), and
over fifty papers in leading philosophy and social science journals and edited collections.
Ingrid Robeyns
is an economist and philosopher and holds the Chair in Ethics of Institutions at the Ethics
Institute at Utrecht University. She currently also serves as the president of the Human
Development and Capability Association. She works primarily in normative political phi
losophy and applied ethics, in particular theories of justice, the evaluation of institutions,
and the capability approach. In her recent book Well-Being, Freedom and Social Justice:
The Capability Approach Re-examined (Open Book Publishers), she analyses how all the
different strands in the capability approach relate to each other and can be thought to fit
together under one generalized overarching structure. In applied ethics and applied phi
losophy, she has worked on questions of gender, parenthood, disability, basic income, wel
fare state arrangements, and ecological sustainability, among many more. More informa
tion and links to her publications can be found at www.ingridrobeyns.info.
David C. Rose
is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His research focuses on

behavioral economics, political economy, the theory of the firm, and ethics. He has pub
lished scholarly articles on a wide range of topics. His book The Moral Foundation of Eco
nomic Behavior (Oxford, 2011) explored the role that moral beliefs play in the develop
ment and operation of free market societies. His more recent book Why Culture Matters
Most (Oxford, 2019) explores how culture uniquely solves the most daunting obstacle to
individual and collective human flourishing: individual rationality undermining the com
mon good. His work has been supported by the Weldon Spring Foundation, the National
Institute of Mental Health, the HFL Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Temple
ton Foundation. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Missouri State Univer
sity and a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia.
Joakim Sandberg
is Director of the Financial Ethics Research Group at University of Gothenburg in Swe

den. He is Professor of Economics and Finance from a Humanist Perspective at Universi
ty of Groningen in the Netherlands, and Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy at
University of Gothenburg. He is also affiliated with the Mistra Center for Sustainable
Markets (Misum) at the Stockholm School of Economics. Joakim has a background in both
economics (MBA in 2003) and philosophy (PhD in 2008). He was selected as Wallenberg
Academy Fellow by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2014.
Debra Satz
is the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and
Sciences, the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, and Professor of Philoso
phy and (by courtesy) Political Science at Stanford University. (p. xxi) Her publications in
Page 7 of 9
clude Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets (2010) and
Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy and Public Policy (2017, with Michael McPherson
and Daniel Hausman). She has coedited several books and is the author of numerous arti
cles and the editor of the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. She was elected a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
David Schmidtz
is Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic in the

McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona. He is editor in chief of
the journal Social Philosophy & Policy, author of Elements of Justice, and co-editor (with
Dan Shahar) of Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works, published
by Oxford University Press.
Virgil Henry Storr
is a Senior Research Fellow, Vice President of Academic and Student Programs, and the
Don C. Lavoie Senior Fellow in the F.A. Hayek Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Eco
nomics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and an Associate Professor of
Economics in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. He is the author
of Understanding the Culture of Markets (Routledge).
Mark D. White
is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/
CUNY, and a member of the doctoral faculty in economics at the Graduate Center of
CUNY. He is the author of seven books, including Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autono
my, Dignity, and Character; editor or co-editor of many volumes, including Economics and
the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation (with Jennifer A. Baker); and author of over
sixty journal articles and book chapters in economics, philosophy, and law. He is series
editor of On Ethics and Economics (Rowman and Littlefield International) and Perspec
tives from Social Economics (Palgrave Macmillan), and a co-founder of the blog Econom
ics and Ethics.
Jonathan B. Wight
is Professor of Economics and International Studies in the Robins School of Business at

the University of Richmond. He is past president of the Association for Social Economics
and author of Ethics in Economics: An Introduction to Moral Frameworks and the acade
mic novel Saving Adam Smith: A Tale of Wealth, Transformation, and Virtue. He is co-au
thor of Teaching the Ethical Foundations and Economics, and co-founded and edits the
blog Economics and Ethics.
Kaitlyn Woltz
is a third year PhD student at George Mason University in the Economics department.
She is a PhD fellow with the Mercatus Center and a Graduate Fellow with the F.A. Hayek
Page 8 of 9
Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Kaitlyn’s research in
terests are in the fields of Austrian economics, institutional analysis, and the political
economy of criminal justice. Her current project looks at the role that prison periodicals
played in prisons and the criminal justice system during the mid-twentieth century.
Eyal Zamir
is the Augusto Levi Professor of Commercial Law at the Faculty of Law, The Hebrew Uni
versity of Jerusalem, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2002 to 2005.
His spheres of interest include economic and behavioral analyses of law, (p. xxii) law and
normative ethics, and contract law and theory. He has been a visiting researcher or visit
ing professor at the law schools of Harvard, Yale, NYU, Georgetown, UCLA, and Zurich.
Eyal has authored or edited sixteen books and published more than sixty articles and
book chapters, including ones in Columbia Law Review, Journal of Legal Studies, Univer
sity of Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, and Virginia Law Review.
Page 9 of 9
Introduction
Introduction
Mark D. White

THE birth of modern economics is credited to a moral philosopher who wrote of both
sympathy and self-interest, but nearly 250 years later the connection between ethics and
economics has worn thin. In the last century especially, economics has adopted a scientif
ic, positivistic, and empirical sheen, and its ethical foundations have been more difficult
to discern, although they are still there. As long as it studies the choices, interactions,
and welfare of human beings, economics cannot deny its roots in moral philosophy. At the
most basic level, choice and well-being matter for a reason—and more to the point, hu
man beings matter for a reason. Economists may take these things for granted when they
go about their work, much as chemists take the existence of matter for granted. Unlike
chemists, though, economists’ attitudes toward the persons they study help determine the
methods, results, and interpretations of their research, as well as the recommendations
they make to business and governments based on it.
This handbook, and the chapters that comprise it, do not attempt to restore ethics to eco
nomics, for it was never truly gone. When buyers and sellers meet in markets to trade
money for good and services, they are seeking their own self-interest—but they are also
often behaving honestly and honorably, although standard economic models make it diffi
cult to explain why. Policies, regulations, and laws are typically designed to maximize ag
gregate welfare, and this is certainly an ethical goal—but not the only one, and economics
needs to make room for other possibilities. The contributors to this volume highlight the
ethical concepts inherent in economic analysis, extend the ethical foundations of econom
ics into new areas of moral philosophy, and apply these techniques to a wide range of eco
nomic topics.
If “ethics and economics” or “economics and ethics” can be considered a field unto itself,
it is a bifurcated one at best. The most visible part is methodological and critical, with
economists, philosophers, and other scholars challenging mainstream economics for its
narrow focus on the maximization of utility or welfare to the neglect of concepts such as
virtue, rights, dignity, or justice. For example, Amartya Sen introduced the concept of
commitment into economics to challenge the singular pursuit of preference-satisfaction
(1977) and questioned the priority of values with respect to the Pareto criterion (1970).
(p. 2) Amitai Etzioni (1987, 1988) asked if simple preference-satisfaction was sufficient to
explain altruistic behavior and introduced concepts inspired by Kantian ethics to give the
Page 1 of 9
Introduction
standard economic model more depth. Deirdre McCloskey emphasized the importance of
virtue, not only in the history of economic thought (2008) but also the history of com
merce and trade (2006, 2010, 2016). Given the critical stance of this kind of work, it is
natural that heterodox economists have taken the lead in questioning the ethical presup
positions of mainstream economics, chief among them being social economists (Davis and
Dolfsma 2015), feminist economists (Ferber and Nelson 2003), and Austrian economists
(Boettke and Coyne 2015). Many of the participants in this volume have made substantial
contributions of their own in this area, and their chapters herein advance their integral
work.
The other part of the field is not as revolutionary and has therefore been less recognized,
but is no less valuable. It consists of the wealth of research into ethical behavior on the
part of mainstream economists using more modest revisions or reinterpretations of eco
nomic theory. A prime example is the voluminous research, both theoretical and empiri
cal, on the economics of altruism, in which economists study and explain the incidence of
charitable behavior by either expanding models to include other-regarding preferences or
utilities without violating any of the axioms of choice theory (Bergstrom 1999; Fehr and
Schmidt 1999) or positing different types or sources of utility to motivate self-regarding
and altruistic behavior, a modest modification to the standard model (Margolis 1984; Et
zioni 1988). Copious experimental evidence confirms that people often do not behave as
the simplistic models of self-interest predict (Fehr and Schmidt 2006), and behavioral
economists, who recommend more significant changes to the constrained preference-sat
isfaction model (while leaving its core intact), also work to explain this behavior with
more elaborate and psychologically realistic models of choice (Dhami 2016: Part II). Evo
lutionary economists work to explain how the psychological foundations of economic be
havior allowed early human beings to adapt to their environment, which reinforces the
foundations of both mainstream and behavioral conceptions of choice (Bowles and Gintis
2011). Again, many of the chapters in this volume are written by pioneers in this area of
economics and ethics, providing background, extensions, and applications of their semi
nal work.
These two parts of economics and ethics overlap, of course; commentary on technique
need not be separate from application of it. Even the relatively mainstream work on altru
ism requires some changes to the standard economic model of choice, however modest.
The more significant methodological critiques of economic technique and theory can—
and should—be applied to topics of economic interest such as consumption and produc
tion theory and policymaking. Gary Becker (1976) famously expanded the domain of eco
nomics to topics previously thought to be sociological or legal—such as marriage, dis
crimination, and crime—but he did so strictly within the neoclassical framework, which
neglects their inherent ethical dimensions. An expansion of the ethical foundation of eco
nomic theory is necessary to explain all the relevant facets of these phenomena and to
predict behavior accurately. This goes for more “normal” economic activity as well, such
as consumption and production, which have important (p. 3) ethical aspects that are tak
en for granted at best (and ignored at worst). Also, heterodox and political economists
who urge more attention given to inequality and injustice are often reformers at heart—
Page 2 of 9
Introduction
like Jeremy Bentham, the implicit inspiration behind mainstream political economy—urg
ing changes to economics to produce positive change in the real world.
Ethics is essential not only to economic theory, policy, and practice, but perhaps even
more so to education. Very few economics students are exposed to ethics in any explicit
manner, and the implicit ethical foundations of the economics they are taught are rarely
brought into the light. Excellent resources exist, including books useful as texts for begin
ning students (Wight 2015) and advanced ones (Hausman, McPherson, and Satz 2016;
Dutt and Wilber 2010), as well as handbooks for practicing scholars (Peil and van
Staveren 2009, and the present volume), but the importance of ethics to economics must
be recognized by the institutions responsible for education. To this end, movements on
part of students and scholars, such as Rethinking Economics (Fischer et al. 2017), are
prompting reconsideration of economics education around the globe (particularly since
the Great Recession), and ethics needs to part of this in order for economics to reach its
full potential. (The ethical behavior of economists themselves has also attracted in
creased attention in recent years; see DeMartino 2011 and DeMartino and McCloskey
2016.)
Neglect of ethics means ruling out possible explanations of behavior, unexamined topics
of study, and crucial perspectives on policy issues. Economics cannot claim to speak to all
aspects of life while maintaining an insufficiently broad perspective that obscures impor
tant aspects of the world. It can be a worthy heuristic experiment to see how much an as
sumption can explain—and the mainstream paradigm certainly explains a lot—but when it
is clear the assumption fails, there is no virtue in defending it as if it had intrinsic rather
than instrumental value. The methods and approaches of economics are tools to explain
and predict human behavior, design institutions, and recommend policy, and economists
should be willing to modify, extend, or reject them when sufficient evidence indicates. For
example, in recent years mainstream economists have increasingly acknowledged the in
novations of behavioral economics, which are now being absorbed into the mainstream,
leading some to proclaim that behavioral economics simply is economics. Let’s hope that
sometime in the near future, we can say that ethics-and-economics simply is economics—
which would certainly be a better economics, both practically and morally speaking.
Although the phrase “ethics and economics” would suggest a two-way exchange of ideas
—which would be ideal—this has not been the pattern in the field, which, as described
above, has dealt primarily with economists attempting to incorporate more elaborate con
ceptions of ethics into their work to better explain behavior or influence policy. For the
most part, this handbook follows suit, with the chapters herein presenting various ways
that ethics can contribute to economics. The volume is divided into two broad areas, foun
dations and applications, with a concluding chapter explaining what economics can con
tribute to ethics in turn, pointing the way to a true bilateral cooperation between the two
fields in the future.
The first half of the book looks at foundational issues of ethics in economics. The
(p. 4)
first section surveys five significant ethical thinkers or schools of thought and explores
Page 3 of 9
Introduction
their actual or potential influence on economics. Appropriately, the first chapter, by Ste
fanie Haeffele and Virgil Henry Storr, deals with Adam Smith, the moral philosopher
cited at the beginning of this introduction, explaining how he established a more com
plete social science that emphasized sociality and sympathy, especially in markets (which
are looked at in more depth in the second part of the volume). The second chapter, by
Jennifer A. Baker, explores the contributions that a rich conception of virtue, based on
ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and the Stoics (as well as Smith), can make to eco
nomics, presented in the context of business ethics—and a notorious character from the
work of Charles Dickens. In the third chapter, Mark D. White surveys his work integrat
ing the deontological ethics of Immanuel Kant into economic theory and practice, and ar
gues that economists need to acknowledge concepts such as principles, rights, and duties
in order to capture the richness of human choice, as well as the true impact of utilitarian
policy that wrongfully harms some for the benefit of others. In the fourth chapter,
Jonathan B. Wight argues for a pluralist approach to ethics in economics, writing that
no single school of ethics can capture every relevant moral aspect of economic phenome
na. He recommends combining and balancing the perspectives of virtue, duty, and wel
fare, and responds to criticisms of a pluralistic approach to ethics in economics. In the fi
nal chapter of this section, Constanze Binder and Ingrid Robeyns present the capabili
ties approach of modern philosophers Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in relation to
economics. As Binder and Robeyns argue, the capabilities approach balances the two con
cerns of freedom and well-being in a way that makes it particularly useful for the evalua
tion of institutions and economic systems, but not without limits, which they are also
careful to identify.
The second section of the foundations half of the book looks at the evolutionary roots of
morality in the context of economic theory and thought. The first chapter, by Geoffrey M.
Hodgson, addresses the issue of sympathy versus self-interest highlighted by Adam
Smith and others, but in the context of the work of Charles Darwin, who emphasized the
same themes in his work, and also explored how language and deliberation were essen
tial to the development of morality. On this basis, Hodgson explains how moral senti
ments important to economic behavior may have evolved, and questions whether the as
sumption of other-regarding preferences is sufficient for economic models to explain al
truistic behavior. In the second chapter, Gerald Gaus presents the work of Friedrich von
Hayek, who used the concept of spontaneous order to offer an explanation of the evolu
tion of morality that aligns with current science while avoiding the utopianism of many
current political philosophers. Gaus challenges, however, Hayek’s focus on group selec
tion, arguing instead that a Smithean “invisible hand” can maintain social cooperation. In
the final chapter of this section, David C. Rose surveys classical economic ideas about
decision-making and introduces the visual metaphor of a bookshelf with books of differ
ent colors to represent choices of different degrees of social conformity. He then uses this
to explain how the style of economic thinking that Deirdre McCloskey terms “Max-U”
could have evolved in tandem with the development of the market economy.
Page 4 of 9
Introduction
The contributors to the third section of this half of the book explore various schools
(p. 5)
of thought within economics and how each incorporates ethics to better explain economic
behavior. The first chapter, by Sanjit Dhami and Ali al-Nowaihi, surveys the work done
by behavioral and experimental economists in studying ethical and unethical behavior—
particularly lying—and argues that behavioral economics provides a more inclusive
framework that results in more accurate and useful predictions of economic behavior, es
pecially when ethical factors are present. The second chapter, by John B. Davis, exam
ines the interrelationship between ethics and economics on a more methodological level,
exploring the nature of the relationship between the disciplines using a complex systems
approach. Davis argues that social economics, which assumes that market processes are
embedded in social processes, offers a better context for dealing with ethics and econom
ics than mainstream economics does. In the third chapter, Peter J. Boettke and Kaitlyn
Woltz look at the connection between economics and ethics in the Austrian school of eco
nomics, with particular attention to the separation between ethical assumptions and eco
nomic analysis in the context of twentieth-century Austrian economists’ support of free
markets and capitalism (which are addressed further in the second half of the book). In
the next chapter, Ulrike Knobloch explores the ethics of feminist economics, or what she
calls feminist economic ethics (which also takes queer and postcolonial ethics into ac
count). In this framework, she critically examines various topics such as the androcentric
point of view of economics, the ethics and economics of gender norms, and the nature of
ethics, justice, and provisioning, all from the point of view of care. Finally, the chapter by
Arlo Klamer introduces a value-based approach to economics based on cultural econom
ics, using a novel five-spheres model of the economy to explore the many ways that cul
ture is essential to economics and emphasize that sense-making is an integral aspect of
the economic process.
The second half of the book focuses on applications of ethics to important topics within
economics, whether from a mainstream or expanded perspective. The first section is de
voted to the ethics of commerce and markets, a topic mentioned in several of the chap
ters in the first half of the book. In his opening chapter, James R. Otteson discusses the
ethical approaches of contributors to classical political economy, especially David Hume
and Adam Smith, as well as their critics, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx.
He describes how Hume and Smith saw markets as not only moral but truly humane,
helping to ensure for a broad prosperity, give special assistance to the poor, and enhance
sociality in general. Julian Reiss takes a similar approach in his chapter, looking at the
relationship between capitalism and democracy through the work of Alexis de Toc
queville, Joseph Schumpeter, and Karl Polanyi, as well as Marx and Hayek. Reiss then ex
tends their perspectives into the current literature, in the end questioning which type of
capitalism that exists today, if any, can co-exist with democracy. In the third chapter,
Joseph Heath focuses on profit, pointing out its counterintuitive role as the motivation
for competition, which ideally drives profit to zero. Because morality is normally under
stood to make people more cooperative, Heath asks if profit can truly be moral if it en
courages competition, even as a means to overall beneficial end. Next, Joakim Sandberg
examines the ethics of money and finance, starting with their existence (p. 6) per se and
Page 5 of 9
Introduction
then questioning the ethics of financial practices, suggesting ways to make them more
honest or fair. He also considers arguments that agents within financial systems have so
cial responsibilities beyond their own self-interest, a common question in discussions of
commerce in general. Finally, Michael S. McPherson and Debra Satz look at labor mar
kets, perhaps the most human aspect of commerce if not always the most humane. Recog
nizing that markets for labor have unique properties that distinguish them from other
markets for inputs or output, they survey a number of perennial issues, including unem
ployment, the minimum wage, and the organization of work in a just society, as well as
ethical implications of the rise of the gig economy.
The second section of this half of the book deals with the difficult problem of policymak
ing in an ethical fashion, both within welfare economics itself—especially in the context of
risk—as well as in conjunction with fairness and equality. In the first chapter, Matthew D.
Adler provides a comprehensive review of cost-benefit analysis and social welfare func
tions, the two most widely used approaches to welfare economics and policymaking, and
makes a case that the social welfare function approach is preferable in the context of a
number of important ethical principles that complement basic welfarism (including priori
tarianism, which gives additional weight to the well-being of the worse-off). Next, Marc
Fleurbaey focuses on risk and uncertainty, and examines several ethical questions with
making social decisions involving risk to various parties, such as whether social decisions
should be more or less risk-averse than those individuals make for themselves; how poli
cymakers should respond to large but unlikely catastrophes compared to smaller but
more frequent harms; and how these questions relate to egalitarianism, both ex ante and
ex post. The third chapter, by Luc Bovens, looks at similar ethical issues of risk using ex
amples such as drug allocations, charitable giving, breast-cancer screening, and Caesari
an sections. He explains how each example has its own unique characteristics that make
a utilitarian approach unpalatable, and questions the sufficiency of formal modeling alone
to solve these difficult issues. Finally, George F. DeMartino looks at what he calls econo
genic harm, harm done by economists in the process of trying to do good, which arises
because of the uneven impact of economic interventions (especially those justified by
cost-benefit analysis) and the epistemic problems that plague much work in economics.
Because econogenic harm is inevitable to some degree, DeMartino proposes an “economy
harm profile analysis” to help economists analyze it, reduce it, and identify opportunities
to rectify it when possible.
The final section of this half of the book looks at four major applied fields of economics
with significant ethical aspects. In the first chapter, Daniel M. Hausman tackles the
fraught issues of health care and health insurance, explaining the difficulty of designing
health policy and law to deal with asymmetric information, adverse selection, and moral
hazard. He then complements the typical economic concern of efficiency with the equally
important values of compassion, choice, efficiency, fairness, and solidarity, arguing that,
in the end, health care markets must be both economically sound and morally defensible.
Next, Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina consider deontological morality within the context
of the economic approach to law (or law and economics) as a way to counterbalance and
improve upon the standard utilitarian approach to the discipline. (p. 7) Specifically, they
Page 6 of 9
Introduction
propose using threshold deontology, which limits the enforcement of deontological rules
when their cost reaches a particularly high level, as a way to integrate rules and stan
dards within a legal decision-making framework without abandoning concern with out
comes altogether. In the third chapter, David Schmditz investigates the concept of jus
tice within discussions of ecology and the environment, arguing that an economic ap
proach is integral to arriving at realistic solutions. After asking what it means for justice
to be realistically ecological, he discusses the evolution of justice among early humans
and how it makes compromise possible in a world of political conflict, especially with re
gard to environmental issues. In the last chapter of the section, Brendan O’Flaherty
looks at the justification for civil rights in terms of both ethics and economics, explaining
why they rightfully apply only to those subject to discrimination, and critically examines
their effectiveness in light of their rationale, finishing with some suggestions for reform.
The volume concludes with a chapter by John Broome that turns the focus away from
what ethics can contribute to economics, and points instead to lessons that economics
can teach ethics, such as the right and (especially) wrong way to use the word “utility,” as
well as the usefulness of mathematical methods, which he illustrates with an overview of
the discussions of prioritarianism in both economics and philosophy (moral and political).
More generally, Broome’s chapter suggests an avenue for the field of economics and
ethics to be a truly interdisciplinary venture in which each part contributes to the other,
possibly even leading to a new collaborative entity in which both ethics and economics
work together toward their common goals of human prosperity and flourishing, however
those might be defined or expressed.
Becker, Gary S. 1976. The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago, IL: Universi
ty of Chicago Press.
Bergstrom, Theodore C. 1999. “Systems of Benevolent Utility Functions.” Journal of Pub

lic Economic Theory 1: 71–100.
Boettke, Peter J., and Christopher J. Coyne (eds.). 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Austrian
Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2011. A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity
and Its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Davis, John B., and Wilfred Dolfsma (eds.). 2015. The Elgar Companion to Social Econom
ics. 2nd edn. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
DeMartino, George F. 2011. The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for the Content of Profes
sional Economic Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeMartino, George F., and Deirdre N. McCloskey (eds.). 2016. The Oxford Handbook of
Professional Economic Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dhami, Sanjit. 2016. The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Page 7 of 9
Introduction
Dutt, Amitava, and Charles K. Wilber. 2010. Economics and Ethics: An Introduction. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1987. “Toward a Kantian Socio-Economics.” In Charles K. Wilber

(p. 8)
(ed.), Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 139–
49.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1988. The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics. New York: Free
Press.
Fehr, Ernst, and Klaus M. Schmidt. 1999. “A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooper
ation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114: 817–68.
Fehr, Ernst, and Klaus M. Schmidt. 2006. “The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Al
truism—Experimental Evidence and New Theories.” In Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean
Mercier Ythier (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity,
Volume 1 (Dordrecht: Elsevier), pp. 615–91.
Ferber, Marianne A., and Julie A. Nelson. 2003. Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Eco
nomic Man. 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Fischer, Liliann, Joe Hasell, J. Christopher Proctor, David Uwakwe, Zach Ward Perkins,
Catriona Watson, et al. (eds.). 2017. Rethinking Economics: An Introduction to Pluralist
Economics. London: Routledge.
Hausman, Daniel, Michael McPherson, and Debra Satz. 2016. Economic Analysis, Moral
Philosophy, and Public Policy. 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Margolis, Howard. 1984. Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
McCloskey, Deirdre N. 2006. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics in the Age of Commerce.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McCloskey, Deirdre N. 2008. “Adam Smith, the Last of the Former Virtue Ethicists.” Histo
ry of Political Economy 40: 43–71.
McCloskey, Deirdre N. 2010. Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Mod
ern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McCloskey, Deirdre N. 2016. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions,
Enriched the World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Peil, Jan, and Irene van Staveren (eds.). 2009. Handbook of Economics and Ethics. Chel
tenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Sen, Amartya K. 1970. “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal.” Journal of Political Econo
my 78: 152–57.
Page 8 of 9
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Sen, Amartya K. 1977. “Rational Fools: Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of
Economic Theory.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 6: 317–44.
Wight, Jonathan B. 2015. Ethics in Economics: An Introduction to Moral Frameworks.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Page 9 of 9
Adam Smith and the Study of Ethics in a Commercial Society
Adam Smith and the Study of Ethics in a Commercial

Society
Stefanie Haeffele and Virgil Henry Storr
Print Publication Date: Jun 2019

Subject: Economics and Finance, Micro, Behavioral, and Neuro-Economics, Economic Theory
and Mathematical Models, History of Economic Thought
Online Publication Date: Jun 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198793991.013.1
Abstract and Keywords
Over time, the fields of economics and ethics have become more distinct with economics
focusing on the rationality of actors, the incentives they face, and the outcomes of inter
acting within an amoral market setting. However, in the real world, economics and ethics
are more interconnected. Humans are social and ethical beings regardless of setting. Re
cent studies have shown that individuals reward trustworthiness, punish dishonesty, and
can develop meaningful social bonds within markets. Economists, seeking to better un
derstand the world, should incorporate ethics into their economics. We argue that Adam
Smith is an exemplar of pursuing a fuller approach to social science, and utilize his argu
ments on both economics and ethics to advance a study of ethical markets.
Keywords: Adam Smith, ethics, economics, markets, sympathy
(p. 13) 1.1 Introduction

ALTHOUGH economics began as a branch of moral philosophy, the study of markets and
the study of ethics are now mostly pursued separately as distinct phenomena.1 Within
neoclassical economics, for instance, the emphasis is typically on the rationality of mar
ket actors and how their behavior is shaped by incentives. The individuals acting within
the market, when analyzed this way, appear to be cold calculators of benefits and costs—
the homo economicus of neoclassical economic modeling. Their preferences are simplified
into aggregable utility functions and their motivations reduced to external incentive
structures. The market is viewed as an amoral space where rational actors in certain set
tings interact in ways that advance social progress (that is, by the invisible hand) and in
other settings fail to achieve positive social outcomes (or market failure). Arguably, for
most economists, the moral dispositions of market actors and the morality of markets are
beyond, or at most tangential to, their scholarly focus.
Page 1 of 24
Contemporary economists, thus, face a challenge of how to incorporate the ethical orien
tations of individuals into their analysis.2 The strictly rational homo economicus can have
no ethical considerations without impugning his rationality. Yet, in daily life, economics
and ethics (as well as politics, charity, and other aspects of human interaction) (p. 14) are
interconnected.3 The same person attends church on Sunday, goes to work at a firm on
Monday, votes on Tuesday, purchases groceries on Wednesday, and volunteers at a home
less shelter on Thursday. It is unsurprising that in the real world, one’s ethics, goals, and
experiences shape their actions in all these areas (see, for instance, Granovetter 1985;
Macneil 1986; Storr 2008).
Behavioral and experimental economists, however, have not only pointed out some of the
flaws within the neoclassical conception of rationality, but have also shown how people in
corporate ethics into market transactions.4 Indeed, the hopelessly flawed and often irra
tional beings—that is, the imperfect actors of behavioral economics—who often fail to
achieve their personal goals, are ethical creatures who attempt to but do not always live
up to their ethical commitments. For example, researchers have found that individuals
value trustworthiness in their trading partners (Kumar 1996), punish dishonesty and
greed in trade (Akerlof 1970; Adler 1992), and prefer firms that have high employee satis
faction, high customer loyalty, and overall good reputations (Loveman 1998; Roberts and
Dowling 2002). Furthermore, scholars have argued that markets provide opportunities for
social interaction and moral learning (McCloskey 2006; Novak 1984; Paganelli 2010;
Storr 2008, 2010). Arguably, despite these efforts, the question of how best to incorporate
ethical concerns into economic analysis, without having to abandon traditional insights
about the nature and functioning of a market system, remains unsettled.
A fuller examination of the market requires understanding and incorporating ethical con
siderations and dispositions into the study of markets. Contemporary economists might
benefit from looking to Adam Smith as an exemplar for how the study of political econo
my can incorporate ethics and economics. Smith is known for two seminal works: The In
quiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations (1776, henceforth WN), which
studies markets, and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759, henceforth TMS), which
studies ethics. While these two distinct topics may be seen as contradictory (known as
“Das Adam Smith Problem”), scholars have recognized that they are inextricably linked.5
In WN, Smith argues that not only should we not rely on or expect benevolence from oth
ers in order to survive and thrive, we thrive precisely because others are seeking to im
prove their own lot in life (Berry 1990; Muller 1993; Rasmussen 2008; Rothschild 2001;
Werhane 1991). As Smith famously stated, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher,
the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own in
terest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to
them of our own necessities but of their advantages” (26–7).
This self-interest, or self-love as Smith calls it, which motivates individuals to pursue mar
ket exchange, is also constrained by our moral sentiments (Storr 2018). In TMS, (p. 15)
Smith argues that we seek to share our passions and reactions with others in order to feel
Page 2 of 24
understood and to legitimate our feelings and actions (that is, we seek fellow-feeling)
(Den Uyl 1991; Griswold 1999). Smith observes that “nothing pleases us more than to ob
serve in other men a fellow-feeing with all the emotions of our own breast” (13) and “to
approve of another man’s opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to ap
prove of them” (17). Our feelings and actions are legitimate when we receive approval
and praise from others. Yet, we do not just want to receive praise; we also want to be tru
ly praiseworthy. As Smith states, “Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a
desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of
being what he himself approves of in other men” (117). In order to assess praiseworthi
ness of ourselves and others, we utilize an impartial spectator, or man in the breast, as an
unbiased judge. Smith argues that in order to judge mankind, individuals appeal “to a
much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed im
partial and well-informed spectator, to that of the man within the breast, the great judge
and arbiter of their conduct” (130).
Taken together, Smith suggests that we seek to improve our lot in life but also to be un
derstood and approved of by our peers and the impartial spectator. These dual forces
shape our social interactions. In order to understand the world around us, both aspects—
economics and ethics—should be explored in our studies. Specifically, as students of com
mercial society, economists ought to adopt this Smithian strategy and tackle questions
about the interconnection between economics and ethics.
Furthermore, we argue that this Smithian approach to political economy has implications
about the market and society. First, markets do not need to be defended by claiming their
amorality, but instead can be a space for moral interaction and development (see also
Storr 2018). Second, a fuller understanding of individuals as social creatures allows us to
see how our lives are shaped by markets, along with civil society, politics, and more.
The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 1.2 examines Smith’s theory of markets and his
theory of ethics is explored in Section 1.3. Section 1.4 provides a synthesis of these theo
ries into a Smithian theory of markets that focuses on ethics, and Section 1.5 concludes.
1.2 Adam Smith’s Theory of Markets

In WN, Smith shows how markets, through specialization and the division of labor, have
led to incredible social progress. Indeed, he opens the book with: “The greatest improve
ment in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and
judgement with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects
of the division of labour” (1). With the division of labor, jobs are divided into sequences of
specific tasks. The making of a pin, woolen coat, or pencil requires the efforts of thou
sands: from collecting the raw materials, to constructing the individual (p. 16) compo
nents, to shipping and selling the final products.6 This specialization does not just occur
within manufacturing but throughout the economy. For instance, lawyers often specialize
in practicing specific types of law, such as corporate, family, or environmental law.
Page 3 of 24
The division of labor allows for workers to produce more than they ever could on their
own, by parsing out tasks and gaining skills in particular areas. As Smith states:
This great increase of the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the division
of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three
different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular work
man; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from
one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of
machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work
of many. (WN: 17)
While improved dexterity and reduced switching costs allow workers to produce more
during work hours, labor-saving inventions are an attempt to reduce or shift their work
load. By finding new and creative ways to fulfill their tasks, such as through automation,
workers can simplify their tasks or take on new responsibilities. As Smith explains:
It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are
employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and read
ier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it ad
mits of such improvement. (WN: 20)
This diverse and intricate nature of the market is not only found in the cities where we
live, but stretches across nations. We shop for groceries at our local supermarket which
employs dozens of local residents and whose inventory comes from all over the world.
When we purchase coffee, spices, and produce, they often come from communities we
have never travelled to and from people we will never meet. The wide array of goods and
services available shows the global extent of the market in modern developed nations. In
deed, Smith notes that progress is constrained by the extent of the market:
As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so

the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in
other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no per
son can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment,
for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own
labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the pro
duce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for. (WN: 31)
The goods, services, and social progress that comes with the market are available to all in
society who can work for a wage or who otherwise have funds to purchase them, no
(p. 17) matter how kind or mean, generous or miserly, benevolent or selfish. As Smith
notes, “without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest per
son in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely
imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated” (WN: 23).
Members of society benefit from the progress of the market, not because of the benevo
lence of their neighbors, but because social progress is possible when everyone aims to
improve their own lot in life (Muller 1993; Otteson 2002; Rasmussen 2008; Rothschild
Page 4 of 24
2001). In other words, pursuing our individual self-interest is incentive-compatible with

social progress.
Additionally, in order to achieve our own goals, we must exchange with, interact with, and
rely on others in society. This cooperation is another incentive-compatible aspect of the
market; it is not from benevolence but self-interest that people exchange with and cooper
ate with one another. As Smith observes,
man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for
him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he
can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own ad
vantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bar
gain of any kind, proposes to do this: Give me that which I want, and you shall
have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this man
ner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices
which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brew
er, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own in
terest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and nev
er talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. (WN: 26–27)
Smith saw this process as resulting in more than just the culmination of individuals pur
suing their self-interest and achieving personal success (Herzog 2016; Rasmussen 2006;
Rothschild 2001). Social progress impacts all members of society, as even the poorest
amongst us have access to and can benefit from the knowledge and innovations that were
once luxuries only available to kings and queens.7 Further, knowledge and innovation
spreads throughout the market, leading to new adoptions and adaptations. Smith argued
that this spreading of knowledge through the market would lead to further progress:
nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of force than that mutual com
munication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive
commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, car
ries along with it. (WN: 627)
While the market is not perfect—it does not lead to benefits and progress for all in
(p. 18)
dividuals at all times, as we discuss in Section 1.4—the trend of social interaction within
the market is toward social progress. This is possible, Smith advances, through the divi
sion of labor and the realization that social cooperation is not dependent on benevolence.
Even when our neighbors are mean, miserly, or selfish, Smith argues in WN, we can still
cooperate and prosper together. Next, we turn to ethics and Smith’s understanding of
how individuals are not just self-interested but also social, ethical beings.
1.3 Adam Smith’s Theory of Ethics

Smith’s theory of ethics is in the tradition of the Enlightenment philosophers of his time,
building off of but distinguishing itself from the works of his teacher, Francis Hutcheson,
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thermometer, which was set up beneath a little wooden shelter daily,
reached extraordinary maxima. For one whole month the maximum
fluctuated between forty and fifty degrees Centigrade, the
atmosphere becoming heavier and more exhausting as the day wore
on until sunset. During the night the maximum was generally a little
over thirty degrees, and you must remember that I am speaking of
the winter, when the air was pretty well saturated with moisture.
I have read in books of travel of countries where, to avoid
succumbing from the heat, Europeans live in holes dug in the earth,
and make negroes pour more or less fresh water on their heads from
calabashes to keep them cool. We never got as far as that, but I do
think that Say, at least in June and July, can compete in intensity of
heat with any other place in the world.
In such an oven we quite lost our appetites!
Now ensued a time of terrible ennui. All our energy, all our gaiety,
all our philosophy melted away before the awful prospect of living in
this remote and hostile corner of the earth for five whole months; five
months during which we knew we could not stir from the island; five
months in which we must endure all the storms of heaven in our frail
huts, and be exposed to the ceaseless plots against us of Amadu.
The dreary, monotonous days in which nothing happened, did not
even supply us with topics of conversation, so we talked more and
more of France, which of course only intensified our home-sickness.
Taburet, who had a wonderful memory for dates, seemed to find
every day of the month an anniversary of some event.
It became a more serious matter when our ennui resulted in
constant attacks of fever, but fortunately these attacks, thanks to the
daily dose of quinine, were never very serious, only their recurrence
was weakening, the more so that they were accompanied by what
we called the Sudanite fever, a kind of moral affection peculiar to
African soil.
This Sudanite affection betrayed itself by different eccentricities in
different people. It really is the effect of the great heat of the sun
upon anæmic subjects, or upon those whose brains are not very
strong. Sometimes, at about four o’clock in the morning, we used all
of a sudden to hear a series of detonations inside the enceinte.
“Holloa!” we would exclaim, “some one has got an attack of Sudanite
fever, and is working it off by firing at bottles floating on the river.” Or
another of the party would seal himself up hermetically in his hut,
blocking every hole or crack through which a ray of sunlight could
penetrate. The whole of the interior would be hung with blue stuff,
under the pretence that red or white light would give fever. Another
case of Sudanite!
We could cite many more examples of the disease during our stay
at Fort Archinard.
However different may be most of its symptoms, one is always the
same—a patient afflicted with it contradicts everybody and shows an
absolutely intolerant spirit.
Truth to tell, I must add, in common fairness, that we were all
more or less affected by it. We might have managed to pull along
peaceably in an ordinary station with occupations which separated
us from each other sometimes, but in this island, this cage, for it was
little more, we were always rubbing shoulders, so to speak, and
constant friction was inevitable. In fact, we ran our angles into our
neighbours instead of rubbing those angles down. We were regularly
prostrated with our inactive, almost idle life, and the true characters
of each one came out without disguise.
THE MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION AT FORT ARCHINARD.
At table every discussion led to a kind of squabble. Each of us

stuck to his own opinion, even when the most astounding paradoxes
had been enunciated. Sometimes, after a regular row, we all sat
perfectly mute glaring at each other, and wondering what was to
happen next.
At night, or in the hour of the siesta, I used to get out my flute—
another form of the Sudanite fever—and play melodies from the Or
du Rhin or Tristan et Yseult, but even music failed to calm the
disputants. The tension was too great, and I was afraid that, even at
this late period of our expedition, things would go wrong in
consequence.
All of a sudden a happy idea occurred to me, a regular inspiration
from Heaven, which every one fell in with at once.
This idea was simply that we should all work, and the result was
the immediate restoration of order.
It was a simple task enough that we now set ourselves to do, just
to make vocabularies of the various more or less barbarous idioms in
use in the Niger districts. There were plenty to choose from, for there
is more confusion of tongues, such as is described in the Bible, in
these parts than anywhere else. There is a perfectly inexhaustible
supply of peculiar phrases.
For instance, between Abo, in the highest part of the delta of the
Niger, and the sea, as an officer of the Royal Niger Company told
me, there are no less than seven dialects spoken, none of which
have the very slightest affinity with each other. It would appear that
one wave of migration has succeeded another, as the breakers do
on the beach, the natives composing the different parties of
emigrants dying out, or leaving only a few survivors stranded like
islets in a flood in the tropical forests, retaining their original customs
and dialects, and continuing to offer sacrifices in the old way,
uninfluenced by the other native populations.
It has been different further inland, for the last emigrants have
been absorbed by the earlier settlers, rather than driven back, but at
the same time their characteristics have not been merged in those of
other tribes, so that we still find side by side totally different customs,
and people speaking different dialects quite unlike each other, such
as the Tuareg, Fulah, Songhay, Bambara, Bozo, Mossi, etc., almost
equally distributed over extensive districts.
So we all set to work. Father Hacquart and I buckled to at the
Tuareg language. Pullo Khalifa turned out to be an indifferent
teacher, though he was full of good-will. He was never at a loss for
the signification of a word, but his renderings were mostly merely
approximate. I have already dwelt upon the peculiarities of the
Tuareg language in a previous chapter, so I will only add here that
we had two other instructors in it, another Fulah, a Mahommedan,
who shilly-shallied a good deal in his interpretations, and a female
blacksmith of Bokar Wandieïdiu, now attached to the service of
Ibrahim Galadio, who lent her to us. The last-named was certainly
the most interesting of our linguistic professors. She had a
tremendous voice, and was as ugly as sin, but she gave herself
many airs and graces. With the aid of these three and a few others
we drew up quite an imposing comparative vocabulary of the Tuareg
language.
Father Hacquart also devoted some time to the study of Songhay,
which is spoken between Say and Timbuktu, and also in other
districts beyond those towns in the east and west, for we meet with it
again at Jenné and at Aghades. Near Say, they call the Songhay
language djermanké. Pretty well every one undertook to teach us
Songhay; it was a simple dialect enough, spoken through the nose,
and it was likely to be very useful to us. The Pères blancs of
Timbuktu give especial attention to its study.
Tierno Abdulaye Dem, a few coolies, old Suleyman, who had
deserted Amadu, tired of wandering about after him, and had
rejoined us to go back to his beloved Foota, used to assemble every
day in Baudry’s hut, which was transformed into a Fulah academy.
Most unexpected results ensued from these meetings. The Fulah
language is a very charming one, and has been carefully studied by
General Faidherbe and M. de Giraudon, but there is still a good deal
to be learnt about it. It is very difficult to connect it with any other. It is
the one language necessary for travelling or for trading between
Saint Louis and Lake Tchad. There have been many theories on the
subject of the Fulah migration, and a great deal of nonsense has
been talked about it. Baudry, who studied the language with the
greatest zeal, discovered some extraordinary grammatical rules in it
and strange idioms, enough to frighten M. Brid’oison himself. No one
could now utter two or three words at table without Baudry declaring
how they could be translated into one Fulah expression. The
following example will give an idea of how much could be expressed
in a Fulah word. I must add, however, that Baudry and Tierno
Abdulaye agree in saying it is very seldom used.
The word I allude to is Nannantundiritde, which signifies to
pretend to go and ask mutually and reciprocally for news of each
other.
Tierno Abdulaye, who was a Toucouleur from the Senegal
districts, gave out that he could speak his maternal language or
Fulah pretty perfectly. When, however, Baudry set to work to explain
to him the formation of Fulah words which he claimed to have
discovered, Tierno realized that after all he did not know much about
it, so he tried to acquire grammatical Fulah, with the result that many
of his fellow-countrymen could not understand what he said. They
were completely confused by all these new rules, but Baudry was
delighted at having won a disciple.
The people of Massina, or the districts near the great bend of the
Niger, speak very quietly and in a low voice, as if they realized the
beauty of their language, and do not trouble themselves very much
about strict grammatical accuracy. The Fulah tongue, in fact, admits
of an immense number of shades of expression, and though there is
not perhaps exactly anything that can be called Fulah literature,
except for a few songs which can only be obtained from the griots
with the greatest difficulty, the language simply teems with proverbs.
Here are a few examples, but of course, like all such sayings, they
lose terribly in translation:—
“When you cannot suck the breasts of your mother, you must suck
those of your grandmother.”
“When a man has eaten his hatchet and his axe, he is not likely to
sputter much over broiled pea-nuts.”
“A stick may rot in the water, but that does not make it a
crocodile.”
“There is the skin of a sheep and the skin of a cow, but there is
always a skin.”
Thanks to Osman, Bluzet had unearthed a cobbler or garanké, a
native of Mossi. He was a very worthy fellow, but, it seems to me,
most of his fellow-countrymen are equally estimable. The Mossi, at
least those we knew, were all very easily intimidated, but honest and
trustworthy. At first Bluzet had a good deal of trouble to get any
information out of this Mossi, but when he gained a little confidence
he got on apace, and used to indulge on occasion in long
monologues, as when he treated us to the following little tale, which
he related to us all in Mossi in Bluzet’s hut.
“One day, a woman going along the road to Say, taking some milk
to market, sat down at the foot of a tree and fell asleep.
“Presently three young men came up, and when they saw the
woman one of them said to the others—
“‘Follow me, and imitate everything I do.’
“They approached her cautiously, making a détour round the
brushwood. ‘Hu! hu!’ cried the leader, when he got close to the
sleeper, and the others shouted after him, ‘Hu! hu!’
“The woman started up terrified, and ran away, leaving the
calabash of milk on the ground.
“Then the eldest of the three young men said, ‘This milk is mine
because I am the eldest.’ ‘No,’ said the second, ‘it is mine because I
thought of crying, Hu! hu!’ ‘No, no,’ cried the third, ‘I mean to drink it,
for I am armed with a spear, and you have only sticks.’
“Just then a marabout passed by. ‘Let him be the judge!’ said the
disputants, and they put their case before him.
“‘I know of nothing in the Koran which applies to your difficulty,’
said the holy man; ‘but show me the milk.’ He took the milk, he
looked at it, he drank it. ‘This is really good milk,’ he added, ‘but
there is nothing about your case in the Koran that I know of.’”
With two other vocabularies of Gurma and Bozo expressions, less
complete than those of the Songhay and Fulah languages, we made
up a total of more than ten thousand new words, to which we added
many very interesting grammatical remarks.
This absorbing occupation, which fortunately became a positive
monomania with some of us, contributed more than anything to our
being able to survive the last month of our stay at Fort Archinard.
OUR QUICK-FIRING GUN.
NATIVES OF SAY.
CHAPTER VIII
MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS
We must now return to our arrival at Say. Although the days there
were most of them monotonous enough, they brought their little ups
and downs, and we received news now and then, of which, under
the circumstances, we naturally sometimes exaggerated the
importance. It would be wearisome for me as well as for the reader
to give an account of what happened every day during our long
winter at Fort Archinard. My notes were written under various
difficulties and in very varying moods, reflecting alike my
exaggerated low spirits when things went wrong, and my excess of
delight when anything occurred to cheer me. Consecutive pages of
my journal often contradicted each other, and any one reading them
would imagine they were written by two different persons; but this is
always the way with travellers, and even Barth himself was not
exempt from such fluctuations of mood.
My journal in extenso might serve as an illustration of the
psychology of the lie as illustrated amongst the negroes and
Mussulmans, but no other useful purpose, so I shall greatly
condense it. The reader will still, I hope, get a very good idea of all
we went through. If what I quote is rather incoherent, excuses must
be made for me, for the news we got was often incoherent enough,
and our life at the Fort was rather a puzzle too sometimes, with our
alternations of hope and anxiety.
Friday, April 10.—We are getting on with our fort; our abattis are
finished and ready for any attack. (This was written the day after our
arrival, whilst our work was still in full swing.)
We put the Aube in dry dock to-day, and it took the united efforts
of us all to haul her into position: non-commissioned officers,
interpreters, servants, all had to work, and even we white men lent a
hand. During the operation of turning her on to her side, the poor
Aube might have tumbled to pieces, for all her planks were loose.
But she held together yet once more, and, as you will see, we did not
have to abandon her until the very end of our voyage.
A new recruit joined us to-day, my journal goes on, so with
Suleyman Futanké we have two extra hands now. This was how he
came to join us. During the siesta hour we heard a man shouting
from the other side of the river, “Agony! agony!” and looking out we
saw some one waving a white cloth. We sent the Dantec to fetch
him, and when he arrived he kept shouting “Agony! agony!” in a
joyful voice. He showed us his cap of European make, evidently
expecting us to understand what he meant, but that did not explain
the use of the word “agony” so often.
It was Tedian Diarra, a big Bambarra, who had acted as guide to
General Dodds in the Dahomey campaign, who solved the mystery
at last, and told us that the man had been a porter at Say to the
Decœur expedition. He had been taken ill with an attack of some
discharge from the joints, and had been left under the care of the
chief of the village to be handed over to the first Frenchman who
should happen to pass. The poor fellow, whose name was Atchino,
—at least that is what we always called him,—was trying to explain
to us that he came from the village of Agony on the Wemé. He had
feared he should never see his native village again, with its bananas
and oil palms; but as soon as he heard of our arrival at Say, he came
to take refuge with us. Later I indemnified the man who had taken
care of him for the expense he had been put to. We made this
Atchino our gardener, and he turned out a very useful fellow, a
decided acquisition to our small staff.
Monday, April 13.—We finished the repairs of the Aube. She still
let the water in like a strainer, but, as we always said, we were used
to that. This expression, “used to it,” was perpetually employed by us
all, and it enabled us to bear with philosophy all our troubles. It is, in
fact, the expression which gilds the bitterest pills to be swallowed on
an exploring expedition, and no one need dream of starting on such
a trip as ours if they cannot adopt what we may call the philosophy of
use and wont on every occasion. Have twenty-five of us got to pack
into a boat about the size of my hand? What does it matter? go on
board, you’ll get used to it. Have we got to find place for provisions
and things to exchange with the natives when there is no more
room? Never mind, ship them all, we shall get used to them when we
settle down. Are you in a hostile district? Do rumours of war, of
approaching columns of thousands and thousands of natives uniting
to attack, trouble you? Never mind, they will turn out not to be so
many after all; you are used to these rumours now. You have some
dreadful rapids in front of you; you have got to pass them somehow.
There are so many, you can’t count them. Shall we draw back? Shall
we allow them to check our onward march? No, no, we shall get
used to them. If you take them one by one, you will find that each
fresh one is not worse than the last, and that the hundredth is just
like the first. You get quite used to them, at least if you do not lose
your boats and your life too. Which would be the final getting used to
things, the last settling down!
A diavandu and his sister one day presented themselves at the
camp. These diavandus, who are the guides and confidants of the
people, are everywhere met with amongst the Fulahs. I don’t know
what trade the sister followed, but this diavandu came to offer us his
services. He offered to perform all the usual duties of his office on
our behalf, and was ready either to sell us milk, or to act as a spy for
us. He was a little fellow, of puny, sickly appearance. We made him
drink some quinine dissolved in water, and our people told him that
the bitter beverage contained all the talismans of the infernal
regions. Certainly the witches in Macbeth never made a philtre
nastier than our mixture.
Our diavandu swore by the Koran, without any mental
reservations, that he would be faithful to us, and our spells and the
grisgris we had given him would, he knew, kill him if he were false to
us, or betrayed us in any way. Then we sent him to see what was
going on in Amadu’s camp. I do not know what eventually became of
him, but perhaps if he was false to us the quinine killed him by auto-
suggestion; perhaps he was simply suppressed by our enemies, or
he may have died a natural death; anyhow we never saw either him
or his sister again.
About the same time Pullo Khalifa appeared at Fort Archinard,
sent, he said, by Ibrahim Galadio, the friend of Monteil. He began by
asking us what we wanted, but it really was he who wanted to get
something out of us. We gave him a fine red chechia to replace his
own, which was very dirty and greasy. Later we gave him various
other presents, but, strange to say, he always came to visit us in his
shabbiest garments.
TALIBIA.
Thursday, April 23.—In the evening a sudden noise and confusion

arose on shore at Talibia, and in our camp we heard dogs barking
and women shrieking, whilst the glare of torches lit up the
surrounding darkness. Gradually the tumult died away in the
distance. Had the Toucouleurs been on the way to surprise us, but
finding us prepared given up the idea for the time being? We
shouted to Mahmadu Charogne, but no answer came. Mamé then
fired a fowling-piece into the air, but nothing came of it. All was silent
again, but we passed the night in watching, for we knew that that
very morning a man wearing a white bubu had tried to tamper with
our coolies, and to frighten away the native traders. He had shouted
from the left bank that Amadu had let loose the Silibés upon us,
giving them permission to make war on us, and promising them the
blessing of Allah if they beat us. No wonder such a coincidence as
this put us on our guard.
The next morning Mahmadu explained the uproar of the
preceding evening. It had been a question not of an attack on us, but
of a wedding amongst the Koyraberos. He told us a marriage is
never consummated until the bridegroom has literally torn away his
bride from her people, and the rite of abduction, for a regular rite it is,
is a very exciting ceremony. When the suitor comes to pay the dowry
it is customary for him to give his fiancée, it is considered good form
for the parents to shrug their shoulders, and pretend that the sum
offered is not enough; millet is very dear just now, they say, and they
cannot afford wedding festivities worthy of their daughter. They must
keep her at home until after the harvest, and so on.
The young man goes home then with bowed head and a general
air of depression. When he gets back to his own village he calls his
relations and friends together, chooses out the best runners and
those who can shout the loudest, and with them returns to seize the
object of his choice. He finally succeeds in taking her away in the
midst of screams, yells, and the sham curses of her relations, who
are really full of joy at the marriage. The so-called ravishers of the
dusky bride are pursued to the last tents of the village, and the
ceremony concludes, as do all weddings amongst the negroes, with
a feast such as that of Gamache immortalized in Don Quixote.
Soon after this exciting night our relations with Galadio began,
and throughout the winter all our hopes were centred on this man.
We counted on him to the very last moment as our best friend, and
he really was more reasonable than most of those with whom we
had to do during that dreary time. It must not, however, be forgotten
that amongst Mussulmans, especially those of the Fulah race,
wisdom means profound duplicity. The Fulahs actually have no word
to express giving advice, only one which means “give bad advice,” or
“betray by counsel given.” The idea is simple enough, and is the first
which comes into their heads. So that if by any chance they want for
once to translate our expression, “advise you for your own good,”
they have to go quite out of the way to make the meaning intelligible,
and to use a borrowed word. This is really a reflection of the Fulah
character.
TALIBIA.
Galadio was in this respect a thorough Fulah, although he had

Bambarra blood in his veins. His mother was a Fulah, of the Culibaly
tribe, and he deceived us perpetually with good words which meant
nothing. Still I must do him the justice to add, that he was careful to
save us from being involved in open war. Perhaps he saw how fatal
that would be to his own influence, or he may have dreaded it as a
calamity for the country he was now living in, or for the people over
whom he had been set. Anyhow he managed to run with the hare
and hunt with the hounds: in other words, to keep in with Amadu and
us. He always gave us to understand, that if the worst came to the
worst he would at least preserve a strict neutrality, and as a reward
for this he got many very fine presents. He was treated almost as the
equal of Madidu himself, and he too received from us a velvet saddle
embroidered with gold. His messengers were provided with a pass
by us, and were received with all due honour, for it was not until quite
the end of our stay that the mystery was solved, and Galadio
appeared in his true colours. Of his own free will he had concluded a
regular treaty with me, a treaty drawn up quite formally in Arabic and
French, and which he signed with his own name. He showed,
moreover, a very eager wish to enter into relations with Bandiagara.
April 30.—Khalifa is certainly an extraordinary man. To-night he is
to bring to us in a canoe, when the moon is set and all is silence,
darkness, and mystery, no less a person than the brother of the chief
of Say. We watch all night for the signal agreed upon of the
approach of our guests: the lighting of a candle on the bank of the
river, but nothing is to be seen. Was the whole thing simply a
manœuvre on the part of Pullo to get possession of a box of
matches and a candle? Perhaps so, for one of his chief delights
when he is in any of our tents,—and he is very often there,—is to
strike matches one after the other. He is not the only one with this
wasteful habit, Baudry is also afflicted with it, but fortunately we have
a sufficient supply even for such vagaries as this, which really are
very pardonable in the Sudan.
The next day Khalifa and the brother of the chief of Say actually
arrived, after a good deal more fuss and mystery. Even poor little
Arabu, who wanted to sleep in the camp, was sent away, weeping
bitter tears at the thought that his white brothers did not want him.
Very useless were all these precautions, for the brother of the chief
of Say, though perhaps rather more polite, was not a bit more
sincere than he. Our visitor explained that he had come to see us
quite independently, and that his great wish was to make friends with
us. What he really wanted, however, was a bubu and a copy of the
Koran. As his friendship was of a very doubtful quality, we put off
giving the present to another time, when he should have proved his
sincerity by getting us a courier to go to Bandiagara. He went off
promising to see about it.
We had “big brothers” and “little brothers” ad infinitum, but as
there is no masculine or feminine in the Fulah language, the
Sudanese when they try to speak French muddle up relationships in
a most original manner, without any distinction of sex. Abdulaye said
to us, with no idea that he was talking nonsense, “My grandfather,
who was the wife of the king of Cayor;” and it is no rare thing for one
of our men to bring a young girl to us in the hope of getting a
present, who is really no relation to him at all, telling us, “Captain,
here is my little brother; he has come to say good-morning to you.”
In my journal I find the following note à propos of this confusion of
relationships. The grandson of Galadio, who came to see us, told us
he had come to pay his respects to his grandfather, and I was that
grandfather, because I was the big brother of his other grandfather.
The muddle is simply hopeless, but with it all the natives never lose
their heads, but keep in view the possible present all the time.
GALADIO’S GRANDSON.
Sunday, May 3.—The day before yesterday some strange news
was brought us by a boy of about fifteen. He had been sent secretly
to us by the Kurteye marabout we had seen when we were on our
way to Say. A horrible plot was being concocted, he said, for Amadu,
remembering the spells of his father, who had been a great magician
at Hamda-Allâhi, had made an infallible charm against us. On some
copy-book paper, which had evidently been taken off our presents,
he had written the most awful curses, imploring Allah seven times
over to exterminate the Kaffirs, as he called us, and having washed
the paper in water he made a goat drink the decoction thus
produced. He then sent that goat to us, thinking we would buy it! But
we were warned in time.
The awful grisgris did, in fact, arrive in camp yesterday in the form
of a black goat. The poor creature did not look as if she were
charged with venom. She was plump not too old, and would make a
first-rate stew.
All our men were, however, afraid to have anything to do with her,
for in their eyes she was indeed a grisgris endowed with unholy
powers by Amadu. The negroes are all superstitious, and their
imagination often quite runs away with them. On the other hand, faith
is sometimes wanting amongst the Mussulmans. Putting on an air of
very great wisdom, therefore, we generously offered two cubits of
stuff, worth about threepence-halfpenny, for the goat filled with spells
against us, and when the trader who had brought her looked
confused, yet almost willing to let us have her at that ridiculous price,
we explained to him emphatically that our own grisgris, the tubabu
grisgris, had revealed to us the black designs of Amadu, and we
intended to have him and his goat taken back to the other side of the
river, manu militari, I very nearly said kicked back.
The Kurteye marabout who had warned us, was evidently a
friend, unless the whole story was made up to get a present from us.
Every evening now regular tornados broke near Say. Up-stream and
down-stream, at Djerma and at Gurma, torrents of rain fell
constantly, and the lightning flashed from every point of the
compass; but, strange to relate, there was no rain at Say itself, and
when there is no rain there is no harvest. The report was now spread
that we had called down on the village the curse of Allah. The other
day Amadu Saturu had publicly recited the Fatiha in the Mosque in
the hope of getting rain to fall, and we were told that in the meeting
of the notables of the place, the Kurteye marabout had got up and
asserted that Say was punished for having given a bad reception to
a man sent from God, in other words, to the chief of our expedition,
and because Amadu had broken his promise and all his solemn
oaths.
Like my uncle Dr. Barth in Sarayamo, I now found myself looked
upon as the bringer of storms. He had also been looked upon as a
marabout saint, and the Fatiha had been recited to him in the hope
that he would open the floodgates of heaven. We, Kaffirs though we
were, would soon in our turn be entreated to remove our interdict on
the rain so much needed.
May 7.—Tierno, after many a discussion, has at last succeeded in
getting us a courier in the person of an ivory merchant from Hombori.
He will take our letters for Bandiagara, an advanced French post of
Massina. Aguibu, king of Massina, and under our protection, had
sent an agent to Hombori, which is on the road there. Our man
would go for 200 francs, 100 payable at Bandiagara and 100 on his
return to us. All, therefore, was for some days excitement and bustle
in our camp. Maps, reports, letters were being rapidly got ready, and
nobody had a moment to spare. Our courier, who did not seem to
feel quite sure of his safety, sent to ask whether during his absence
his family could go to our friend Galadio, who would protect them.
We said yes, of course.
He returned a month later, and said he had not been able to get to
Bandiagara. The Habés, who had risen in revolt, had robbed him
near the village of Dé. He had only escaped with the greatest
difficulty under cover of a tornado, leaving his packet of letters in the
hands of our enemies. We think he romanced a good deal on the
subject, and I fancy that a good search in Amadu Saturu’s camp
would probably result in the discovery of our packet intact, except for
being perhaps gnawed by termites.
I had some little doubt on the subject, however, and it is thanks to
that doubt that the courier still has his head on his shoulders. I never
saw him again.
May 13.—Great news! We are told by Osman that there are some
white men on the Dori side of the river, but no one knows exactly
how many. Barges full of white men are floating down-stream; they
are now off Ansongo. There is talk of three iron boats like ours; those
in them are all for peace, nothing but peace.
May 16.—Who is our friend Pullo bringing us this morning? Who
is that man with him who looks like a Tuareg, dressed in blue Guinea
cloth, with a grisgris on his head and a spear and javelin in his hand?
He is a Fulah, the foster-brother of Madidu, with his pockets full of
news. Twenty days ago he said he had left his “big brother” to come
to Say and sell four oxen for some of the cloth of the district. One of
these oxen had died, another had been stolen. What a good
opportunity to ask us to give him a bubu to make up for his losses.
Madidu had not known that we were still at Say. Had he done so
he would certainly have sent messengers, perhaps even have come
himself. He or Djamarata would have visited us, for they had gone
down the river as far as Ayoru to chastise Yoba for some want of
respect to us, but I am sure I don’t know what.
Our Fulah had heard a rumour of four white men having come to
trade on the Niger. Madidu had sent two of his blacksmiths to
prepare the way before them, and he had also by this time sent
envoys to Timbuktu to confirm the treaty we had made with him. He
did not know what had become of that treaty, but anyhow he had
returned with his pocket (Heaven only knows the capacity of that
pocket) full of knick-knacks and more than one present for Madidu.
The news of the approach of the barges was confirmed during the
following days, and in my notes I find the following reference to
them:—
May 17.—A man from Auru who had come to Say told us that at
Ansongo there were three hundred armed men and seven or eight
whites who had come in peace, nothing but peace, and were coming

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The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

(p. iv) Contents

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6DP,

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

© Oxford University Press 2019

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First Edition published in 2019

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Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

(p. x) (p. xi) List of Figures

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

(p. xii) (p. xiii) List of Tables

21.13 Adler’s Objection 466

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

(p. xv) Notes on Contributors

is Emeritus Professor of Economics in the School of Business at Leicester University.

is Professor of Philosophy at the College of Charleston. Her focus is on updating ancient

is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Co-Director of the Eras­

(PhD University of Minnesota) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Car­

is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Marquette University, USA, and Professor Emeritus

is Professor of Economics in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University

is Professor of Economics at the University of Leicester. He studied at the Delhi School of

is Professor in Management at Loughborough University London. He is the author of sev­

is a professor of cultural economics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He is the

is Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Most of his work is about homeless­

is Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics and Professor of Economics at

Economics: Towards a More Evidence-Based Methodology (2008), Philosophy of Econom­

is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His research focuses on

is Director of the Financial Ethics Research Group at University of Gothenburg in Swe­

is Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic in the

Virgil Henry Storr

is Professor of Economics and International Studies in the Robins School of Business at

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Economics and Finance

Bergstrom, Theodore C. 1999. “Systems of Benevolent Utility Functions.” Journal of Pub­

Etzioni, Amitai. 1987. “Toward a Kantian Socio-Economics.” In Charles K. Wilber

Wight, Jonathan B. 2015. Ethics in Economics: An Introduction to Moral Frameworks.

Adam Smith and the Study of Ethics in a Commercial

Print Publication Date: Jun 2019

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: Adam Smith, ethics, economics, markets, sympathy

(p. 13) 1.1 Introduction

1.2 Adam Smith’s Theory of Markets

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so

2001). In other words, pursuing our individual self-interest is incentive-compatible with

1.3 Adam Smith’s Theory of Ethics

At table every discussion led to a kind of squabble. Each of us

MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS

Thursday, April 23.—In the evening a sudden noise and confusion

Galadio was in this respect a thorough Fulah, although he had

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is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Co-Director of the Eras

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is Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Most of his work is about homeless

Economics: Towards a More Evidence-Based Methodology (2008), Philosophy of Econom

is Director of the Financial Ethics Research Group at University of Gothenburg in Swe

Bergstrom, Theodore C. 1999. “Systems of Benevolent Utility Functions.” Journal of Pub