The Ethical Dimension of Economic Choices

Radu Vranceanu

No DR 05001, ESSEC Working Papers from ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School

Abstract: In general, capitalist countries display sustained growth, dynamism and innovation, and a high adaptability in response to external shocks. Yet in the last twenty years discontent over the notorious drawbacks of capitalism – corporate frauds, corruption, abuses of market power – has grown continually. In this paper, we argue that no remedy to these difficulties can be found if ethical dilemmas are not anticipated and addressed at the individual, firm and economy-wide level. While pro-ethical changes in business regulation would help, government action alone may not be effective enough. Given that the social sciences provide the general framework of reference for human action, better integration of the ethical dimension by these disciplines would bring about additional benefits. In particular, economic theory would gain from developing more in-depth reflection on human end-goals and values.

Keywords: Calculativeness; Capitalism; Corporate social responsibility; Economics; Virtue Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A13 B41 M14 P17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2005-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.essec.fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=5534&key=__workpaper__ (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.essec.fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=5534&key=__workpaper__ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.essec.edu/fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=5534&key=__workpaper__)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-05001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ESSEC Working Papers from ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School ESSEC Research Center, BP 105, 95021 Cergy, France. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sophie Magnanou ().