The Ethics of Financial Speculation in Futures Markets

Ingo Pies, Matthias Georg Will, Thomas Glauben and Sören Prehn

Chapter 24 in The World Scientific Handbook of Futures Markets, 2015, pp 771-804 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This article sketches an ethics of (financial) speculation in futures markets. (1) It identifies an intentionalistic fallacy prevalent in moral criticisms of speculation in general and of financial speculation in particular. (2) It scrutinizes the degree to which the recent debate on financial speculation with agricultural commodities follows the general pattern of moral criticism and its intentionalistic fallacy. (3) It then provides a theoretical and empirical in-depth analysis of long-only index funds' engagement in futures markets and concludes that moral criticisms which put them in the pillory as “hungermakers” are unjust(ified). This proves that ethics, understood as a theory of morality, can criticize moral criticisms of financial speculation on moral grounds. (4) Finally, this article discusses the option of interdisciplinary cooperation between ethics and economics.

Keywords: Futures Markets; Pricing; Risk Management; Futures Trading; Stock Indexes; Interest Rates; Futures Prices; Portfolio Theory; Hedge Funds; Foreign Exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Working Paper: The ethics of financial speculation in futures markets (2013)
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