This book shows how careful attention to moral reasoning can enrich economic understanding and clarify the importance and the limits of an economic analysis of policy problems.

Daniel M. Hausman is the Herbert A. Simon and Hilldale Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A founding editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy (with Michael McPherson), his research has centered on epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues at the boundaries between economics and philosophy. He is the author of Capital, Profits, and Prices (1981), The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (1992), Causal Asymmetries (1998), Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare (2012), and Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering (2015).

1. Ethics and economics?; 2. Ethics in welfare economics; 3. Ethics in positive economics: two examples; Part I. Rationality, Morality, and Markets: 4. Rationality and utility theory; 5. Rationality and morality in positive economics; 6. The ethical limits to markets; Part II. Welfare and Consequences: 7. Utilitarianism, consequentialism, and justice; 8. Welfare; 9. Welfare economics; Part III. Liberty, Rights, Equality and Justice: 10. Liberty, rights and libertarianism; 11. Equality and egalitarianism; 12. Justice and contractualism; Part IV. Moral Mathematics: 13. Social choice theory; 14. Game theory; Conclusions: 15. Putting economics and ethics to work; 16. Economics and ethics, hand in hand; Appendix.