Ethics and Markets

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course will explore historical, normative, institutional and psychological issues surrounding the development of free market economies. In the first section of the course we will be concerned with some of the fundamental works in the history of economic thought by such writers as Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, J. S. Mill, Marx, Keynes, and Hayek. In the second section of the course we will explore contemporary debates surrounding the methodology of the discipline of economics by prominent thinkers such as Knight, Friedman, Sen, North, Buchanan, Thaler, and Vernon Smith. In the third and final section of the course we will discuss some of the most pressing normative issues associated with contemporary dilemmas of globalization, economic development, and the complexity of financial markets.