ABSTRACT
One of us recently shared a taxi leaving the meetings of the National Council for the Social Studies and going to the Atlanta airport. We introduced ourselves. She was a historian. He was an economist. After she learned she was sharing a cab with an economist, the mood of the historian immediately darkened. Economics made her uncomfortable, she said. The discipline of economics was somehow tainted in her mind. She is not alone. This is not the first time economists have encountered this sort of reaction. Many people have difficulty understanding markets because they suspect that markets-and the people who study them-are fundamentally immoral. Don’t markets depend on greed? Isn’t the private sector corrupt? This chapter will address each of these questions and then explain how markets influence moral behavior.
