ABSTRACT
Economics and ethics is difficult to discern as a distinct and independent field of inquiry, in part because the relationship between the two disciplines is hard to understand. Is ethics an external topic from which economics can benefit and to which it might contribute, but at the discretion of economists satisfied with the state and progress of their discipline? Or is ethics an intrinsic and pervasive aspect of economics that has gone neglected for the past 100 years to the detriment of the field (despite the measures of success it has shown)? The answers to these questions, reflecting the disparate attitudes that economists take toward ethics, help to explain the bifurcated nature of the work that is gathered under that umbrella term, as well as the scholars working in each part.
