Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes interest in the ethics of economists and to advance a moral conception of the economic science. It focuses on the ethical behavior of economists and thus mainly concerned with deontology and professional economics ethics. The book discusses the education and training of the ‘ethical economist’: what it means to train and educate an ethical economist and what is needed for economics to become an ethical profession. It examines the ethics of econometric research and the categorical mistake made by some economists when considering that ethics is to be left for business, government and policymakers and not for the econometrician. The book presents the philosophical arguments for the removal of normativity and normative analysis from economics and what the implications of this issue are on the personal responsibility of economists.