ABSTRACT
Ethics should be taught to all students of economics, from undergraduates to graduates. Principles courses could confront the urtext of utilitarianism in economics, econometrics courses could discuss the issues of economic versus statistical significance, and graduate students wishing to run randomized controlled trials of their own could sit down and grapple with the concerns raised by randomization. The economists running the experiment wished to know if wearing corrective eyeglasses might allow those children who were sight-defective to perform better in school. The ethical econometrician would do well to follow the examples of the American Statistical Association and Supreme Court and learn from the debacles. The ethics of econometric research – from the design of a fully funded field experiment to the seminar interpretation of the most classical, virginal, linear regression – is frequently said to be the reader’s business, or the government’s business, or the sponsor of the experiment’s business, not the econometrician’s.
