ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to ascertain the role of ethical values in economic sciences. For Mill and Neville Keynes normative economics is linked with ethical values. However, an analysis of different positions on the role of values in normative economics suggests the possibility of a legitimate presence of ethical values not only in normative economics but also in positive economics. Confirming this requires explaining why ethical values can legitimately intervene in science: that is, rejecting the so-called value-free ideal. This is the topic of the first section of the chapter. The last section comes back to the relation between economics and ethics. The conclusion is that whenever values are present, including ethically ‘thick’ concepts, we need both a descriptive and an evaluative analysis to achieve a complete scientific consideration of the economic phenomenon analysed.
