The Values Of Economics

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed. Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic: that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

In his Ethics, Aristotle argued that human beings try to further a variety of values by balancing them, stating that people try to find a middle road between excess and deficiency. The author develops and applies this idea to the values of economics, arguing that in the economy; freedom, justice and care are also balanced to further ends with scarce means. Freedom is furthered through market exchange, justice through a redistributive role of the state, and care through mutual gifts of labour and sharing of resources in the economy. The book argues that economics is, and has always been, about human values, which guide, enable, constrain and change economic behaviour.

A path-breaking analysis of the relationship between economic institutions and values.

Values-based organizations are institutions, communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are inspired by a mission or a vocation – for these groups it is their ideals which are most important to them and economics does not have a way to incorporate that into its analysis. This book provides a short introduction to the economics of values-based organizations. The book opens with an analysis of some phenomena common to all organizations: the management of vulnerabilities in relationships and the role of incentives, especially in relation to loyalty. Turning to values-based organizations more specifically, the book explores the motivations of their members, how they retain their most motivated people, what happens when the ideals of the organization are perceived to have deteriorated, and the decisions made by those in charge, who focus on efficiency, oblivious to values and identities. The second part of the book explores the narrative dimensions of values-based organizations. "Narrative capital" is a precious resource in many of these organizations, particularly through periods of crisis and change. But problems can also be caused if the second and later generations after the foundations continue to use the original narrative without enough innovation. Finally, the book discusses the gaps – the surpluses and misalignments – between people, their ideals and the organizations and how these can be managed. The book is written for academics, students and others interested in the role of values and ideals in organizations – economists, sociologist, business scholars, theologians and philosophers.

"This book is for all those who are seeking a human perspective on economic and organizational processes. It lays the foundations for a value based approach to the economy. The key questions are: "What is important to you or your organization?" "What is this action or that organization good for?" The book is directed at the prevalence of instrumentalist thinking in the current economy and responds to the calls for another economy. Another economy demands another economics. The value based approach is another economics; it focuses on values and on the most important goods such as families, homes, communities, knowledge, and art. It places economic processes in their cultural context. What does it take to do the right thing, as a person, as an organization, as a society? What is the good to strive for? This book gives directions for the answers. The value based approach restores the ancient idea that quality of life and of society is what the economy is all about. It advocates shifting thefocus from quantities ("how much?") to qualities ("what is important?").

This book brings together key players in the current debate on positive and normative science and philosophy and value judgements in economics. Both editors have engaged in these debates throughout their careers from its early foundations; Putnam as a doctorial student of Hans Reichenbach at UCLA and Walsh a junior member of Lord Robbins’s department at the London School of Economics, both in the early 1950s. This book collects recent contributions from Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen and Partha Dasgupta, as well as a new chapter from the editors.

Elizabeth Anderson offers a new theory of value and rationality that rejects cost-benefit analysis in our social lives and in our ethical theories. This account of the plurality of values thus offers a new approach, beyond welfare economics and traditional theories of justice, for assessing the ethical limitations of the market. In this light, Anderson discusses several contemporary controversies involving the proper scope of the market, including commercial surrogate motherhood, privatization of public services, and the application of cost-benefit analysis to issues of environmental protection. Table of Contents: Preface 1. A Pluralist Theory of Value A Rational Attitude Theory of Value Ideals and Self-Assessment How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization 2. An Expressive Theory of Rational Action Value and Rational Action The Framing of Decisions The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs Consequentialism Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self 3. Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods The Advantages of Consequentialism A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value Judgments Incommensurable Goods Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods 4. Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints The Test of Self-Understanding The Hierarchy of Values Agent-Centered Restrictions Hybrid Consequentialism A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason? 5. Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense 6. Monistic Theories of Value Monism Moore's Aesthetic Monism Hedonism Rational Desire Theory 7. The Ethical Limitations of the Market Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market Civil Society and the Market Personal Relations and the Market Political Goods and the Market The Limitations of Market Ideologies 8. Is Women's Labor a Commodity? The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood Children as Commodities Women's Labor as a Commodity Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law 9. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis Conclusion Notes References Index Reviews of this book: Anderson/auhtor is anxious to combat what she sees as a tendency for commercial values to invade areas of human life where they do not belong...A useful contribution to debate about the proper scope of the market. "Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats." DD--Philadelphia Inquirer "The book is rich in both argument and application." DD--Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement "In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading." DD--A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy --Hugo Dixon, Financial Times [UK] Reviews of this book: Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats. --Philadelphia Inquirer Reviews of this book: The book is rich in both argument and application. --Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement Reviews of this book: In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading. --A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy

An argument that conceiving of economic value as a social force makes it possible to develop a new and more powerful theory of market behavior. With the advent of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, the economics profession itself entered into a crisis of legitimacy from which it has yet to emerge. Despite the obviousness of their failures, however, economists continue to rely on the same methods and to proceed from the same underlying assumptions. André Orléan challenges the neoclassical paradigm in this book, with a new way of thinking about perhaps its most fundamental concept, economic value. Orléan argues that value is not bound up with labor, or utility, or any other property that preexists market exchange. Economic value, he contends, is a social force whose vast sphere of influence, amounting to a kind of empire, extends to every aspect of economic life. Markets are based on the identification of value with money, and exchange value can only be regarded as a social institution. Financial markets, for example, instead of defining an extrinsic, objective value for securities, act as a mechanism for arriving at a reference price that will be accepted by all investors. What economists must therefore study, Orléan urges, is the hold that value has over individuals and how it shapes their perceptions and behavior. Awarded the prestigious Prix Paul Ricoeur on its original publication in France in 2011, The Empire of Value has been substantially revised and enlarged for this edition, with an entirely new section discussing the financial crisis of 2007–2008.