Call for papers:

  Economics and Ethics

The Tragic Science?

Critical responses to DeMartino’s harm-centric economics

Online conference, Thursday 30 March 2023

Organised and sponsored by

LSBU Business School & London Centre for Business &

Entrepreneurship Research

In his most recent book, The Tragic Science (2022), Professor George DeMartino (University of Denver) argues for a harm-centric economics. Economic policy analysis recognises that most economic interventions entail harms along with benefits (economic growth, for example, has ineluctable distributional consequences). 

But the notion of harm that economists standardly accept is, DeMartino argues, highly restricted. Harms are assumed financially compensable, and reducible to a single type – thwarted preference or diminished welfare. This limited conception of harm blinds economists to the real damage that economic policy interventions can inflict and this ought, DeMartino suggests, to encourage us to revisit the notion of harm in economic theory and practice.

The Tragic Science builds on DeMartino’s vanguard work in economics and ethics (DeMartino, 2011; DeMartino and McCloskey, 2016; see also, White, 2019; Dolfsma and Negru, 2019) and breaks down the barriers between economics and broader conversations around, for example, the psychological and health impacts of public policy, social inclusion, economic democracy, and endemic poverty. 

The conference will be of interest to academics and applied economists in policy and business. 

The issues raised by professor DeMartino’s new book are wide-ranging and conference presentations are invited in the following (non-exhaustive) areas: professional economic ethics, economics and future generations, the capabilities approach to policy analysis, sustainability, economics and social inclusion, deliberative democracy, economics and inequality, economics and identity, race and gender, harm-centric economics and business ethics. 

Presentations are also invited that address the implications for economic methodology of a richer conception of harm.

The deadline for abstracts of conference presentations is 31 January 2023.

Decisions and invitations to present will be sent by 20 February 2023.

For further information please contact Dr Craig Duckworth, LSBU Business School, craig.duckworth@lsbu.ac.uk, Dr Ioana Negru, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, ioana.negru@ulbsibiu.ro, or Dr Imko Meyenburg, Anglia Ruskin University, imko.meyenburg@aru.ac.uk.

Please send your abstract by email to Dr Craig Duckworth,

craig.duckworth@lsbu.ac.uk

References

DeMartino, G.F. and McCloskey, D.N. eds., 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics. Oxford University Press.
DeMartino, G.F., 2011. The Economist's Oath: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
White, Mark, ed., 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dolfsma, W. and Negru, I. eds., 2019. The Ethical Formation of Economists. Abingdon: Routledge.