Teaching ethics to economics students in one lesson

Ethics is an integral part, not just an appendix, to economics. It is essential to make this point clear to students at the very beginning of their study of economics - in Lesson 1. That isn’t done now. In fact, the thought that economics teachers will tell students that ethics is central to economics is a pipe dream. Yet, this is by no means to suggest that we should stop stressing the importance of teaching ethics to economics students. The proposal of this chapter is to explore how to teach ethics to economics students in a more effective way so that it is most likely to be done. We suggest that for those of us who think ethics is important to economics, the best we can hope for is for one lesson that reminds introductory students that ethics is central to policy conclusions, and that scientific economics, on its own, does not arrive at any policy conclusions. Attempts to teach significantly more than that simple idea in the principles course will likely fail. In the chapter we first explain why “less is more” is the best strategy to foster teaching ethics in economics education. We then identify three types of cases where ethics matters to economics, but argue that in the introductory course, one of these, the way economists treat ethics in economic policy analysis, is the ethical issue that should be focused on. We illustrate how ethics in economic policy could be studied by considering some common pitfalls as counter examples.