Ethics and Professional Practice

Abstract

This chapter discusses what role ethics has in guiding professionals. The chapter criticizes a “lawgiver model” of ethics, in which ethics purports to be universal, authoritarian, and counterpreferential. The chapter sketches parts of a different model of ethics, one in which ethics is participatory and guides us. Ethics need not merely constrain us. Ethics can help economists (and other professionals) to figure out how to do the right thing. There may be more than one way to get this right. Figuring out how to do it is not something ethicists can facilitate without the lived experience and advice of those in the field. In formulating an ethics for economists, economists have to do a lot of the ethical work.