Conclusion

Abstract

We have argued in this book that it is impossible to do economic analysis and conduct public policy by leaving out ethics. Efforts to purge ethics from economics by separating positive and normative economics and by appealing to the value neutrality thesis are unwarranted. Economists make explicit and implicit value judgments when they do what they call positive economic analysis in choosing what questions they examine and what assumptions they make in their analysis and their models. These questions cannot be swept aside by appealing to brute facts and to empirical testing.