This article was published on The Economist online on February 24th, 2018 and also appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline “Moral hazard”. It begins with a reference to the debate over President’s Trump tax bill and the absence of a moral reflections when economists, both in favor and against the new policy, argued about its effects. The author refers to some historic moral concerns for economists, and describes how the absence of this considerations has not been always the case.
In sum, the publication concludes that nowadays economists have to understand and evaluate moral arguments rather than dismiss them. Because in order to be able to state what society should be doing, questions of values will emerge.
In my point of view, it is pretty clear that, regardless of the importance of arguing values for justification, moral considerations cannot be ignored, because of their impact on the decisions of agents in commerce, for instance the way in which moral objections change behavior.
