Morality in Economics, as viewed from Sociology (Georg Kanitsar in European J. of Sociology)

Georg Kanitsar, a young sociologist, undertakes the task of looking at how economists think about morality (with a focus on experimental and behavioral econ, and market design). His view of how economists think may shed some light (for economists) on how sociologists think. (I quote below from near the beginning and near the end of his paper.)

Kanitsar, G. (2023). Putting Morals into Economics: From Value Neutrality to the Moral Economy and the Economization of Morality. European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes De Sociologie, 1-30. doi:10.1017/

"Abstract: The economic discipline plays a performative role in constructing the moral order of market society. Yet, little attention has been paid to what economists explicitly regard as moral or how they conceive of morality. This article reflects a recent attempt to put morals into economics, that is, to introduce morality as a research topic in behavioural and experimental economics. It maps three research programs that theorize the moral economy. The programs emphasize the moral foundations of market society, the moral limits of market expansion, and the moral consequences of market trading and, thus, appear irreconcilable with classifications of economists as market enthusiasts or moral agnostics. At the same time, however, the literature centres on an “economized” form of morality that is corrective to market inefficiencies, attributed to the responsibility of the individual, and expressed in rational terms. In doing so, this literature contributes to redefining moral problems in economic terms."

"I consider efforts to incorporate morality into an economic framework advanced by two influential branches of the discipline—behavioural economics and market experiments. To gain an overview of relevant research in these branches, I assemble a database of 39 recent articles and identify 20 key articles among them.

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" I explore the “economization of morality” by elucidating the moral arguments and the moral background of two authoritative programs in present-day economics: behavioural economics/experiments and market design/experiments. While many renowned economists have produced notable work on morality, these two research programs currently exert a unique influence on the economic discipline and are highly industrious in exporting its findings to policy making.

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"Discourse in the economic mainstream was long dominated by market enthusiasts and moral agnostics, but the recent surge of behavioural and market experiments has again drawn attention to morality as a research topic in economics. At the argumentative level, the reviewed literature reveals a genuine break with market fundamentalism in the narrow sense. I have identified three strands that shed light on the moral economy and emphasize the moral foundations, limitations, and consequences of markets. Thus, economics has not been deaf to appeals to “put morals into markets” [Amable Reference Amable2011]. At the background level, however, the integration of morality is steered by the discipline’s theoretical and methodological underpinnings. In consequence, a very specific understanding of morality lies at the heart of these research efforts; a form of morality that is functional to market efficiency and attributed to utility-maximizing individuals.

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"Behavioural economics thus strikes out in the opposite direction as scholarship in economic sociology. On the surface, both disciplines take as a starting point a view of market society as divided in arm’s-length transactions and social ties, and both disciplines have rediscovered morality as their subject matter. Yet, behavioural economics addresses the social sphere with tools that were tailor-made for the neoclassical analysis of markets. The field maintains the analytical primacy on efficiency and rationality, which it inherited from its parent discipline. In experiments, social exchanges are represented as contractual, anonymous, and temporary encounters, and money is regarded as a neutral tool used to express valuations. Conversely, economic sociology views markets as diverse “arenas of social interaction” [Beckert Reference Beckert2009: 245]. Market transactions are considered as far from universal, arelational, and disembedded [Aspers Reference Aspers, Beckert and Zafirovski2005], and the cultural meanings of money rarely reduce it to a qualityless, neutral, and homogenous medium of exchange [Zelizer Reference Zelizer1989]. Thus, the “moral economy” of behavioural economics is situated next to the “amoral economy” of neoclassical economics [Bowles Reference Bowles2016], echoing the traditional opposition between separate spheres of the economic and the moral [Thompson Reference Thompson E1971]. By contrast, economic sociology is increasingly devoted to identifying the multiple moralities underlying economic processes [Beckert Reference Beckert2012; Zelizer Rotman Reference Zelizer Rotman2017], convinced that “all economies are moral economies” [Fourcade Reference Fourcade2017: 665]."