As the world debates the economic crisis, it does so without considering two historically important ideas: the stigmatization of miserliness and the prohibition of usury. Although these ideas were once keystones of society, they are missing from the current discourse. This paper seeks to...

This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

In November 2007, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued quot;Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States.quot; This statement by the American Catholic Bishops provides guidance to Catholic voters on how...

This has been developed from the keynote speech of the inaugural Cambridge Capabilities Conference held in 2016 (a similar version is to be published in Anand, P.B., Comim, F.V. and Fennell, S. (eds), [provisional title] 'New Frontiers of the Capability Approach', forthcoming from Cambridge...

William H. Starbuck began his academic career in the late 1950s as a doctoral student at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, working alongside Herb Simon, Jim March, and Dick Cyert. Bill ends his academic career this year as the ITT Professor of Creative Management at the Stern School of...

This paper argues that a sweatshop worker's choice to accept the conditions of his or her employment is morally significant, both as an exercise of autonomy and as an expression of preference. This fact establishes a moral claim against interference in the conditions of sweatshop labor by third...

How should we make interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences? One branch of welfare economics eschews such comparisons, which are seen as impossible or unknowable; normative evaluation is based upon criteria such as Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency that require no...

An ongoing debate has centered on whether redistribution should be attained solely through taxes and transfer payments, or also via the private law. The most powerful argument against redistribution through private law is grounded on economic considerations. Accordingly, legal rules are more...

This Chapter elucidates and defends the second premise of the Argument from Claims about Interest-Affecting Normative Requirement. The premise runs: A theory is a normative political theory just in case it claims that a certain set of normative requirements ranges over (a) some actions, or (b)...