Professional Ethics for Economists: A Reflection on DeMartino's Oath

Abstract

Economists and the discipline of economics occupy positions of immense institutional and intellectual authority in the world today. Decisions made based on the advice and expertise of economists influence the lives of millions of people. Economic ideas are leaned upon to shape government and corporate agendas the world over. But this influence on the world also carries with it the possibility that such ideas and actors can be the cause of significant harm. Despite these powerful positions that economists occupy and the possibility of being responsible for harming others, there has heretofore been very little serious or sustained discussion as to the potential ethical responsibilities that they might have as a profession.

Over the last few years, several economists have taken note of this absence within the field and attempted to initiate a discourse about the types of professional ethical obligations that they might share as a group. One of the leading voices in this nascent discourse has been George DeMartino and his 2011 book The Economist’s Oath – which lays down many of the core assumptions and conceptual apparatuses that have guided the conversation thus far. In his book, DeMartino offers an overview of how he perceives the profession, the problems facing it, and he argues that a promising way to proceed would be to model Professional Ethics for Economists on the practices found in the medical profession.

In this thesis, I critically examine the argument made by DeMartino in The Economist’s Oath and argue for some potential alternatives as to how the overall project might proceed. In Chapter 1, I lay out what I take to be the core of DeMartino’s position and identify a number of points upon which the discourse might be expanded. In Chapter 2, I offer one such expansion of the discourse on the specific topic of economic history and add additional details to some of the key historical events discussed by DeMartino. I argue that this additional context regarding the history of economics alters how they many central assumptions of DiMartino's enterprise are understood. In this chapter, I also introduce the recent development within the AEA, wherein they deviated from the historical trend of avoiding discussion of ethical topics and recently introduced a code of professional conduct for its members. I will discuss the ways that this new code does and does not address the concerns that DeMartino raises. In Chapter 3, I focus on one of the major themes of DeMartino’s book, his reliance on an analogy between economics and medicine. I argue that this analogy in DeMartino’s book – the comparison between the economic and medical professions – has fundamental limitations and that there are other established professional ethics literatures to which more fruitful comparisons can be made. In Chapter 4, I offer two such alternatives – accounting and engineering. The first alternative that I propose is accounting ethics and in particular its use of the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The second alternative explored here is engineering and the emphasis that that profession places on the principle of humility. I conclude, in Chapter 5, by applying some of these possible alternative frameworks to a selection of recent real-life examples of behaviour by economists to which such professional ethics ideas may have been usefully applied.