This edited volume is the first collection of essays exploring the intersection of social economics and the law, providing alternatives to neoclassical law-and-economics and applying them to real-world issues. Law is a social enterprise concerned with values such as justice, dignity, and equality, as well as efficiency - which is the same way that social economists conceive of the economy itself. Social economists and legal scholars alike need to acknowledge the interrelationship between the economy and the law in a broader ethical context than enabled by mainstream law-and-economics. The ten...

While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and computational methods. But recent financial crises in the real world have reignited discussions of the importance of ethics to economics, including growing calls for a new approach to incorporating moral philosophy in economic theory, practice, and policy. Ironically, it is the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristotle and Adam Smith that may lead to the most promising way to developing an economics...

This collection of essays by prominent economists and philosophers showcases the important contributions that markets can make to important topics within social economics, including practical issues such as poverty and disaster relief, as well as more general concerns regarding ethics and well-being.