Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy is concerned with economics and ethics, but it is not about how to behave ethically when doing business or doing economics. We prescribe no code of conduct and preach few sermons. Rather, in this book we try to show how understanding moral philosophy can help economists to do economics better and how economics and ethics can help policy analysts to improve their evaluations of alternative policies. We also hope to show how philosophers can do ethics better by drawing on insights and analytical tools from economics. We are writing mainly for those who are interested in economics and we aim at helping them to do economics, but we think that economics has some important things to offer ethics, too.

This focus may seem a big letdown. Surely it's more important to grapple with life-and-death moral problems! You'll get no argument from us about that. We fully agree, and we're not proposing that people stop asking moral questions. On the contrary, we hope this book will show how important morality is in economic life. But our concern is with economic theory rather than directly with economic life. Our job will be to show clearly the role that ethics has in economics and policy analysis and to show how knowing moral philosophy helps one do economics and policy evaluation better.