Ethics and Economics Education
Moral foundations, economic principles, & critical thinking
E3NE hosted its first Big Idea Policy Conference in Concord, NH, on November 5, 2015. We are grateful for support of Hon. Jason Osborne, Aaron Day, and State Budget Solutions, which made this conference possible. The following is a thorough summary of the the speakers’ presentations and the question-and-answer sessions. Video should be available in a few days. Effects of Casinos Doug Walker […]
Read moreIn a famous 1972 article, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” philosopher Peter Singer compared global poverty to a child drowning in a pond: [I]f it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. An application of this principle would be as follows: if I am walking […]
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What caused the Great Depression? There’s no shortage of popular theories. Some say it was an inevitable consequence of capitalism. Others claim it was the big stock market crash of October 1929 that started it. Yet another hypothesis says that the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff, highest in U.S. history, turned a recession into a depression. All these explanations are false. Economists […]
Read moreIn my last post, I talked about how prices give us both a signal and an incentive. A falling price tells a producer that a good is needed less, and so that producer will direct resources elsewhere, where the profits are higher. A rising price tells a producer that a good is needed more, and so that producer will direct […]
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