The Price of Our Values - by Augustin Landier & David Thesmar (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The economic case for self-interest at the outer limits of being morally good. Modern life is an exercise in discomfort. In the face of endless injustice, how much selfishness is permissible? How do we square suffering elsewhere with our hope to thrive at home? How does one strive for the greater good while guarding one's personal interests? The Price of Our Values argues that the answers to these questions are economic: by weighing our sense of the personal costs associated with the outer limits of our moral beliefs. These tradeoffs-the want to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the points at which people abandon goodness due to its costs-are somewhat unsettling. But as economists Augustin Landier and David Thesmar show, they are highly predictable, even justified. Our values guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions. The Price of Our Values is an economic reckoning with the universal unease of contemporary moral life. Wielding insights from the philosophical founders of the field, Landier and Thesmar provide frameworks for thinking about the place of values-justice, freedom, beauty- in the decisions of modern life. They do so in terms that seek to be consistent with both our good intentions and their limits"--

Book Synopsis

The economic case for self-interest at the outer limits of being morally good.

Modern life is an exercise in discomfort. In the face of endless injustice, how much selfishness is permissible? How do we square suffering elsewhere with our hope to thrive at home? How does one strive for the greater good while guarding one's personal interests? The Price of Our Values argues that the answers to these questions are economic: by weighing our sense of the personal costs associated with the outer limits of our moral beliefs.

These tradeoffs--the want to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the points at which people abandon goodness due to its costs--are somewhat unsettling. But as economists Augustin Landier and David Thesmar show, they are highly predictable, even justified. Our values guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions.

The Price of Our Values is an economic reckoning with the universal unease of contemporary moral life. Wielding insights from the philosophical founders of the field, Landier and Thesmar provide frameworks for thinking about the place of values--justice, freedom, beauty-- in the decisions of modern life. They do so in terms that seek to be consistent with both our good intentions and their limits.

Review Quotes

"By bringing together a discussion of various quandaries that plague the modern age and a survey of economic thought, Landier and Thesmar offer a novel perspective for readers pondering how to act morally given limited time and resources."-- "Christian Century"

"Tin-eared economists [have failed] to take moral complexity seriously, which is why there is still an urgent need for a book like The Price of Our Values. . . . The Price of Our Values is a short book that manages to range across many of the issues where traditional economists' moral judgments fail society most egregiously. . . .By the end, the nonexpert reader is likely to be wary of the simple-minded economist touting efficiency as the solution to society's most pressing problems. Economists, meanwhile, will have learned that there is good reason to take seriously the complexity and plurality of the moral landscape in our quest to promote social betterment--not as it is defined by us, but as it is defined by those we seek to serve."-- "Science"

"Unlike everyday folk, economists like to separate their economic choices from moral ones. Their moral toolkit is utilitarianism. Here [the authors] set out not to ignore values such as compassion, liberty, and fairness, but to argue that to be fully ethical, our moral decisions must confront their cost implications. Their hope is that they can offer 'a framework for processing moral values while taking economic constraints into account.' Now there's a brave endeavor."-- "New Scientist"

"Economists like to separate economic choices from moral ones, but ordinary, everyday people do not. The Price of Our Values makes a compelling theoretical and empirical case for why the economists' position is untenable in the modern age."--Luigi Zingales University of Chicago and cohost of Capitalisn't

"Landier and Thesmar provide a clear approach on integrating economic and moral arguments into a unified framework. There is much to learn from both their analysis and clever examples."--Andrei Shleifer coauthor of "A Crisis of Beliefs: Investor Psychology and Financial Fragility"

"The Price of Our Values is a hugely interesting and important book which draws from a wide range of disciplines beyond economics--including philosophy, sociology, and psychology. The authors highlight the deep flaws inherent in consequentialism and utilitarianism that are fundamental to most neoclassical economics, and they offer ideas as to how and why a broader sense of morality must become fundamental to economics analysis."--Rebecca M. Henderson Harvard University

About the Author

Augustin Landier is professor of finance at HEC Paris. He has previously taught at the Toulouse School of Economics, New York University, and the University of Chicago and served as a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. In 2014, he was named "France's Best Young Economist" by Le Monde. David Thesmar is the Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics and professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has previously served as a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. In 2007, he was named "France's Best Young Economist" by Le Monde. With Augustin Landier, he writes a regular column for the French daily newspaper Les Echos.