Ethics as a Topic of Economic Inquiry: The Social-Theoretic Context

In ordering different fields of scholarly inquiry, ethics is commonly thought to be independent of economics, with ethical principles standing in judgment of economizing actions. In contrast, we explore a line of thought in which
ethics, politics, and commerce all emerge simultaneously within the same social order. Principles of economizing action are ubiquitous; however, those principles can manifest in different substantive contexts. Ethics is commonly
pursued from a normative point of view in which theorists advance principles that constitute their visions of goodness. In contrast, we pursue ethics as a social science, the substance of which emerges through the efforts of people
to fashion arrangements for living together in geographical proximity. Within this alternative analytical framework, principles of ethics and of political economy are both emergent features of human interaction within social
systems in which standards of desirability are likewise emergent outputs of those systems.

Find the full article here.