(Sample syllabus)
Markets and property rights: perspectives from
economics and political philosophy
Instructor: Sean Ingham
Course description: This course surveys theoretical resources from economics
and political philosophy for thinking critically about markets, property rights,
the distribution of wealth and income, and related public policy. The first unit
considers the concepts of efficiency and cost-benefit analysis that economists
use to evaluate market outcomes and public policy. The second unit covers
approaches from political philosophy—appeals to liberty, property rights, and
justice. In the third unit we’ll apply the theoretical discussions from the first
two units to evaluate proposals for an unconditional basic income and market
socialism.
I. Economists’ take on markets and economic efficiency
Week 1
Economic models of behavior
9/4
No readings assigned for introductory lecture.
9/6
John Broome, Ethics Out of Economics, ch. 2.
Sean Ingham’s notes on revealed preferences and utility-maximization.
Gary S. Becker, “The Economic Way of Looking at Life,” Nobel Lecture, Dec.
9, 1992. http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/Nobel/nobellecture.pdf
Week 2
Economic efficiency and the “invisible hand”
9/11
Allen Blinder and William Baumol, “The Case for Free Markets: The Price
System,” ch. 14 in Economics: Principles and Policy (South-Western Cengage Learning, 2011).
9/13
Allen Buchanan, “The Paretian Concept of Efficiency,” pp. 4–13 of Ethics,
Efficiency, and the Market (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1988).
Sean Ingham’s notes on the Edgeworth Box.
1
Week 3
Market failure
9/18
Blinder and Baumol, “The Shortcomings of Free Markets” ch. 15 in Economics: Principles and Policy.
9/20
Blinder and Baumol, cont’d.
Optional alternative: Steve Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking
Like an Economist Undermines Community, Appendix A (Harvard University
Press, 2008).
Week 4
Economic cost-benefit analysis
9/25
Anthony Boardman et al., Cost-Benefit Analysis: Concepts and Practice,
chapter 2 (Prentice Hall, 2010).
9/27
Amartya Sen, “The Discipline of Cost-Benefit Analysis” The Journal of Legal
Studies 29 (2000): 931–952.
Uwe Reinhardt, “How we economists bastardized benthamite utilitarianism
and became shills for the wealthy,” http://www.princeton.edu/~reinhard/
pdfs/100-2008HOW_ECONOMISTS_BASTARDIZED_BENTHAMISM.pdf
Week 5
value
Objections to market valuations as measures of
10/2
Michael J. Sandel, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limit of Markets,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Oxford, 1998), http://www.
tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/sandel00.pdf
10/4
Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Harvard University
Press, 1993), ch. 9.
Week 6
Application: environmental policy
10/9
Michael Sandel, “Its Immoral to Buy the Right to Pollute,” New York Times,
December 17, 1997.
Daniel M. Hausman and Michael S. McPherson, Economic Analysis, Moral
Philosophy & Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 12–23.
2
10/11
Cass R. Sunstein, “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment,” Ethics 115
(2005): 351–385.
II. Liberty, Property Rights, and Justice
Week 7
What kind of freedom do free markets provide?
10/16
Isiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Liberty: Isiah Berlin, ed. Henry
Hardy (Oxford University Press, 2002).
10/18
Milton Friedman, “The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political
Freedom,” in Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Week 8
Critiques of appeals to liberty
10/23
G.A. Cohen, “Freedom and Money” in On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice
and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka (Princeton
University Press, 2011).
10/25
Allan Gibbard, “What’s Morally Special About Free Exchange?” Social Philosophy & Policy 2 (1985): 20–28.
Week 9 Natural property rights as constraints on the state
10/30
Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chs. I–V.
11/1
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), pp. 149–182.
Week 10
A critique of rights-based libertarianism
11/6
G.A. Cohen, “Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: how patterns preserve
liberty”, sections 1, 2, and 6 (pp. 19–24, 31–33) in Self-Ownership, Freedom
and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
11/8
G.A. Cohen, “Self-ownership, world-ownership, and equality” in SelfOwnership, Freedom and Equality, pp. 67–90.
3
Week 11
Economic inequality and justice
11/13
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, sections 1, 3, 4, and 11.
11/15
Rawls, sections 12–17.
Week 12
Continuation of week 11
11/20
Rawls, sections 24–26.
11/22
Rawls, sections 41–43, 48.
III. Institutions and Policy
Week 13
An unconditional basic income
11/27
Philippe van Parijs, “Basic Income : A simple and powerful idea for the 21st
century” in Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants
as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism, ed. Erik Olin Wright (Verso,
2006).
11/29
Brian Barry, “Survey Article: Real Freedom and Basic Income,” The Journal
of Political Philosophy 4 (1996): 242–276.
Week 14
Market socialism
12/4
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Whither Socialism? (The MIT Press, 1994), ch. 1.
John Roemer, A Future For Socialism (Harvard University Press, 1994), Introduction.
12/6
Roemer, ch. 8, “A model of a market socialist economy.”
4