Senior Seminar: Economics, Philosophy and Economic Justice
ECON BC3063     Fall 2007

Professor Marcellus Andrews

This course has two primary objectives: (1) explore the nature, logic and limits of economic justice in liberal democratic societies while (2) surveying the wide range of new thinking on economic justice among an emerging group economists and philosophers on the post-welfare state Left. First, the course considers the economic implications of arguments about the legitimacy and character of economic and social justice for the scale and scope of the state in matters of redistribution within and between generations, economic mobility, equal opportunity and “development rights”, that is, the status and content of redistributive justice from all adults to all children via public mechanisms. Second, the course explores the history and the current state of debate on economic justice with special emphasis on post-Rawlsian developments, including but not limited to the work of Amartya Sen, Brian Barry, Phillipe van Parijs, Bruce Ackerman and Martha Nussbaum. Third, the course uses analytical economics, especially macroeconomic approaches to the distribution of income and wealth over time, to assess recent proposals for radical egalitarian economic policies by various sectors of the free market Left including left-libertarians like Phillipe van Parijs, through anti-welfare state egalitarian liberals like Anne Alstott and Bruce Ackerman.

Class Meetings: Tuesdays 2:10-4:00pm