NOW OPEN: Four Positions in Financial Ethics

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The University of Gothenburg seeks to establish a new research group in practical philosophy dedicated to ethical and political issues raised by the financial system. There is a growing consensus that financial agents and markets are failing to live up to their social responsibilities. The global financial crisis demonstrated how misaligned incentives and poor regulations impose extreme risks on both the financial system itself and society at large. But a more general problem is the seeming inability of financial markets to address the great sustainability challenges of our times, such as global poverty and the threat of climate change.

These overarching issues can be broken down into many subtopics, which in turn raise questions of more general philosophical concern. Possible subtopics include: * the proper objective of private companies and the division of moral labour in society; * the ethics of speculation and gambling; * insider trading and the importance of ‘fair play’ in markets; * the legitimacy of paternalism in dealing with clients; * incentive- versus desert-based views on justice in pay; * the Tobin tax and the legitimacy of international tax regimes; * the role of central banks and the justification of virtual or international currencies; * microfinance and poor people’s right to credit; and * Islamic finance and the moral critique of usury.

A total of four positions are advertised (click on the links to read more): Continue reading →

CFP: Intersections of finance and society

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Call for papers: Conference on ‘Intersections of finance and society’
To be held on 3-4 November 2016 at City University London, UK
PDF version of the call for papers available here.

Recent years have seen a growth in innovative research on finance across the humanities and social sciences. Following on from the success of the ‘social studies of finance’ approach and the new literature on ‘financialisation’, scholars are taking up the challenge of theorising money and finance beyond the conceptual constraints of orthodox economic theory, with different research agendas emerging under various new monikers. This two-day conference aims to bring these approaches into closer dialogue. In particular, it seeks to identify new synergies between heterodox political economy and various sociological, historical, and philosophical perspectives on the intersections of finance and society.

The conference is organised by the journal Finance and Society (with support from the Department of International Politics at City University London), together with the Social Studies of Finance Network at the University of Sydney (with support from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney).

Confirmed keynotes Continue reading →

Four Positions in Financial Ethics

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The University of Gothenburg seeks to establish a new research group in practical philosophy dedicated to ethical and political issues raised by the financial system. There is a growing consensus that financial agents and markets are failing to live up to their social responsibilities. The global financial crisis demonstrated how misaligned incentives and poor regulations impose extreme risks on both the financial system itself and society at large. But a more general problem is the seeming inability of financial markets to address the great sustainability challenges of our times, such as global poverty and the threat of climate change.

These overarching issues can be broken down into many subtopics, which in turn raise questions of more general philosophical concern. Possible subtopics include: * the proper objective of private companies and the division of moral labour in society; * the ethics of speculation and gambling; * insider trading and the importance of ‘fair play’ in markets; * the legitimacy of paternalism in dealing with clients; * incentive- versus desert-based views on justice in pay; * the Tobin tax and the legitimacy of international tax regimes; * the role of central banks and the justification of virtual or international currencies; * microfinance and poor people’s right to credit; and * Islamic finance and the moral critique of usury.

A total of four positions will be advertised: Continue reading →

Finance and Social Justice Conference

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CFP: Finance and Social Justice Conference

Date: 3-5 November 2016

Location: University of Bayreuth, Germany

Website: www.finance-and-justice-conference.org

Keynote Speakers:

  • Adair Turner(Former Chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority and former member of the UK’s Financial Policy Committee, Institute for New Economic Thinking)
  • Martin O’Neill(Senior Lecturer in Political and Moral Philosophy, University of York)

Invited Speakers: Continue reading →

How (not) to define banking culture

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The Group of Thirty has recently published a report entitled Banking Conduct and Culture. The Group of Thirty is a high-profile think tank covering global finance with members such as Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Fed; Mark Carney, Govenor or the Bank of England; and Mario Draghi, President of the ECB. As the subtitle indicates, the report is meant as a “call for sustained and comprehensive reform”:

“There must be a sustained focus on conduct and culture by banks and the banking industry, boards, and management. Firms and their leaderships need to make major improvements in the culture within the banking industry and within individual firms.” (p. 11)

A lot about the report is to be recommended. It provides a good overview of current interventions to improve organisational culture in banking. It urges leaders of banks as well as regulators to move beyond lofty value statements, towards a firm integration of an ethical culture into banks. It does so by calling for a “fundamental shift in the overall mindset on culture”, and making ethics count when designing incentive structures, performance management, and promotion paths.

Alas, the report fails at providing a helpful definition of organisational culture. It fails in ways that some very old-fashioned conceptual analysis could have prevented. Continue reading →

Ethical Government Bonds

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Pacta sunt servanda – contracts must be kept. This legal doctrine is only acceptable from an ethical perspective if certain conditions in addition to the consent of the contracting parties have been met. These conditions include the requirement that the parties to the contract understand its content; that none of the parties dominates the other; that the background conditions that regulate how difficult it will be for either party to satisfy the terms of the contract should be sufficiently stable and predictable; and that the parties to the contract are identical to the persons bound by it.

The sovereign debt contract common today violate these requirements. Consider Greek debt: The officials in the Greek government and the members of the Greek parliament do not just enter a contract on their own behalf when they decide to issue government bonds, but they force tax obligations on Greek citizens and even their progeny to cover the servicing, and perhaps repayment of the debt. How onerous this tax burden is depends on the economic development of Greece in the next couple of decades, which is neither predictable nor likely to be stable.

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Open Position in Economics & Philosophy / Business Ethics

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Tenure Track Assistant/Associate Professor Economics&Philosophy/Business Ethics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Groningen, The Netherlands

The application deadline is 15 June 2015. For information about the post, click here.

The University of Groningen invites applications for an assistant or associate professor (tenure track) in economics and philosophy/business ethics in the Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance of the Faculty of Economics and Business. Tenure track positions are eligible for consideration for award of the title of full professor, generally after ten years, depending on merit.

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Financial Ethics: Taking Responsibility for the ‘Stupid Stuff’

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Ethics in financial services is suddenly a major concern for the most prominent US bank supervisor.

In a speech at the Bank of England on 20 January 2015, Thomas C Baxter, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, proclaimed, “At the New York Fed, we have made ethical culture a priority for financial services.”

As tangible evidence of this priority, the New York Fed held a workshop on 21 October 2014, on ‘Reforming Culture and Behavior in the Financial Services Industry,’ in an effort to understand the causes of ethical failures and to develop strategies for improving the ethical cultures of large financial institutions.

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Creation of value in finance?

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H/T Leiterreports: an interesting piece in The New York Times on what’s worrying about too many students going into finance, with links to papers about the social value of finance, or lack thereof.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/upshot/why-a-harvard-professor-has-mixed-feelings-when-students-take-jobs-in-finance.html?action=click&contentCollection=Science&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=0