Research Catalog

Title

Ethics and the global financial crisis : why incompetence is worse than greed / Boudewijn de Bruin.

Author

Bruin, Boudewijn de, 1974-

Publication

• Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• ©2015

Supplementary Content

Cover image

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 228 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"Professor De Bruin has written an important book. For all of the thousands of pages written on the recent global financial crisis, there is very little solid ethical analysis of the underlying causes and concepts. He makes a critical distinction between the motivation of financial actors and their competence, then argues that most of the analysis of the crisis has been about motivation. In particular many have called into question the very idea of capitalism as seeking to maximize profits for shareholders. While DeBruin admits that motivation is an important idea, he traces much of the difficulty to incompetence on the part of multiple stakeholders, who have no real motivation to learn about how the basic ideas in finance actually work"--

Series Statement

Business, value creation, and society

Uniform Title

Business, value creation, and society.

Subject

• Financial crises > Moral and ethical aspects
• Finance > Moral and ethical aspects
• Business ethics
• Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009 > Moral and ethical aspects
• BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Business Ethics
• Finanzkrise
• Wirtschaftsethik
• Wirtschaftskrise

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: Trust and trustworthiness -- Moral decision making and moral intensity -- Motivation or competence? -- Epistemic virtues -- Warning and outline -- 1. Financial ethics: virtues in the market -- Friedman's argument -- Corporate responsibility -- Shareholders -- Job requirements -- A theory of the firm -- Hierarchy of command -- Corporate law -- A company's goals -- The economics of banking -- An argument for liberty -- Politics -- Arguments -- Epistemic preconditions for liberty -- Responsibility -- Criticism -- Summary -- 2. Epistemic ethics: virtues of the mind -- Instrumental epistemic value -- Intellectualism and psychology -- Intrinsic or instrumental value? -- Motivation and enablement -- Courage -- Generosity -- Epistemic actions -- Doxastic voluntarism -- Investigation -- Doxastic stance -- Justification -- Epistemic virtues -- Courageous soldiers and evil demons -- First improvement -- Second improvement -- Courageous villains -- Summary -- 3. Internalizing virtues: the clients -- Love -- Avoiding elitism -- Financial planning -- Courage -- Justice -- Tax advice and functional food -- Epistemic injustice -- Temperance -- Efficiency -- Online investing -- Humility -- CEO hubris -- Long-Term Capital Management -- Talking about retirement -- The meaning of guarantee -- Minding your audience -- Summary -- 4. Case study I: primes and subprimes -- Costly and complex contracts -- Behavioural biases -- Epistemic injustice -- Love -- 5. Incorporating virtue: the banks -- Corporate entities -- Plural subjects and a puzzle -- Corporate internal decision structures -- Structures, functions, cultures and sanctions -- Back to the puzzle -- Matching virtues to functions -- Board roles -- Virtues of overconfidence -- Organizational support for virtue -- Structure -- Culture -- Sanctions -- Organizational remedies against vice -- Macro-level remedies -- Micro-level remedies -- Summary -- 6. Case study II: nerds and quants -- Split strikes and Ponzi schemes -- Uncovering the fraud -- Volatility and diversification -- Epistemic virtue -- 7. Communicating virtues: the raters -- Other-regarding epistemic virtues -- Generosity -- First difference from non-epistemic virtue -- Second difference from non-epistemic virtue -- Credit ratings -- Credit risk: asserting creditworthiness -- Monitoring: directing management -- Stamps of approval: directing investors -- Compromising epistemic virtue -- Love -- Justice -- Temperance -- Courage -- Generosity -- Testimony -- Outsourcing epistemic responsibility -- Summary -- 8. Case study III: scores and accounts -- Professional accountants -- Joint epistemic agents -- Codes of conduct -- Expectation gap -- Accounting options -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JBE 15-350

ISBN

• 9781107028913
• 1107028914

LCCN

• 2014026396
• 12016828

OCLC

887855783

Author

Bruin, Boudewijn de, 1974- author.

Title

Ethics and the global financial crisis : why incompetence is worse than greed / Boudewijn de Bruin.

Publisher

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Copyright Date

©2015

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Business, value creation, and society

Business, value creation, and society.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Connect to:

Cover image

Other Standard Identifier

12016828

Research Call Number

JBE 15-350