Aaron Levine - Böcker

At once it must be recognized that religious law by its very nature regulates and restricts the conduct of its adherents. One of the major foci of The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics is therefore to describe the impact economic regulation in Jewish law has on the integration of Jews into the economic fabric of societies governed by different legal systems. Factors that impede integration, as well as those that facilitate it, are identified. More globally, a number of the papers in this volume discuss the positive contribution of Jewish business ethics to the morality of the marketplace, as well as Jewish legal perspectives on economic public policy. In the discipline of economics, advances in theory provide the grist for debate regarding the appropriate role for government. Accordingly, this volume presents papers dealing with economic theory in the Bible and Talmud, as well as comparative law studies that relate to economics. Also included are studies of the influence of religious economic law on the economic sphere of life in societies of the past.Finally, this work investigates how successfully Jews, as a people, have integrated into American economic life, and the related question of how economic forces have played a role in causing the American Jew to assimilate, shedding religious practice and commitment.

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics.This volume explores a variety of issues implicating morality for both individual commercial activity and economic public policy. Issues examined include price controls, the living wage, the lemons problem, short selling, and Ronald Coase's seminal theories on negative externalities. To provide an analytic framework for the study of these issues, the work first delineates the normative theories behind the concept of economic morality for welfare economics and Jewish law, and presents a case study illustrating the deontological nature of Jewish law. The book introduces what for many readers will be a new perspective on familiar economic issues. Despite the very different approaches of welfare economics and Jewish law in evaluating the worthiness of an economic action, the author reveals a remarkable symmetry between the two systems in their ultimate prescriptions for certain economic issues.

The Orthodox Forum, convened by Dr. Norman Lamm, President of Yeshiva University, meets each year to consider major issues of concern to the Jewish community. Forum participants from throughout the world, including academicians in both Jewish and secular fields, rabbis, rashei yeshivah, Jewish educators, and Jewish communal professionals, gather in conference as a think tank to discuss and critique each other's original papers, examining different aspects of a central theme. The purpose of the Forum is to create and disseminate a new and vibrant Torah literature addressing the critical issues facing Jewry today.The main idea upon which the essays in this book are built is that the power and success of business is ultimately based on one's beliefs about life's meaning. It is no exaggeration to suggest that corporate success is set in motion and encouraged by a set of core ethics values shared by managers, employees, and stockholders. This book reflects the unflinching belief that traditional Jewish sources provide useful and practical paradigms and solutions to many important issues facing the modern business manager. Jewish business ethics must begin by taking both business and Jewish ethics seriously.