Genesis of norms in economic science

Project management: Prof. Dr. Volker Caspari, Prof. Dr. Rainer Klump and Prof. Dr. Bertram Schefold

The research network focused on three sub-projects that dealt with different economic and business ethics issues.

Firstly, the historicity of (economic) concepts of efficiency and justice was demonstrated. In the course of the history of economic theory, there has been a shift in emphasis away from questions of justice and towards considerations of efficiency. The aim was to trace this process and to reveal the reasons behind it. This sub-project resulted in Matthias Lennig’s dissertation (“From Justice to Efficiency: On a shift in the Normative Focus of Economics”, 2012).

The second sub-project dealt with norms and value judgments in the socio-economic debate at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century. The focus here is on the value judgment controversy in economics, which was ignited by the normative content of the concept of productivity. This debate about the possibility of a normative-ethical economics is seen as an expression of an intellectual crisis in German economics towards the end of the 19th century. From this sub-project, Johannes Glaeser’s dissertation “Der Werturteilsstreit in der Nationalökonomie. Max Weber, Werner Sombart and the ideals of social policy”, which was published in 2014 in the book series “Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Ökonomik” (edited by Birger P. Priddat and Heinz Rieter).

Thirdly, the normative and economic-ethical foundations of ordoliberalism, a German variant of neoliberalism, were discussed. In a first step, the ethical content and normative components of ordoliberalism were uncovered. In a second step, a (sharper) definition of content and terminology within neoliberalism was sought.

The most important publications of the research project include: Klump, Rainer/Wörsdörfer, Manuel (2011): On the Affiliation of Phenomenology and Ordoliberalism: Links between Edmund Husserl, Rudolf and Walter Eucken; European Journal of the History of Economic Thought Vol. 18(4), 551-578, Caspari, Volker/Schefold, Bertram (2011): Where is economic science heading? A methodological dispute in economics Frankfurt, Campus Verlag and Klump, Rainer/Wörsdörfer, Manuel (2010): An Ordoliberal Interpretation of Adam Smith; The Ordo Yearbook of Economic and Social OrderVol.61, 29-51. The most important events in the project were: Michel Foucault and Ordoliberalism (Conference of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’, Frankfurt am Main/Germany, June 10-11, 2010; Klump/Wörsdörfer in cooperation with Thomas Biebricher), Normen in der VWL – Normung des volkswirtschaftlichen Curriculums (Conference of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’, Frankfurt am Main/Germany, February 18-19, 2010) and Völkerrecht und Weltwirtschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Internationalisierung der Ökonomie aus völkerrechts- und wirtschafts(theorie-)geschichtlicher Perspektive (Conference of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’, Frankfurt am Main/Germany, September 3-4, 2009 in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History (Miloš Vec).