The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens Yale University Press New Haven and London, 2016, 288 pages, ISBN: 9780300163803

The words ‘moral’ and ‘economy’ originated in the classical intellectual
world and in Aristotle’s social theory; besides the politics and ethics, economy was the
third domain of practical philosophy where excessive profit making and charging of
interest were not the moral practices. However, in the middle of the eighteenth century,
the ‘moral economy’ got separated from the morality, and turned out to be simply a
religious concept. Defining the moral economy in the 21st century on the basis of
goodness, fairness, and justice is something perplexing for the proponents of market
economies. But can we ignore the moral basis in our ‘ordinary business’ of life? The
book under review, The Moral Economy by Samuel Bowles raises several questions in
this regard and tries to show that our basic human goodness is more effective in
decision making than the financial incentives. The strength of this book lies in its using
different case studies and behavioral experiments with evidence-based arguments on
the workable economic and financial world of the 21st century. Islamic economics is
based on morality and ethics. Thus, the purpose behind the review of this path breaking
work is to understand its relevance to Islamic economics that has emerged as a new
paradigm in recent decades.