The Price of Our Values: The Economic Limits of Moral Life

By David Thesmar (University of Chicago Press, 2025). Two economists examine the interplay between our desire to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the point at which people abandon goodness due to its costs. Aided by the results of two surveys, they find that the answers to modern moral dilemmas are economic, and often highly predictable. Our values may guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions.