The Price of Our Values

The Economic Limits of Moral Life

Augustin Landier, David Thesmar

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English

University of Chicago Press
16 August 2025

Ethics & moral philosophy; Economic theory & philosophy; Development economics

The economic case for self-interest at the outer limits of being morally good.

Modern life is an exercise in discomfort. In the face of endless injustice, how much selfishness is permissible? How do we square suffering elsewhere with our hope to thrive at home? How does one strive for the greater good while guarding one's personal interests? The Price of Our Values argues that the answers to these questions are economic: by weighing our sense of the personal costs associated with the outer limits of our moral beliefs.

These tradeoffs—the want to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the points at which people abandon goodness due to its costs—are somewhat unsettling. But as economists Augustin Landier and David Thesmar show, they are highly predictable, even justified. Our values guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions.

The Price of Our Values is an economic reckoning with the universal unease of contemporary moral life. Wielding insights from the philosophical founders of the field, Landier and Thesmar provide frameworks for thinking about the place of values—justice, freedom, beauty— in the decisions of modern life. They do so in terms that seek to be consistent with both our good intentions and their limits.

By: Augustin Landier, David Thesmar
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 399g
ISBN: 9780226827087
ISBN 10: 0226827089
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 16 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Chapter 1: Making Morals and Economics Meet Chapter 2: Altruism Chapter 3: Freedom Chapter 4: Markets and Communities Chapter 5: Justice Chapter 6: Local and Global Chapter 7: Beauty Chapter 8: Companies Chapter 9: Money Afterword Notes Index

Augustin Landier is professor of finance at HEC Paris. He has previously taught at the Toulouse School of Economics, New York University, and the University of Chicago and served as a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. In 2014, he was named “France’s Best Young Economist” by Le Monde. David Thesmar is the Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics and professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has previously served as a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. In 2007, he was named “France’s Best Young Economist” by Le Monde. With Augustin Landier, he writes a regular column for the French daily newspaper Les Echos.

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

“The Price of Our Values is a hugely interesting and important book which draws from a wide range of disciplines beyond economics—including philosophy, sociology, and psychology. The authors highlight the deep flaws inherent in consequentialism and utilitarianism that are fundamental to most neoclassical economics, and they offer ideas as to how and why a broader sense of morality must become fundamental to economics analysis.” -- Rebecca M. Henderson | Harvard University “Economists like to separate economic choices from moral ones, but ordinary, everyday people do not. The Price of Our Values makes a compelling theoretical and empirical case for why the economists’ position is untenable in the modern age.” -- Luigi Zingales | University of Chicago and cohost of Capitalisn’t “Landier and Thesmar provide a clear approach on integrating economic and moral arguments into a unified framework. There is much to learn from both their analysis and clever examples.” -- Andrei Shleifer | coauthor of ""A Crisis of Beliefs: Investor Psychology and Financial Fragility""