The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits

http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html

According to Friedman, businessman who talk about “social responsibility of business in a free-enterprise system” are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. In his view, corporate executives shall exclusively strive after increasing the company’s profits. If businessmen don’t act like this, they consequently act in some way that is not in the interest of the employers. “For example, that he is to refrain from increasing the price of the product in order to contribute to the social objective of preventing inflation, even though a price in crease would be in the best interests of the corporation.”

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Economists Are Getting Religion

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_49/b3911107_mz057.htm

The article deals with this week’s topic: Economic Imperialism. The treatead field is religion: “…religion is simply to big for economics to ignore…”

In Lazear’s artcile Gary Becker was mentioned several times as one of the most important economists regarding the “expansion of the boundaries of economics into other social sciences.” Here Laurence R. Iannaccone is mentioned – who studied under Becker at Chicago – and who now heads a new academic group: the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics & Culture.

In the article you will find similar statements like those we read in Lazears’s report. For example, “the economics of religion is founded on the belief that people are just as rational in their choices about religion as they are about, say, buying a car.”

Moreover, the article also addresses the relationship between religions and economic growth. In this context, Kunar an economics professor at the University of Sothern California argues that “development in Muslim countries has been hindered historically by certain rules of the Koran.”