The field of economics has a physics problem. Or, more specifically, a playing-dress-up-as-a-natural-science problem, says Nick Romeo, a longtime writer for The New Yorker magazine and a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley.

Less than a cousin to physics, Romeo argues, economics is closer to philosophy. That’s what he discovered during his deep dive into the field, interviewing scholars across the globe, for his 2024 book The Alternative. Sure, there’s a lot of math involved in economics, but economists’ models and measurements of an economy’s health are based on moral ideas. “When you push hard enough on a lot of economic questions, especially ones having to do with distribution of resources, what you really get to is a philosophical discussion about fairness or justice, or what we owe to one another, or what we owe to the future,” Romeo says.

To University of Cambridge economist Christopher Marquis, who has been working in the field for 25 years, a more ethically minded approach to economics still seems to go against the grain not only in training, but in scholarship.

Romeo and Marquis both published books last year questioning certain assumptions in economics – especially the premise that a healthy economy is defined by the success of corporations and not by the well-being of a society. The two authors will meet twice this week in Austin to talk through their findings. They’ll speak for a SXSW panel Tuesday, and then Wednesday for a free talk on corporate accountability at UT-Austin’s business school.

Marquis’ The Profiteers examines how companies offset the costs of their production onto society: rather than pay for more sustainable packaging or less carbon-emitting manufacturing, the world pays for pollution as governments handle waste collection and people sickened by pollution pay for their own medical care. Companies pay low wages, while taxpayers pay for social programs that keep low-wage workers living well enough to continue working for those companies. Marquis put it simply on the cover with the subtitle: “How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs.”

An inadvertent companion to Marquis’ book, Romeo’s The Alternative begins with a similar examination of externalized business costs. Then, chapter by chapter, it looks at programs and business ventures that challenge the status quo. In Austria, a job guarantee program replaces unemployment benefits with tailor-made positions in the public sector. In Spain, the world’s largest co-op allows business successes to be shared by all employees. In the Netherlands, researchers calculate new prices for goods (called “true prices”) which account for the cost to offset harms caused in production and transportation.

Although these ethically minded programs exist worldwide, Marquis points out that the moral ideas underpinning them are still not part of mainstream, GDP- and shareholder-focused economic thinking.

“Up until this year In the U.S., I would say there was an increasing support for issues related to sustainability and inclusion,” says Marquis, an American who has lived in China and now Britain. “Schools were focusing on it much more, I think students were more and more interested in it. I don’t think it had cracked the mainstream of the schools certainly, but I do think there was a really positive trend. I’m really very worried about this really drastic pullback that so many institutions have had since the election.”

Romeo says recognizing the moral and cultural dimensions of economics doesn’t mean “anything goes” or that the discipline is incapable of answering questions with crunched numbers. “There is a body of expertise that has accumulated. If you want to understand the mechanics of an economy, it’s valuable to consult with economists,” Romeo says. “My point – and the point of the economists I spoke with who share this perspective – is just that there’s a larger set of normative, moral, philosophical, and political questions about: What is the economy for? What defines a good job? What do we owe to the natural world and one another? And these are questions on which economists don’t have special insight. In some ways, some economists have been disabled by their training.”

Building a More Just Economy: Holding Corporations Accountable

Tuesday 11, 10am, Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon A

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