In this article, Tom Donaldson examines the prospect of the ethical advantage of nations, and in particular, of a set of advantages that extend far beyond the simple dimension of trust so often discussed. He considers, further, how such a range of ethical features would be structured, and what the implications of those features would be. The article reached three conclusions: 1) morality may create economic advantages for nations in ways that extend beyond the notion of an idealised market; 2) in order for ethics to drive economic advantage, ethical concepts must rise to the status of intrinsic value; and 3) if claims for national ethical success factors are true, then nations should attend to the issue of moral education.
This article forms part of issue 25 of the IDEES magazine, “The wealth of nations”, published in print format between January and March 2005. The PDF article is available to download in Catalan below.
