Prof. Vossenkuhl will address how globalization has revealed that market failures are often ethical failures too. This is at least obvious in the present financial crisis. Credit Default Swops (CDS) and Collateral Debt Obligations (CDO) in general were used by the most powerful global players in banking to ruin firms and communal administrations and even to attack national economies at the expenses of the tax payers in many countries. The most basic rules of fairness and international justice were ignored. The global markets are in need of collectively binding ethical obligations in order to avoid another crisis of this kind.

Prof. Zamagni will explain the reasons why in the last century economics could do its job without bothering itself with ethics, and will consider why globalization has changed dramatically the situation. The main reason is that freedom of choice does not necessarily imply consensus. Finally, Prof. Zamagni will speak in favour of the ethics of virtue as a solid background to cope with present day problems.

Moderator: Ignazio Musu, President, VIU TEN Center

Wilhelm Vossenkuhl is full professor at Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich. He is founder and speaker of the Munich Research Center in Ethics (MKE). He has published on Kant and Wittgenstein, on the philosophy of language and action, on ethics and the theory of rationality. He is teaching two courses during the Spring 2010 semester of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of VIU: Ethical Problems in Globalization: Governance, Multiculturalism and Paternalistic Intervention and Theories of Justice from Aristotle to Rawls.

Stefano Zamagni is full professor of Economics at the University of Bologna and Vice Director of the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. He has widely published on civil economy, economic theory and history of economic thought. His recent publications include: Crisi economica, crisi antropologica. l'uomo al centro del lavoro e dell'impresa, 2010; Economia e etica, 2009; L'economia del bene comune, 2007; Avarizia, 2009; The cooperative enterprise, 2010.