Putting Integrity Into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach

Abstract

The seemingly never-ending scandals in the world of finance, accompanied by their damaging effects on value and human welfare, make a strong case for an addition to the current paradigm of financial economics. We summarize here our new theory of integrity that reveals integrity as a purely positive phenomenon with no normative aspects whatsoever. Adding integrity as a positive phenomenon to the paradigm of financial economics provides actionable access (rather than mere explanation with no access) to the source of the behavior that has resulted in those damaging effects on value and human welfare, thereby significantly reducing that behavior. More generally we argue that this addition to the paradigm of financial economics will create significant increases in economic efficiency, productivity, and aggregate human welfare. Because integrity has generally been treated as a virtue (a normative phenomenon) the actual cause of the damaging effects of out-of-integrity behavior are hidden, resulting in assigning false causes to those effects. This keeps the actual source of these damaging effects invisible to us. As a result, in spite of all the attempts to police the false causes of these damaging effects, the out-of integrity actions that are the source of these effects continue to be repeated. This new model of integrity makes the actual source of the damage available for all to see, and therefore to act on. Integrity as we define it (or the lack thereof) on the part of individuals or organizations has enormous economic implications for value, productivity, and quality of life. Indeed, integrity is a factor of production as important as labor, capital, and technology. Without a clear, concise, and most importantly, an actionable definition of integrity, economics, finance and management are far less powerful than they can be.