Economic morality and Jewish law

Aaron Levine compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics within which the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics.