Respect: Empirical Labour Economics and Distributive Justice

Empirical economists study outcomes, policies, and mechanisms of interest without ever referencing any particular account of what constitutes a just society. I argue that completely ignoring distributive justice is untenable and has implications for work in empirical economics. I make the argument in three steps. 1) Empirical economists typically proceed as if the Welfare Theorems hold as a rough approximation and, so, efficiency implications of policies are separable from the notion of justice being pursued. I argue that results from empirical labour economics over the last 20 years imply that efficiency and justice are not separable and that acting as if they are is not tenable. We implicitly endorse accounts of justice in choosing what we study, how we study it, and in even our efficiency targeted policy recommendations. 2) To achieve transparency, we need to be explicit about justice concerns. I argue we can do so without sacrificing neutrality if we focus on an element of justice that is common across different specific accounts of justice, and that providing the bases of respect to all is such an element. 3) I examine the implications of a respect principle perspective for existing and potential directions for research on human capital.