Do financial markets need a moral framework?

How do you decide what is right and what is wrong? What is your moral code based on: is it religious teaching, or a set of moral principles which you use to help you decide on a particular course of action?

Michael Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University, has written a book on the subject, Justice, in which he explores these ideas.

One of his arguments is that financial markets need a moral framework.

It is an argument that the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, echoed in a recent speech when he said "Markets need what they cannot generate themselves: markets need morals."

The BBC's Robin Lustig asked him: if markets exist to enable people to buy and sell at prices that they are prepared to accept then where does morality come into it?

First broadcast 12 October 2009