Adam Smith’s outlook still inspires and informs modern sensibilities and argumentation. It is of interest beyond Smith aficionados whether a particular line of modern thought “fits” Smith. One important such dispute involves recent “left Smithian” writers who argue that he was more...

The project called “The Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates” fills the September 2013 issue of this journal. In doing the project the investigators emailed the living laureates with a questionnaire asking them of their ideological character and outlook over time. The document...

In Catholic theology, sin is a rebellion against God and against our created nature. It is an alienation of the person from his own nature whose symptoms are rebellious passions and weakened reason. This alienation is not addressed by most economic analyses of choice, even analyses that address...

The knowledge (if any) afforded by Religion comes by the practice of faith, hope, and charity. It is direct, experiential knowledge of God. The knowledge (if any) afforded by Science comes by the method of ‘conjectures and refutations’ applied to our observations of Nature. Improved theory...

A sample of 299 U.S. economics professors responded to our 2010 survey. We collected information on the respondents’ membership in twelve professional economic associations. Five are general professional associations (American, Eastern, Southern, Western, and Econometric), and seven are...

The key assumption of economic anthropology—maximizing behavior by the individual (or Max U)—has been subject to criticism both from outside and within economics. This article suggests that the philosophical or theological approach known as “personalism” may be useful in generating an...

This article traces the evolution of Milton Friedman’s ideological views over the course of his adult life. It finds the evolution to be from a moderate liberalism to a definite classical liberalism and then, during the last 50 years of his life, to an increasingly robust libertarianism....

Thomas Aquinas can serve as a resource for conceptions of human happiness and practical reason that resist the flatness characteristic of Max U. While Aquinas shares with economists the notion that humans act in order to achieve desirable ends, and that their desire is infinite, he differs from...

This piece is a prologue to a symposium, cosponsored by the Acton Institute, that asks its contributors: Does professional economics need enrichment by religious or quasi-religious thinking? Many common criticisms of professional economics propose the incorporation of richer concepts and...

Mainstream economists are currently under fire because they did not foresee the financial meltdown of 2007. This article suggests that many of the shortcomings of neoclassical economics come from its overly narrow understanding of the human person. Economists could turn to the higher discipline...