"This thought-provoking monograph connects the idea of civil economy in Italian economic thought to the work of Thomas Aquinas. Its main thesis is that there is an alternative spirit of capitalism, with Catholic origins, and which has been carried through to the modern day via the Neapolitan...

Economists and theologians usually inhabit different intellectual worlds. Economists investigate the workings of markets and tend to set ethical questions aside. Theologians, anxious to take up concerns raised by market outcomes, often dismiss economics and lose insights into the influence of...