Around the year 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq, based on archaeological research, the earliest civilizations in the Middle East were founded. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians and the Israelites and other nations, later will appear on the map of history, being organized in small...

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...

The Prologue to this issue discusses how the flatness of economics leaves out aspects of reality that do not fit neatly into its formulations. I agree that much is left out, but I am not so sure methodology is to blame. Rather, the omission is caused by our restriction of economic methodology to...

Internet resources, extended media coverage and international organizations' reports recently witness the increasing interest of western banks in new models of finance, particularly Islamic finance and microfinance. This new trend is not only channeled through the frame of corporate social...

Research on the economic context of Jesus* teaching on wealth and exchange points to the need to take into account the nature and extent of market arrangements in first-century Roman Palestine. This context involves changing relations among reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange....

The costs of transacting the myriad individual contracts needed to operate a complex productive enterprise are prohibitive. The firm provided the solution, by substituting hierarchy and command for perpetual negotiations. The legal system played its part in the development of firms by...

What is the advantage of faith in faith-based poverty-to-work programs? My qualitative, field research sought to determine the key distinctions between faith-based and secular programs by comparing three faith-saturated programs with three secular programs: one run by a reorganized governmental...

Despite a values emphasis said to distinguish Catholic business schools from secular institutions, a focus on moral development through principles of Catholic social teaching (CST) resembles the prominent role that ethics education plays at business schools accredited by AACSB International....