Economics and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer

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                            Jun 10toJun 13
                            
2018

You can download the poster here.

Now in its third year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought, starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts.

This seminar is cosponsored by the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

Format: There will be two sessions each day, featuring a different instructor. Each instructor will open with a lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar-style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. In the final sessions, we will discuss how the material can be applied to each student’s particular area of interest.

Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. A limited number of travel stipends are available on a need basis. All participants will be provided with accommodations and meals.

Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students and faculty in economics, finance and related fields.

Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application form, including:

An updated CV.
A brief statement of research interest no longer than 750 words.
One academic writing sample.

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar.

Please direct any further questions to contact@credo-economists.org.

Martijn Cremers is the Martin J. Gillen Dean and the Bernard J. Hank Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. He served as interim dean at Mendoza from July 2018 to June 2019. Prior to joining Notre Dame in 2012, Cremers was a faculty member at the Yale School of Management from 2002 to 2012. His research and teaching areas are investment management, corporate finance, corporate governance, corporate law, business ethics and Catholic social thought. His research focuses on empirical issues in investments and corporate governance, and has been published in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Stanford Law Review, and Northwestern Law Review, among others. Cremers is also a member of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture's Faculty Advisory Committee.

Mary Hirschfeld is Associate Professor of Economics and Theology at Villanova University. Dr. Hirschfeld holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. She works at the boundary between both disciplines, specifically by developing an approach to economics that is grounded in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, with applications to questions of consumption economics, economic justice, the common good, the nature of practical reason, and economic methodology. She is the author of Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (Harvard, 2018) and her writings on economics have been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Economic Education, and History of Political Economy.

Joseph Kaboski is the David F. and Erin M. Seng Foundation Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. Kaboski's research focuses on growth, development, and international economics. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Frisch Medal for the best paper in the journal Econometrica and has published scholarly articles in many other journals, including the American Economic Review and The Journal of Economic Theory. He is the president of CREDO, a past consultant to Catholic Relief Services, and is currently a Consultant to the USCCB, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

Msgr. Martin Schlag holds the Alan W. Moss endowed chair for Catholic Social Thought of the John A. Ryan Institute in the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), where he is full professor with dual appointment in the department of Catholic Studies and the Opus College of Business. He is also director of the Program for Church Management at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. Born in New York, raised in England and Austria, Msgr. Schlag has authored over 80 publications, among them: (together with Domènec Melé) Humanism in Economics and Business: Perspectives of the Catholic Social Tradition, The Handbook of Catholic Social Teaching: A Guide for Christians in the World Today, and The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope’s Message on the Economy.