10th Conference in Economics and Catholic Social Thought: Polarization, Social Cohesion, and the Economy

David Cloutier is Ordinary Professor of Theology/Ethics at the Catholic University of America, joining the faculty in 2016 after spending ten years at Mount St. Mary’s University (MD), where he held the Knott Professorship of Catholic Theology. He is the author of four books, including the award-winning The Vice of Luxury: Economic Excess in a Consumer Age (Georgetown University Press, 2015), and Walking God’s Earth: The Environment and Catholic Faith (Liturgical Press 2014). He is particularly interested in connecting Catholic moral theology to research about human behavior from the social sciences, and received a $40,000 grant from The Happiness and Well-Being Project at Saint Louis University to collaborate on publications on the ethics of virtue and human agency with psychologist Anthony Ahrens of American University. He teaches moral theology, with particular interests in economic ethics, sexual ethics, and the environment, and received the College Theology Society’s 2018 Monika Hellwig award for teaching excellence. Dr. Cloutier is active in traditional and web-based media, having been published in Commonweal, The Washington Post, U.S. Catholic, and other publications. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics in 2019. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in religion (theology & ethics) from Duke University. 

Andrew M. Yuengert is Blanche Seaver Chair of Social Science and Professor of Economics, Social Science Division, Pepperdine University. An economist whose research crosses the boundaries between economics, moral philosophy, and Catholic theology, he is the author of The Boundaries of Technique: Ordering Positive and Normative Concerns in Economic Research (2004) and Approximating Prudence: Aristotelian Practical Wisdom and Economic Models of Choice (2012).

Martin Schlag is the Holder of the Moss-endowed Chair at University of St. Thomas and the Director of the John A. Ryan Institute. 

Schlag’s research focuses on the tradition of Catholic social thought in political and economic questions. Specifically, he studies how the Christian faith over the centuries related to markets, trade and exchange, money and interest, and private property and social justice. The focus is on how to promote principled business leadership for the common good and to overcome poverty by including the poor into the market economy.

Schlag’s research is published in a series of books and chapters in edited books. Many of them are the fruit of conferences he has organized in various parts of the world. His experience as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome has given him a unique insight into social and human challenges worldwide.

Schlag is passionate about making his students think about the “big picture” and the deep meaning of truth, goodness and beauty in their work. Business is a noble vocation when it is part of an aspirational narrative made up of dreams, virtues and values that give business purpose and meaning. As a Catholic priest, he wishes to help students live a life worth living.

Kirk Doran is the Henkels Family Collegiate Chair and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton’s labor economics dissertation award.  Doran’s research focuses on issues in labor economics, innovation economics, and international migration, with a particular focus on human capital complementarities. His work has examined the implications of large migrations of top scientists on the productivity and knowledge generation of their peers. Recent work has focused on the role of externalities, collaboration, and geographic distance in knowledge production, the impact of top prizes on the intellectual content of their recipient’s work, and the impact of highly skilled immigrants on firms which randomly receive them. Professor Doran’s research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, Economica, Economics Letters, and Innovation Policy and the Economy, and has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Upjohn Institute, and the Kauffman Foundation.