Now in its fifth year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and junior 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 sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute; the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization; the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture; the Kellogg Institute for International Studies; and the the Institute for the Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame.
Format: There will be two sessions each day for three days, each 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. 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. The application deadline is February 14, 2022.
Please direct any further questions to contact@credo-economists.org.
Kirk Doran is the Henkels Family Collegiate Chair and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a BA and an SM from Harvard University and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University, 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. 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.
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 Review of Economic Studies. 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 Markets, Culture and Ethics Research Centre at at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. Born in New York, raised in England and Austria, Msgr. Schlag has authored over 100 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.
