This will be our only issue of “On the Margin” in 2019, and I am happy to give you an update on the society.
CREDO continues to grow. We have nearly 600 members, and membership has already grew over 18 percent in 2018, and has already grown about 10 percent this year. We will be applying for membership in the ASSAs, so we will hopefully have our first academic sessions in 2021.
We co-sponsored our fourth mini-seminar on Catholic social thought for faculty and graduate students in economics and finance this past June. It was especially exciting as the seminar was in Israel! We had a fantastic group of participants, a combination of devoted faculty and graduate students from top programs. The seminar itself was great, but the highlights were certainly the pilgrimage sites: Mass in the Holy Sepulchre, visiting the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, seeing the ruins of the house of Peter in Caphernaum. Just an extraordinary experience that I would recommend to anyone. Even the economics of Israel is fascinating with the religious/ethnic divisions in the country and the different administrative zones.
CREDO also helped organize a Lumen Christi conference again this past March with a focus on finance and ethics. CREDO board member Maureen O’Hara moderated the public session, which included Cardinal Turkson (head of the Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development), Christopher Giancarlo (then Chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commision), John Studzinksi (billionaire financier and philanthropist), and CREDO advisory panelist Mary Hirschfeld. A follow up conference is being planned with USCCB and Vatican participation in Rome in 2020.
Kelly Davidson and Craig Gunderson again organized a Mass and breakfast at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in Atlanta, and they were instrumental in gathering contributors for this newsletter focusing on food supply. (We are grateful for anyone who volunteers to take initiative and organize or contribute to CREDO.)
There has again been a lot of individual accomplishments within CREDO as well. Richard Burkhauser finished up his time on the Council of Economic Advisors. Martijn Cremers was named dean of the Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame. Mary Hirschfeld’s book Aquinas and the Market: Toward a More Humane Economy has attracted a lot of attention in Catholic social thought circles. I’ve had people from the USCCB and people in Rome both discuss her book with me.
It would be impossible not to mention that it has been a very difficult year for the Church in terms of continuing sex and pedophilia-related scandals. As someone that has some contact with bishops at various levels, I can only say that it has been stunning. Indeed, it is a test of faith. The only thing I can do is keep praying, and be thankful that I only deal with economics.
Pope Francis continues to have a strong interest in economics, however. He has initiated a conference in Assisi called “The Economy of Francesco” which is a call for “young economists, entrepreneurs, and change-makers”. The conference is March 24-25, 2020 with a deadline at the end of September. It appears to be less academic in interest, but CREDO has been invited to contribute to a panel, which will include Michael McMahon of Oxford and me. Details are at https://francescoeconomy.org.
If you have a contribution, please send it to contact at credo-economists.org
