Anthony Annett is an economist, with a keen interest in Catholic social teaching and in the intersection of ethics and economics more broadly. He currently works as a Climate Change and Sustainable Development Advisor at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. A CREDO member, this year he published a book titled Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy. Here we share an interview with him, curated by CREDO’s Bill Hauk. Any comments or questions for Anthony, post them below. We hope you enjoy it!
Bill Hauk: Your book is called Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy. What led you to write this book?
Anthony Annett: It really goes back to the global financial crisis of 2008-09. I was working as an economist at the IMF at the time. Yet while I saw the crisis as a crisis of ethics, driven by greed and a cult of excess, most of my fellow economists looked at it through a technocratic prism – as a technical problem in need of technical solutions. I began to wonder if the whole discipline of economists hadn’t been corrupted by flawed values, especially since economics arose as a branch of moral philosophy (something I certainly was never taught!). Anyway, I looked for alternatives and I found the answer I was looking for in the Catholic tradition. Yet while this tradition offered a more realistic vision of human nature and a healthier foundation on which to structure the economy, it remained relatively unknown, even among Catholics. This is why I wrote Cathonomics. I wanted to appeal both to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Indeed, one of my claims is that the principles of Catholic social teaching can stand on their own – they do not require belief in the claims of the Catholic faith.
BH: Chapter 3 of the book sets out a contrast between Catholic Social Teaching and the “Dominant Economic Paradigm”. Where do you feel that the dominant economic paradigm is most in error with respect to what is called for by CST?
AA: I think in what motivates the person and what is seen as the good of the person. In mainstream economics, we are taught – following Adam Smith – that people are motivated by self-interest, and that everyone acting in their own self-interest leads to enhanced societal wellbeing. But we know from modern science – economic games, evolutionary biology, psychology, even neuroscience – that people are also cooperative and altruistic. In this sense, Catholic social teaching – which points to solidarity, reciprocity, and gratuitousness – is more realistic. Similarly, we are taught in economics that people maximize their (subjective material) preferences. This implies that people derive satisfaction, without limit, from goods and services that they obtain from the market. And nobody’s preferences can be questioned – there is no such thing as any objective good. Catholic social teaching, on the other hand, points to integral human development – the good of the whole person and all people. This is a more encompassing, Aristotelian, vision of the human good. And again, it is more in tune with human nature.
BH: Do you have thoughts on how existing economic models might be reworked or reimagined to capture human behavior more fully in light of solidarity and reciprocity/gratuitousness? Can you recommend the work of any economists who you think are making progress in this area?
AA: This is a difficult question to answer, because neoclassical economics is so different from Catholic social teaching, including anthropologically. In my view, we need to completely get away from the assumptions of utility and profit maximization – or indeed, off any form of maximization. In terms of economists doing things differently, Pope Francis himself commended the work of Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Raworth. I would also recommend Jeffrey Sachs, who has spent decades thinking practically about what the universal destination of goods means in an incredibly wealthy global economy. And the many economists involved in the “beyond GDP” movement, who are trying to work out better ways of envisioning wellbeing.
BH: In the other direction, is there anything that the Church (especially those members in the hierarchy responsible for articulating CST) can learn from Economics?
AA: I thinks economics can inform about what a market economy can and cannot do – there is sometimes some muddled thinking about this in Catholic circles. In particular, it’s worth acknowledging that a market economy is capable of producing great wealth, which is important. It’s just not very good at distributing this wealth justly, or acting sustainably. But we should be under no illusions that a market economy is powerful, and that if we want to eliminate poverty, economic growth is usually a necessary condition (while not necessarily a sufficient condition…)
BH: You mention in the preface that the election of Pope Francis changed your life. Some quarters of the Church have argued that his papacy has marked a discontinuity in CST. What would you say to those who claim that his teaching is entirely new?
AA: One of the themes of Cathonomics is that there is a direct continuity in Catholic social teaching from Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to Pope Francis in 2020. For sure, different popes were reacting to different circumstances and had different emphases. Nevertheless, it is possible to derive a clear set of principles that link the encyclicals across time. Pope Francis is certainly a clear and prophetic advocate for Catholic social teaching. And while his manner of speaking might be different from some of his predecessors, his teaching is in harmony with them. He talks all the time about such principles as the common good, the universal destination of goods, the preferential option for the poor, solidarity, and subsidiarity – these are the traditional principles of Catholic social teaching.
BH: You talk a lot about the urgency of international policy coordination in the fight against climate change in your book. Do you feel optimistic or pessimistic in this area?
AA: I would say a bit of both. I feel optimistic for two reasons. First, on the moral side, I’m encouraged by the bottom-up pressure being driven by young people. Second, on the technical side, I’m encouraged by the remarkable progress over the past decade in wind, solar, and battery storage technology – renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy. Now for the pessimism: the scale of the challenge is so overwhelming – nothing less than a complete restructuring of the global energy system in a matter of decades – that I worry about whether we can get this done. I see the main impediment as political, with strong forces and vested interests working against the energy transition. Which is why I think the example of Pope Francis is so important – he makes the all-important moral case, and people respond to moral reasoning.
BH: What has the reception of your book been like among the Catholic hierarchy and other members of the institutional church? What has it been like among your more secular colleagues from Economics?
AA: I’m not sure if it has had much reception from the institutional church. I was honored to get endorsements from Cardinal Michael Czerny – who is now the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development – and Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo – who until recently was Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences. But I honestly haven’t had much feedback from the hierarchy. Regarding secular economics colleagues, I would say the main response is curious. It’s a tradition they are not familiar with, but I think the principles can nonetheless prove appealing. I certainly haven’t seen any major criticism from within mainstream economics.
BH: What advice would you give to Catholic Economists who have “conventional” economic training, but also want to bring their Catholic faith and principles to their work?
AA: I would say read the encyclicals – from Rerum Novarum all the way through to Fratelli Tutti. They really are rich documents, real treasures of wisdom. I would also recommend engaging with the Italian civil economy tradition – thinkers like Stefano Zamagni, Luigino Bruni, and Leonardo Becchetti. This parallel economics tradition is much more in line with Catholic social teaching that the dominant Anglo-American tradition in economics, which is predicated so much on self-interest, insatiable appetites, and competition over cooperation.
BH: Do you have any recommendations for a classically trained economist who wishes to learn more about work such as the Italian civil economy tradition and how it might enrich current economics research in light of CST?
AA: Yes, I would read Stefano Zamagni, Luigino Bruni, and Leonardo Becchetti. These are all well-published in English, and their papers are fairly easy to locate. One short book I found particularly readable and useful was Bruni’s “The Wound and the Blessing.” Bruni argues that the Smithian tradition, with its emphasis on self-interest and impersonal exchange, in effect throws the baby out with the bathwater – in the sense that we lose the gains of a truly relational approach to economic life.
BH: Any closing thoughts about the book you want to share with us?
AA: I wanted Cathonomics to be practical as well as theoretical. Much of the book is devoted to practical policy prescriptions. I essentially argue that these policy prescriptions overlap to a considerable extent with postwar Christian/ social democracy, which went into abeyance during the neoliberal era. Of course, what we need today is sustainable development, which is really economic prosperity combined with the economic rights of social democracy and the protection of nature. Catholic social teaching offers a moral grounding for this new approach to economics.
