Faith & Economics
NUMBER 59, Spring 2012
Articles
The Emergence of Fair Trade as a Development Channel
Robert I. Mochrie
Abstract: Since the late 1980’s, fair trade has emerged as a mechanism for supporting development initiatives in many countries. After reviewing economic arguments supporting fair trade, we draw upon arguments from Scholastic theology to argue that it should be understood as an economic mechanism for promoting the practice of justice rather than charity.
Key Words: fair trade; just price; economic development
Hypocrisy and Hypocrites: A Game-Theoretic Note
Bruce Wydick
Abstract: Hypocrisy is the feigning of beliefs or virtues that one does not truly possess. Hypocrisy among people claiming religious faith is often provided as a justification for non-religious people to eschew religion. The claim is that widespread hypocrisy among people claiming religious faith is evidence that such beliefs are either false or have no impact on behavior. This short paper provides a proof of precisely the opposite: the existence of genuine faith is a necessary condition for hypocrisy. It demonstrates that the existence of hypocrisy is evidence that genuine religious faith has produced salient differences between non-believers and genuine believers. This is illustrated in a game-theoretic model of market exchange when agent types are hidden. In the resulting Nash equilibrium, hypocrisy always lingers in the shadow of genuine faith when costs of religious profession are low.
The Nature of Biblical Economic Principle, and Its Critics
Clive Beed and Cara Beed
Abstract: Recent evangelical theology has come to the view that the key to legitimate application of normative biblical teaching to the present involves “principlizing.” Selected Christian economists have practiced methodology over the last twenty years, but, nowadays, its practice has virtually died out in economics. The Introduction explains what is meant by biblical economic principle, outlines it justification, and surveys theologians and economists who have applied the method to economic matters. Section 1 details how two sets of Christian economists, Hay (1989), and Tiemstra et al. (1990) employed the technique. The case is proposed in section 2 that most Christian economists nowadays do not use the method, for reasons suggested in section 3. If the above evangelical theology proposition is compelling, more debate is required to assess the nature and use of biblical economic principle.
JEL classification: A10, A12, A13, Z12
Key Words: biblical principle, Christian economists, theologians, methodology.
Correspondence
A Theologian’s Response to Lunn
Kent Van Till
Reply to Kent Van Till
John Lunn
Book Reviews
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
More than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty
by Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel
Reviewed by Roland Hoksbergen
Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element
by John D. Mueller
Reviewed by J. Daniel Hammond
Market Complicity and Christian Ethics
by Albino Barrera
Reviewed by John P. Tiemstra
Looking Beyond the Individualism and Homo Economicus of Neoclassical Economics: A Collection of Original Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Peter L. Danner, Our Friend and Colleague
by Edward J. O’Boyle
Reviewed by Daniel Finn
Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street
by Thomas Sedlacek
Reviewed by Roger D. Johnson
Left, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics
by Lisa Sharon Harper and David C. Innes
Reviewed by Eric Schansberg