FAITH & ECONOMICS

NUMBER 68,  Fall 2016

 

 

THE GREAT ENRICHMENT AND ECONOMIC, ETHICAL, AND RHETORICAL CHANGE: A SYMPOSIUM ON BOURGEOIS EQUALITY

Making the Bourgeois Deal
Edd Noell

What About the Final Act?
Robert Whaples

Dining with Deirdre
P. J. Hill

A Social Justice Perspective on Bourgeois Equality
Nancy Ruth Fox

Equality, Rhetoric, and the Big Questions
Paul Oslington

A Combustible Combination: McCloskey on Ideas, Institutions, and Economic Performance through Time
Peter Boettke and Rosolino Candela

Not Institutions, But Ethics and Religion: A Reply to Whaples, Hill, Fox, Oslington, and Boettke and Candela
Deirdre Nancen McCloskey

ARTICLES

Municipal Spending and Religious Preferences
Jannett Highfill and Kevin M. O’Brien

Abstract: This paper investigates the question of whether religious affiliation is related to municipal spending, revenue, taxes, property taxes, debt, employment, and spending on several specific municipal services: education, roads, police, health, and welfare. It is found that the proportion of religious adherents was negatively associated with property taxes and spending on education and welfare. When divided into religious groups, an increase in the proportion of Protestants was negatively associated with property taxes and education and welfare spending but positively associated with debt. The proportion of Catholics was positively associated with taxes and spending on roads. The proportion of Orthodox Christians was positively associated with education and police spending. When the Protestant group was subdivided, the proportion of evangelicals was negatively associated with property taxes, spending on education, roads, and welfare but positively associated with debt. The proportion of black Protestants was negatively associated with health spending, while the proportion of mainline Protestants was positively associated with welfare spending. Generally, the results for the proportion of Protestants as a whole were similar to the results for evangelicals when Protestants were divided into groups.
JEL Codes: H7, N32

Game Theory in Christian Perspective: The Cooper Project?
Geoffrey Brennan and Christopher White

A Response to Brennan and White
Ben Cooper

BOOK REVIEWS 

Markets Without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests
Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski
Reviewed by Kevin J. Brown

Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science
Dani Rodrik
Reviewed by Jeffrey Bloem

Economics and Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation
Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White, eds.
Reviewed by James Halteman

Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life
Edward Peter Stringham
Reviewed by Jared Pincin

Busted Sanctions: Explaining Why Economic Sanctions Fail
Bryan R. Early
Reviewed by J. David Richardson

For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good
Samuel Gregg
Reviewed by Jamin Hübner