Fall 2018 Issue of Faith & Economics Now Available

The Fall 2018 issue of Faith & Economics is now available to members. This issue includes research on returns to education, Rerum Novarum, a symposium on Globalization, and moral complicity in the marketplace.

Faith & Economics – Fall 2018

FAITH & ECONOMICS

NUMBER 72
Fall 2018

ARTICLES

Returns to Education in the United States: Differentials among Christian Affiliations by Gender
Sedefka Beck

Abstract: This study examines the returns to education for the three major Christian affiliations in the United States—mainline protestants, conservative protestants, and catholics—using data for non-Hispanic whites from the 2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The returns to education are examined at the mean with ordinary least squares and along the wage rate distribution using quantile regressions. At the mean women generally have higher returns to education than men do. However, along the wage rate distribution, different patterns of the returns to education are observed among religious and gender groups. Mainline protestant women have higher returns to education than their male counterparts at low wages, but similar returns to education at high wages. Conservative protestant women have fairly uniform returns to schooling throughout the wage distribution that are also higher than the returns to schooling for conservative protestant men across the wage distribution. In contrast, the rates of return to schooling for Catholic women and men are generally similar along the wage distribution, except at the highest two deciles where women have higher rates of return to schooling. In addition, older conservative protestant men have lower returns to education than their younger counterparts do.

Rerum Novarum and Economic Thought: Some Comments on Professor Waterman from an Italian Point of View
Giacomo Costa

SYMPOSIUM

Trade with Developing Countries in a Global Value Chain World
Judith M. Dean

Is There a Moral Case for Globalization?
Steven R. Weisman

VIEWPOINT

Against Market Complicity
John P. Tiemstra

Abstract: The doctrine of market complicity holds that entering into a trading relationship causes each party to take on some moral responsibility for the other parties’ actions. For example, consumers who buy goods made in sweatshops are guilty of abusing workers, and employers are guilty if their employees use their health insurance to terminate a pregnancy. I argue that this is not the case. The market nexus does not cause us to take on moral responsibility for decisions we are not empowered to make. Vendors should not discriminate against buyers with different religious or moral views, and employers should not try to constrain their employees’ personal moral choices. Consumer boycotts are unlikely to be effective unless they make political demands.

BOOK REVIEWS

Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis
Nicholas Eberstadt
Reviewed by Lance Wescher

Redeeming Capitalism
Kenneth Barnes
Reviewed by Luke Petach

Pope Francis and the Caring Society
Robert Whaples (editor)
Reviewed by Karla Borja