“If you are a young person saying ‘I want to go into ministry because I want to change culture,’ how would delete the word ministry and replace it with business?” asks Greg Thornbury, president of The King’s College in New York City. Thornbury isn’t trying to discourage people from ing pastors and missionaries. Instead, he’s trying to reframe the misperception many young people have that full-time vocational ministry is the only or primary way for Christians to have an influence...

This week, we received the sad news that Professor Hans Rosling has passed away due to pancreatic cancer. A brilliant statistician and mesmerizing public speaker, Rosling was widely known for his dazzling data visualizations pelling lectures on health, poverty, population, religion, inequality, and economic growth. His lectures were heavily driven by data, and although his conclusions sometimes suffered from an underlying utilitarianism, Rosling’s ultimate contribution was to point us beyond the numbers and data points. Rosling had an exceptional gift...

The most recent issue of theJournal of Markets & Morality, vol. 19, no. 2, has been published online and print copies are in the mail. This issue features the publication of Acton’s 2015 Novak Award winner Catherine Pakaluk’s lecture, “Dependence on God and Man: Toward a Catholic Constitution of Liberty,” in addition to our regular slate of peer-reviewed articles. As a special feature, this issue contains two symposia of conference papers: The Evangelical Theological Society Theology of Work Symposium and...

Update: The full interview is now available online. — The situation in North Korea may seem hopeless. This closed-off nation sits more than 6,000 miles away from the United States and is hidden by a cloud of misinformation. Sometimes it’s hard to filter the news out of the nation—what’s real, what’s propaganda, and what’s entirely false? Despite this difficulty, one thing is certain: North Koreans are suffering. Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, has dedicated the last twenty...

Note: This is post #21 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. President Nixon had a problem—inflation was out of control. So in 1971 he attempted to implement a drastic solution: he declared price increases illegal. Because prices couldn’t increase, they began hitting a ceiling. With a price ceiling, buyers are unable to signal their increased demand by bidding prices up, and suppliers have no incentive to increase quantity supplied because they can’t raise the price. This video by...

Retired soccer legend David Beckham was denied knighthood in 2013after British authorities flagged him for “tax avoidance,” according to a new story in theTelegraph. Beckham had invested in Ingenious Media, pany that supported the British film industry – and also allowed investors to write off their losses.Officials at pany say its model providedwealthy people like Beckham the opportunity to reduce their tax liability while following existing tax law; the case is still being thrashed out in the courts. David Beckham....

Social mobility is the ability of an individual or family to improve (or lower) their economic status. The two main types of social mobility are intergenerational (i.e., a person is better off than their parents or grandparents) or intragenerational (i.e., e changes within a person or group’s lifetime).For years I’ve argued that social mobility—specifically getting people out of poverty—is infinitely more important than e inequality. But it’s easy for supporters of social mobility to forget that’s it’s a means, not...

On this edition of Radio Free Acton, we’re joined by Judge Joseph Scoville, former United States magistrate judge for the western district of Michigan, to review the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. We examine the qualifications and judicial philosophy of Judge Gorsuch, and address the question of whether or not the left is correct to accuse Republicans of “stealing” the seat from President Obama. Additionally, we start...

An invitation to American and Canadian college faculty: Acton is currently offering mini-grants for course development and academic projects in free market economics at colleges and universities. The purpose of these mini-grants is to promote free market economic scholarship on college campuses (in the U.S. and Canada). If you are a current U.S. or Canadian college or university faculty member or know any college faculty interested in promoting the free market on campus, you are encouraged to apply or pass...

Despite the predictable flurry of sugary clichés and hedonistic consumerism, Valentine’s Day is as good an opportunity as any to reflect on the nature of human love and consider how we might further it across society. For those of us interested in the study of economics, or, if you prefer,the study of human action, what drives such action — love or otherwise —is the starting point for everything. For the Christian economist, such questions get a bit plicated. Although love...