Economics As Religion

Nelson, CEI senior fellow in environmental studies, continues the discussion begun in his 1991 book, “Modern Economic Theology.”

He begins by examining the values of the American Progressive movement at the end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th; then he examines theological messages in Samulson’s, discusses the “gods of Chicago” (Knight, Friedman, and Stigler), and looks at religion and the “new institutional economics.” He explores the idea that “a new appreciation of the economic significance of religious beliefs, may…point the way to the future of economics in the twenty-first century” and develops the view that economists have had a “special religious task to find a satisfactory moral resolution to `the market paradox'”from his introduction. This study is written for economists, political scientists, and philosophers, but it is accessible to serious general readers as well.