Archbishop Rowan Williams in his final remarks emphasized that markets are populated by people: Ethical markets come from ethical people. I have stressed how incentives created by the rules that underpin markets are created by people through their policymakers (at least in democracies): Values-driven rule-making is more likely to build an ethical economy. That does not leave economists off the hook.

Our job as economists is to help people and policymakers understand what incentives are created by these market rules, and the growth and distributional consequences of those policies. Our job is to talk about how alternative policies grow and distribute the pie.

Is there a trade-off between growth and equity? At extremes, the answer is yes—countries with terrifically mal-distributed pies (Haiti) tend to be dangerous places, either full of crime or on the verge of revolt, so growth stops, indeed the pie shrinks. At the other end too, though, promoting equity can hurt growth. In pre-Thatcher Britain (famous for the ‘Laffer curve’ analysis), very high tax rates and social regulation designed to promote equity stifled innovation and golden geese flocked to other pastures: The pie grows more slowly, and even if better distributed, many people tend to be unhappy. The halcyon equitably distributed and rapidly growth pie is unknown, but the Nordic countries tend to enjoy both favorable growth and equity based on natural resources and more homogeneous populations.

Like Goldilocks, is there a ‘just right’ where growth and distribution both are maximized? Two things are clear: Nationalities appear to differ on their preferences for growth and equity; and the policy pendulum and market outcomes swings from emphasizing growth to emphasizing equity.

In an earlier post, I noted the icons of Americana: Horatio Alger, Marlboro Man, Statue of Liberty. How much should our policies be based on these icons of personal striving and individual ruggedness? For my part, I think that economic policy cannot be based on the icon but rather on the reality. In recent years, the pendulum swung too far toward policies based on the icons, with growth high but distribution worsening. Building a more ethical economy now requires keeping the eye on growth, while putting a greater focus on equity. The economist’s job is to help craft and communicate what those policies should be and how they would work.

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SCOTT GUNN: We have a problem with trust. That was a powerful theme in the closing remarks of Rowan Williams. He said, “Trust is not just about belief, but about having confidence that you are not indifferent to my interest.”
We must demonstrate a clear interest in the welfare of others in order to earn their trust. Speaking of the financial crisis, Williams said, “The deficit of trust and the deficit of relationship go together.” 

How do we begin to learn to trust others, or to earn the trust of others? We need to refresh our concept of self. We must see that “self” includes neighbor and stranger. My self-interest must include the welfare of my neighbor and even of strangers.

For people of faith this should not be difficult. Williams said, "Faith carries with it a vision of the social self." That is, in seeing people made in God’s image we should see in them the image of a God who is eternally relational. 

Much of this year’s Trinity Institute has focused on bridging gaps, especially the gulf between the work of economists and of ethicists. Perhaps economists, with their rationalist bent, are skeptical of the perceived subjectivity of ethicists and theologians. Perhaps theologians are skeptical of economists, with their perceived willingness to dismiss humane concerns on behalf of reductionist views of society.

A persistent theme of speakers, panel discussions, and of questions from participants was, “How can Christians influence the public sphere?” Perhaps it is about trust. As a priest, I need to learn to trust those who are concerned with finance. And financial folks must learn to trust my moral voice. Correlatively, we must each begin to act in ways that we earn mutual trust. While not straightforward by any means, there is at least the beginning of a path toward an ethical economy – or, as I might put it, the kingdom of God.

I look forward to the conversation. 

CATHERINE MANN: Williams masterfully wrapped up the conference with four riffs: economics, education, self, and trust. I’d like to comment on the interplay of education and economics.

Individual decisions matter for the economy and social outcomes that we observe. Policies influence the environment in which we make decisions. We, at least in the United States, vote for representatives who negotiate and legislate the policy environment to which we, as individuals and as businesses, react. The circle is complete, at least here. (In many other countries, individuals have no say on the economic (or other) rules of the game.) So, we have a particular responsibility to think about what going on here in the U.S. because we affect what many others do.

How are we discharging our responsibilities on education? When I left Washington to teach at Brandeis it was partly because I saw a real need to reach out to young people before they moved into decision-making roles in business or politics. This reaching out, to demonstrate to young people the broader implications of their decisions, is important for the future direction of our (and the global) economies. The education process can attune people to the social implications of choices.

The church must play a vital role in this education process. It must concretely bring the word of God into the specifics of the economic sphere. Socially appreciative individuals can change the terms of economic engagement for the benefit of the social good.

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SCOTT GUNN: The plenary speakers just finished an excellent discussion with questions from the nave at Trinity, from partner sites via email, and even Skyped questions. There were too many threads to tie them together here. A couple of topics stood out .

What do we owe future generations? That question and related concerns took up much of the discussion. Kathryn Tanner reminded us that we need to move past “short-termism” and self-centered thinking and provide a compelling answer to the question, “Why should I care about the future, since I won't be there?” Or as Partha Dasgupta phrased the common question, “Why should we do something for posterity? What has it done for us?”

Rowan Williams added that the New Testament, with its sense of ours as the last generation, is not the end, but an impending future that is unimaginably joyful. Then he added, Paul’s assertion is that “the future does not excuse our conduct in the present.”

This might seem academic, but of course it is not. Some Christians claim we do not need to worry about the environmental degradation or climate change because Jesus will fix it all when he comes in glory. Others simply can’t be bothered to worry about more than their own quarterly profits, let alone the well being of future generations. So what are we to do?

Tanner, arguing along the same lines that I did in an earlier post on this blog, suggested that we must first
encourage people who are members of faith communities to behave faithfully.

This all touches on some of the key interests of the conference. How do we motivate people to look beyond their own narrow interests to see the welfare of others as important? How should we measure “value” beyond looking at stock indices and bank statements? How should Christians use their own gifs of money, skill, and time for the welfare of the world? And perhaps most important, how do Christians advocate for the common good in the public sphere?

CATHERINE MANN: The panel discussion was wide-ranging. My blogging colleague encapsulates the discussion by asking: How do we motivate people to look beyond their own narrow interests to see the welfare of others as important? How do Christians advocate for the common good in the public sphere?

Rephrasing this in my language, when ‘we’ as individuals do not value certain activities, ‘we’ as aggregated into how the market responds do not account for undesirable outcomes that range from environmental degradation to labor-exploitation of children. Why do ‘we’ not value certain activities? It could be that we ‘don’t care’. It is difficult o make people care about their neighbor if they are not want to do so. Another alternative is, ‘We don’t know’. In this case, the economist says, ‘Provide information’ and then the newly informed person will act as desired—Fair Trade produce, Sweat-shop Free apparel, Goodweave labor for rugs—all represent such a strategy.

But a third economist says, ‘Sorry, but only price matters’. Unfortunately, indeed this is generally the case. When presented with an imported jacket at a cheaper price vs. a similar U.S. produced jacket at a higher price, the US consumer will almost always buy the cheaper jacket, even as they decry the loss of apparel jobs to imports.

Individual purchasing power rules over a broader good. We are a nation of individuals seeking individual betterment – it is in our heritage (Horatio Alger, westward pioneers, Marlboro Man) – and, it is particularly difficult to change.

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Scott Gunn:  Sir Partha Dasgupta's talk suggests that when it comes to economics and value, we haven't been thinking broadly enough. In particular, Dasgupta wants us to recognize the value of "nature." If we do not account for natural wealth, we will not have an accurate accounting of the wealth of nations, he says. In particular, we have "under-priced" nature, which I understand to mean that the price of many of our products and services does not reflect the true cost.

This theme continued in the panel discussion following the talk. Rowan Williams appreciated the idea that education is a kind of savings, adding that we must learn to understand that the welfare of the next generation is involved with our own well-being. If, Williams said, we do not see the welfare of future generations as a part of our own goodness, than we are implicitly saying the human experiment has failed; it isn't worth carrying on.

Two sound bites will stick with me. Williams said, "I am tempted to describe faith as a non-degradable resource," and Dasgupta said, "It is a scandal that education is regarded as a consumption good."

Where is real value to be found? What happens when we look beyond GDP to the well-being of families? As we look at inflation of goods, what about deflation in the value of relationships? Ought our priority to be efficiency of markets or quality of life? Ethicists and Christians have much to add to this conversation. And economists can use their expertise to explore the consequences of assigning value in new ways.

Answering a question from me in her last post, Catherine Mann almost passed the buck (pun intended), suggesting that economists are off the hook since they don't set policy. In Dasgupta's talk, he raises five essential questions to be used in evaluating economies – the work of economists, I might add – ending with "What policies should be pursued there?" As moral agents, individual economists do not get a pass. I am eager to read Catherine's response to all this. 

CATHERINE MANN: Paying attention to the future and valuing it (whether national resources, the intellectual development of our children, or our own health ) is one of the themes in Sir Dasgupta’s comments from this morning. Yet I was somewhat surprised by the discussion because it did not acknowledge our effort (as economists who measure economic activity and performance ) to go beyond the market-based measure of economic well-being (GDP). Economists well know the limitation of GDP—in my Masters class at Brandeis with students from around the world, we spend a full class period on both why we need to and how we should go about measuring both the level and rate of change over time of well-being. Some of these students (from environmentally ravaged countries, or those with desperate child poverty) see more clearly than we do the consequences of undervaluing the future. Here are various augmented measures: http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/indicators.html

But, do policymakers act upon these broader measures of economic well-being? Does the analysis change the debate? The debacle of Copenhagen suggests that politics outweighs economic analysis. As economists we can quantify the costs of pollution control; we can propose strategies, such as cap-and-trade, that will put a value on carbon emissions. But, the redistributional consequences of those new markets (which we also can measure) led to the round rejection of that approach, and even measurement itself was excised from the agreement. So, ignorance is bliss?

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CATHERINE MANN: Economics and the marketplace are often cast as the villain—the cause of poverty, environmental destruction, inequality, exploitation. Dr. Kathryn Tanner starts out on this theme. However, she ultimately arrives at my counter to this claim—it is not the market, but the policies that underpin the incentive structure and rules of marketplace behavior. Any given market with different rules ends up with either a good or a bad distribution of income, wealth, and resources. 

Economic policies are not impersonal, pre-ordained, or immutable, but rather come out of the system of social values of the participants in the marketplace combined with political systems that either allow (or don’t) the voicing and implementation of those values. It’s a sort of ‘you get out what you vote in’. If venality and greed inform the economic policies, those will be reflected in the tenor of market competition and exchange, and the outcome probably will involve the exploitation of some and wealth for others. If economic policies, the incentive structures and regulations of the market, are aligned more toward redistribution of gains, social equality, and environmental sustainability, it is more likely (albeit not guaranteed) that the resulting economic situation will reflect those goals.

No one is so transparent as to promote policies designed around venality and greed. So, why is it so hard, apparently, to promote policies designed to achieve redistribution of gains, social equality, and environmental sustainability? First, not everyone agrees on metrics of redistribution, equality, and sustainability. How much redistribution is enough? Marx had a point of view on this, but he’s not the only one. Second, individuals may not understand (and therefore vote, if they are able to do so) for representatives who will promote policies in their (as opposed to his or her own) interest. Disinformation in some political circles (and bodily threats in others) can play an active role too.

A third question is whether economic systems with different rules (some more egalitarian than others) can survive—or is the ‘race to the bottom’ necessarily the outcome? (I’ve got opinions, but Scott may have some reflections on this!) 

How do I pull this back to the other pole of this conference–theology and religion? Economic policy does reflect values. What role does religion play in changing those values, and just as important, ensuring that economic ‘man’ acts according to the values espoused by himself as religious ‘man’?

SCOTT GUNN: I have been a fan of Professor Kathryn Tanner ever since my time at Yale, when I was fortunate to enroll in several of her classes. She has a knack for getting us to examine previously unexamined ideas, and that is always a gift. In her talk today, she reminded us that capitalism is not inevitable; it is a choice. And that choice has no embedded moral value, but, as Professor Mann asserts, is reflects the moral values of its participants. Adam Smith, the hero of those who trumpet the goodness of market efficiencies, even recognized that pure capitalism would not work in a society with many inequalities.

In today's global economy, there is a grown inequality between rich and poor. No market will function completely rationally, Tanner says, so there must necessarily be at least some regulation and some goods or services that are placed outside the conventional marketplace. And yet, for whatever reason, in American society, many of us cannot see that it is in our best interest to care for the most vulnerable people. Tanner says, sounding to my ears very much like Smith, "The flourishing of the whole depends on the flourishing of all its parts, and when the welfare of the whole declines, the capacity of any of the parts to benefit is thereby diminished." That statement ought to resonate strongly with both ardent capitalists and committed Christians.

If the plight of the poor is not enough motivation, can we not look at significant market failures to see that unregulated capitalism does not serve the interests of our society well?

My question for my blogging colleague is this: are economists prepared to listen to the wisdom of ethicists and theologians? Can we move past the idea that we are talking about two different realms and acknowledge that we are speaking about the same realm with two vocabularies, two perspectives? If theologians sometimes advocate for unrealistic ideals, can economists acknowledge the inevitable moral dimension to their policies and behaviors?

CATHERINE MANN: Scott, that is an excellent question. Let me try to take that up here.

Two of the best known phrases to describe economists are “If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion” (George Bernard Shaw), and from Harry S. Truman, “Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, on the one hand, on the other”.

What do policy economists do? Given our understanding of how individuals, firms, and countries interact, we analyze how interventions into the marketplace (charter schools, trade tariffs, financial regulations, intellectual property protections, interest rates, transportation spending) will affect these different activities and groups. Since there is not a single answer to such analyses, we are alleged to not only have two hands, but sometimes three, and to never ‘reach a conclusion’.

In this menu of possible outcomes that inevitably result from these analyses, it is absolutely true that the values of an economist affects how s/he looks at the world and the policy suggestions s/he promotes. We all acknowledge this. For example, virtually all economists will say that trade liberalization will make more workers better off, but some will be worse off. Only some economists will argue that this inequality in outcomes should be rectified through complementary redistributive policies.

At the end of the day, though, who makes the choice about which policy to implement? Believe me, it is not the economist! So, whose moral compass is really directing policy?

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SCOTT GUNN: Before I was ordained, I worked as a director of information technology in several companies. At one of those companies, I discovered that the entire company was sharing a single license of a piece of software. Rather than having purchased one copy for each employee as the law and the software license required, they were “saving money” by engaging in an illegal practice.

When I brought this to my supervisor’s attention, he responded that this was a matter of “business ethics” and that someone in corporate headquarters would have to make a calculation about whether or not to remedy the situation. In other words, economics was governing ethics.

Fortunately, I was able to prevail – by pointing out how embarrassing it would be for a company whose “product” was intellectual property to be caught out in this scheme.

I’ve thought about that incident many times over the past few years. Too often, our society privileges narrow economic interests over wider ethical issues (or even the economic interests of the whole of society).

Rowan Williams dealt with exactly these kinds of collisions in his address this morning. In a theme common with much of his teaching and writing, he suggested that we must move past a focus on individualism toward a sense of mutual dependence. Likewise, we must stop thinking of theology (or religious ethics) and economics as separate realms. To think of economics apart from theology leads to inevitable problems.

The solution, Williams says, is to keep our focus on what it means to be human. “Theology does not solve specific economic questions (any more than it solves specific scientific ones); but what it offers is a robust definition of what human well-being looks like and what the rationale is for human life well-lived in common.”

Gathering up economics and ethics together in service of this goal, we will emphasize and seek to realize, “the idea that what makes humanity human is completely independent of anyone’s judgments of failure or success, profit or loss. It is sheer gift – sheer love, in Christian terms.”

Williams is, of course, fighting an uphill battle. Even in parish churches, it’s common to hear someone chime in – in the midst of a discussion on church growth or financial issues – “we have to run the church like a business.” But as Williams notes, a reader of the Gospels should know that Jesus, especially through his teaching in parables, turns over conventional ideas about money and business. Rather than running the church like a business, we should be seeking to run businesses like a church – a place where there is a relentless focus on the common good, on the welfare of all, and where the big picture wins over the small view. Our world got itself into its present predicament (unimaginable wealth on one street and starvation on another) by a failure to grasp that the only thing that really matters to any of us is our humanity, and that humanity in this life is only made real when all of God’s people have life and have it abundantly.

I hope the divorce of ethics and economics will be healed soon. And I would hope that faithful Christians might begin to consider their work in light of the well-being of all people, not just short-term profits. In the end, there is no such thing for Christians as “business ethics”. We have only the Gospel, the real measure of success. That measure hinges not on the thickness of one’s wallet but on the wideness of one’s embrace.

Catherine Mann: From a definitional standpoint, theology is about one’s relationship to the boundless love of God whereas economics is about individuals making choices faced with limited resources. Couldn’t seem to be further apart: Boundless love, limited resources. 

An alternative strategy for discussing the question uses derivatives (of those definitions, not Wall St. financial instruments): What about religion and the marketplace? Religions and the market are both systems that define rules to which individuals respond. Because religion’s rules and teachings help to build and guide the practice of one’s relationships to God, those values should be reflected in one’s exchanges in the market.

What defines the rules of the market? Adam Smith wrote of the marketplace as a set of atomistic agents anonymously reaching decisions about exchange. With equal power, choices about allocation by the individual must be mutually beneficial, and would therefore achieve the best allocation for society. The reality of the market today, of course, is pervasive and systematic departures from this equal power assumption--inequalities of resources across countries and individuals, imbalances in attitudes toward having in the present vs saving for the future, and myriad other examples--which leave us in the current state of the national and global economies.

Given this starting point, economic policy represents new rules, which if agreed upon and implemented, could guide the market closer to a better temporal and inter-temporal distribution of resources. However, economic policies are formulated and implemented by individuals, and there is nothing to say they have the same values.

My blogging colleague calls for “a relentless focus on the common good, on the welfare of all, and where the big picture wins over the small view”. Unfortunately, his are not a universally held guide for individual economic behavior. So, the question is not just about how economic policy should reflect values, but what role does religion play in changing those values? 

SCOTT GUNN: To answer your question, Catherine, I will not be so bold as to claim that religion, or Christianity in particular, should shape public policy for all people, but only for adherents to religions. What I will claim is that Christians should see themselves as part of a whole (both as whole individuals and as members of a common oikos, or household). If you follow this, it makes no sense for Christians to profess one set of ideals on Sunday morning and work for a very different set of ideals on Monday morning. We are people who are faithful "Seven whole days, not one in seven" to use George Herbert's words. Jesus said we can serve only one master, and for Christians that master must be Jesus Christ, with his radical claims of God's love for the whole world especially for those at the margins of society. To claim that we are loyal to market efficiencies is, for Christians, to turn away from God.

If I were an investment banker rather than a priest, my status as a member of Christ's body, the Church, would be no different. As an investment banker who is a Christian, I would be compelled to act in a just manner, behaving with honesty and seeking good for all people, because they are made in God's image. One role of the Church therefore must be to encourage its own members to follow its own tenets. If this took hold even a little, Wall Street would start to look a little more like God's kingdom and a little less like an evil empire. Another role of the Church is to speak for the voiceless and to shine the light of truth into places where society might not like us to look. There may be further roles, but I think those two should keep us busy for a while.

SCOTT GUNN: This evening’s worship effectively combined the ancient and the modern, weaving together traditions from across the world and through many cultures. Centuries-old chants were used right along side contemporary music, with sturdy hymns thrown in. Incense was matched with copious percussion. It was glorious.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev’d Rowan Williams, presided at the service. The Archbishop of Burundi, the Most Rev’d Bernard Ntahoturi, was the preacher. Taking as his text the Gospel reading from Matthew, Ntahoturi preached eloquently on the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 24:14-30).

The Parable of the Talents was a fitting choice for the Trinity Institute, with its theme of Building an Ethical Economy”.

Ntahoturi began by setting out the notion that Jesus is teaching us not only about money (for non-Bible scholars, a talents is a gazillion dollars in today’s currency), but about all our Resources, gifts, and abilities. And we all them. As Ntahoturi said, “No one is untalented in the kingdom of God.”

We are called, Ntahoturi said, to use our gifts for the common good. We will be judged by our results, as we seek to use our gifts for those things that build up the dignity of humanity. We must reject using our gifts for mere consumption. In Burundi, for example, people die regularly from preventable diseases only because they must drink unclean water. What if those of us in the developing world use our resource to provide clean water?

Ntahoturi was critical of wealthy nations, with societies based on competition and consumption. “You either consume or you are consumed!”

But it is into this very world that the Church of Christ is sent “to proclaim a message of transformation." We should be investing in relationships. And our investment is service, transforming the world in love. We must recognize the image of God in others and then seek to make a home for the divine presence in the world. “No one should be excluded, but everyone has a place in the household of God.” We must seek to make the Good News values those of our culture. This journey will be long, and let us walk together.

I wish Ntahoturi could get a nationwide audience, perhaps as a supplement to the State of the Union address coming up in a few minutes. You see, his message is one that Americans especially need to hear. Most often, our culture teaches us that whatever we have is ours
to use as we please, and we merely throw a few crumbs to others, perhaps to make ourselves feel a bit better. Ntahoturi’s message that “Someone else’s physical needs are my spiritual obligation” is not how we Americans usually think. But I suspect it mirrors a Christlike view
of the world. The Gospel consistently teaches us to share what we have for the good of all, and yet we fail to do this.

As a preacher, I was interested in Ntahoturi’s expansion of the parable beyond money to encompass all our gifts, especially at a conference focused on economics and faith. This is fitting though, because we all have gifts which can be used in the service of others for the good of the world.

As the Institute unfolds, I will be interested to hear how other speakers consider “economy”, whether they construe it in broad terms (from the Greek word oikos, meaning household) or in more narrow terms focused on money. I am also taken with a focus on our responsibility to others overtaking our own rights and privileges.

These are messages that we all need to hear – a broad focus on the many gifts God has bestowed on us, alongside our responsibility to use these gifts well. Keeping our skills, passions, ideas, and money to ourselves is contrary to God’s hope for us and for the world. And I for one am a little worried about fulfilling my call as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Based on the Gospel reading tonight, all of us in wealthy nations should be a little worried about being cast into outer darkness.

CATHERINE MANN: Two important addresses were delivered last night—that by Bishop Ntahoturi and that by President Barack Obama. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear either one in real time because I was giving a lecture and Q&A at Northeastern University’s Open Classroom Policy Series. This series, sponsored by the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, invites the community into the classroom. Northeastern is an urban campus, and the community surrounding it includes both the richest and the poorest parts of Boston. My session was on the role that the global economy has played in the US recession.

Each of the three of us, using our own perspective, and to our small to very large audiences addressed some common themes: How are countries and individuals in them inter-related and what are their individual and mutual responsibilities? Bishop Ntahoturi called out individuals in rich nations for their competition and consumerism while individuals in poor nations cannot access clean water or simple pharmaceuticals. I noted, contrary to most of my audience’s priors, that the global economy overall had buoyed up the US during this recession.

The President’s speech focused on politicians and policymakers and the crucial role they play in crafting the ‘rules of the game’ to which people respond with economic decisions. Archbishop Ntahoturi told how microfinance loans to women of the Mother’s Union empowered them to make choices for a better future. To allow such micro-loans is a policy choice, which a country’s leaders can either promote or deny.

More generally, how do politicians and policy-makers line-up with Bishop Ntahoturi’s call to transform the world we live in to honor the image of God that is in all of us?

The economic rules of the game can either help align individual interests with the objectives of broader social justice – whether within a community such as that around Northeastern University, within the United States or Burundi, or between nations—or those rules can favor the accumulation of individual wealth and power to the detriment of broader social justice.

To whose calling do the policymakers respond?

SCOTT GUNN: I am delighted to be blogging the Trinity Institute. For many months, I have looked forward to hearing this lineup of speakers on a topic that is vital to the salvation – wholeness, health, redemption – of our world. The intersection of faith & money is something that hits us at all levels, as a world, as a Church, as a nation, and as individuals. We need to get this right, and we don’t seem to be doing a very good job.

I am rector of Christ Church in Lincoln, RI. There I serve a parish which mirrors the economic diversity of the US. We have extremely wealthy people, and there are people who barely scrape by each week. Some people drive to church in luxury cars, while others hitch rides, take the bus, or walk. Faith and money greet each other every day in parish life. We all make choices about how we spend our money and on what we do to earn money.

On the flip side, many people think about our faith in terms of money (“Jesus paid the price for my sins” or “I owe God because I have done something wrong”). These are not messages that people hear from the pulpit at Christ Church, but these views are nevertheless pervasive in our money-driven culture. I can’t help but wonder how things would be different if we began to think about economics in terms of our faith, instead of using money as the lens through which we view God.

In addition to serving as a parish priest, I write regularly on a blog called Seven whole days On my blog I write about things I am passionate about: fresh articulations of our ancient faith in this modern world, the well-being of the Anglican Communion, and our common political life. Believing that we Christians often take ourselves too seriously, I also try to inject humor into the conversation when I can.

I’ll be writing about the Institute’s plenary talks. My hope is that we’ll have a good conversation both between Catherine Mann and me as we blog, and with you our readers. Please do leave your comments!

CATHERINE MANN: Currently I teach international economics at Brandeis University. I look forward to discussions on how faith and fortunes, and ethics and economics intersect. Based on my 20 year’s experience in the Washington policy scene (Federal Reserve Board, World Bank, President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Peterson Institute for International Economics) as well as economic-policy field work in more than a dozen industrial and emerging markets, I hope to add a practitioner’s perspective to the discussion on how policy can help to build an ethical economy, and the myriad challenges of moving from policy concept to implementation to better economic outcomes.

It is perhaps fitting that this conference begins the same evening as President Obama delivers his first State of the Union Address. (Luckily, the two don’t overlap—so no competition for attention!) The challenge of building an ethical global economy that is sustainable for the future starts at home. But, this point about ‘starting at home’ is true not just for us in the United States – of course our policies have a huge impact on us and on the world’s peoples because we are a very large and rich economy. It is also true that an ethical global economy starts at home for a country such as Haiti, whose economic devastation was nearly complete before the physical disaster of the earthquake completed the job.

What is perhaps of greatest interest to me, and why I moved from Washington to Brandeis, is the intersection of policies that focus on achieving economic success and social justice at home and achieving these objectives abroad. I am fortunate at Brandeis to teach in the International Business School, where the student body is more than 60% foreign national, and from 125 countries. I am constantly challenged by the real situations in countries as personified by my students. I hope to bring some of their perspectives into my discussions.