“It is odd to call someone so famous an ‘underrated thinker’ but indeed Calvin is,” says economist Tyler Cowen. One of the reasons Calvin is so underrated is that he is so often misunderstood. Most people’s perception of Calvin is not based on his work but on the most dour members of the group we now call Calvinists (which includes me, though I’m not crazy about that label). Calvin was one of the best minds of his day. From an...

President and Co-Founder of the Acton Institute, Rev. Robert Sirico, was recently interviewed on EWTNby news anchor Raymond Arroyo to discuss a recent controversial article published by La CiviltàCattolica. The article, approved by the Vatican, received much criticism because it targeted “conservative evangelical and Catholic collaboration around social issues.” Sirico parses the issues revolving around the article, stating how the article was “not substantive and did not exhibit any kind of real understanding of evangelicalism or of conservative, traditional Catholicism.”...

In its “Houses of Worship” column today, the Wall Street Journal examined how the Acton Institute continues to work for economic liberty, even though that project looks “unfashionable” these days. Writer Mene Ukueberuwa interviewed Acton co-founder and President Rev. Robert A. Sirico, and Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton in Rome. The writer noted that opinion polls show declining support for free markets among Christians but said that Acton was continuing its work, without polemics: Far from the Christian capitalist...

This is the fourth part in a series on how to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Read the Introduction and follow the entire series here. In the previous installment, we considered feudalism as a class system of mutual responsibilities centered on land. Land was the basis of wealth during the medieval period. But by the 12th century, land was slowly being replaced by trade as the main generator of wealth in Europe. That basic shift and the subsequent...

Over the past week Americans have been debating the removal of Confederate statues from our public spaces. The discussion was prompted by the white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that was supposedly in response to the plan to take down the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. But if the rally was about a statue, why were the protestors shouting about Jews? “Once they started marching, they didn’t talk about Robert E. Lee being a brilliant military tactician,” says...

“If a product is seen only as the opportunity for work, it is certain that the anxieties of protectionists are well founded.” –Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms Drawing inspiration from a 1847 essay by the inimitable Frédéric Bastiat, economist Donald Boudreauxtackles a popular argument from today’s trade protectionists: namely, “that protectionism is justified if enough consumers or voters are willing to pay higher prices in order to help workers.” The problem, of course, is that such a perspective debases the value...

As the UK sets out its negotiating policies for Brexit this week and next, it is no secret that European nations remain deeply divided over the role of the European Union. But what role does religion play in how nations see the EU, the Single Market, and the promise of an“ever-closer union”administered from Brussels? That underexplored question is the heart ofThePolitical Theology of European Integration by Mark Royce, which is the subject of a new review atReligion & Liberty Transatlantic....

Over the last two decades, global poverty has plummeted and the world’s poorest people have steadily climbed out of the shadow of death. Yet many Christians cannot distinguish between dire poverty and e inequality, falsely believe both are worsening, and oppose the very policies that have lifted the world’s poor out of malnutrition. “Why do we underestimate success?” asks Philip Booth in a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic. “Why do we accept fake news about these issues?” Booth– a...

As children in the U.S. return to school, their European contemporaries have or soon will join them. However, they do so in a context that recognizes fewer of the traditional rights that society has accorded parents over the education of their children, especially whether they are taught to uphold or disdain their family’s moral and religious views. Grégor Puppinck, Ph.D., the director of theEuropean Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), addressed the rights that parents rightfully exercise over their children’s...

Note: This is post #45 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. petitive markets, the market price—with the help of the Invisible Hand—balances production across firms so that total industry costs are minimized. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, economist Alex Tabarrok explains petitive markets also connect different industries. By balancing production, the Invisible Hand of the market ensures that the total value of production is maximized across different industries. (If you find the pace of the videos...