The claim that “crime doesn’t pay” was an early slogan of the FBI. But while the claim may be a truism in the long run, in the short-term criminal activity can produce an parable to the earnings of a middle-class worker. At least that’s the finding of a new paper published in the journal Criminology. Holly Nguyen of Pennsylvania State University and Thomas Loughran of the University of Maryland-College Park attempt to gauge how much money people earn through criminal...

The foreign aid movement has largely failed the global poor, promoting top-down solutions at the expense of bottom-up enterprises and institutions, as Acton’s widely acclaimed documentary, Poverty, Inc., and PovertyCure film series detail at length. Whether due to basic errors in economic thinking or a more subtle, subconscious apathy toward local enterprise, such efforts routinely lead to more disruption than development, hindering the very countries they hope to assist. It’s an ignorance and oversight that has painful implications for many...

Do you live vocationally in your day job, even if you aren’t making a career of it? God’s calling on your life is not a maintenance request, the task is not finite, nor is it particular. Answer God’s call will transform your entire life—starting now, right where you are. ...

As urbanization accelerates around the world, local municipalities and city planners are struggling to keep up with the pace. Sometimes and in some areas, it’s easier to work outside the government altogether. Such is the case for the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Lagos Nigeria, which has slowly developed a city of sorts over the past 30 plete with an independent power plant and privately managed security, infrastructure, and sanitation. “In Nigeria, the line between church and city is...

To be good citizens, faithful people must examine policies’ results, not just their intentions.One overly intrusive environmentalist policy alone has prevented the poor from accessing adequate housing and, ironically, reduced the diversity of the environment. If excluding the vulnerable from the economy is evil, as Pope Francis has written, then new approaches are needed, writesPhilip Booth,a distinguished British professor of finance in a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic. He begins by opening an earnest dialogue with the pontiff’s social...

In 1991 Minnesota passed the first law establishing charter schools in the state. Since then, a majority of states have some kind of charter school system. But what exactly is a charter school? And are they better for students? ...

Note: This is post #49 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. What would happen if we eliminated patents for industries with high R&D costs, such as the pharmaceutical industry? Eliminating patents in this case may result in less innovation and, specifically, fewer new drugs being created, explains economist Alex Tabarrok. In this video by Marginal Revolution University he considers some of the tradeoffs of patents and looks at alternative ways to reward research and development such as patent...

Commentators have long said that banning genetically modified food (GMOs) harms human flourishing. Thanks to a new study, that harm can now be quantified. A study published in late July studies the impact of delaying the approval of GMOs in five nations: Benin, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda. The researchers – who hail from the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, and the United States (surprisingly enough, from the University of California at Berkeley) – analyzed the effects of political decisions to...

The video game developer Blizzard Entertainment, best-known today for its massively popular World of Warcraft (2004), first released a lesser-known classic in 1998: StarCraft. The science fiction warfare and strategy game was the best-selling PC game of the year, and it sold nearly 10 million copies over the next decade. petitions drew crowds of over 100,000 people in South Korea, where the game was so popular that three separate television stations regularly broadcasted matches. Blizzard released a sequel, StarCraft 2:...

In this new episode of Radio Free Acton, producer Caroline Roberts talks with Joe Carter, senior editor for Acton and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Patrick Henry College, about Antifa, the Alt Right, and how Christians should respond to the messages of both groups. Following that, Bruce Edward Walker speaks with Gregory Wolfe about the art of Renee Radell. The artist’s work is the subject ofRenéeRadell: Web of Circumstance(Predmore Press, 2016, 220 pages, $80), a book presenting a career overview...