Category: Faith
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Faithful Economics in an Imperfect World
The Anslem House is a Christian study center at the University of Minnesota. This Easter season they curated a series of blog posts on the following theme:
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Why Good Policy Requires Responsible Communication and Consumption of Research
Over on the Shared Justice website, I (with Katie Thompson) wrote a piece on responsible communication and consumption of research. We focus this post on the recent dust-up with respect to research into the welfare effects of participation in payday lending. Here is an excerpt:
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Max Weber and the (so-called) Protestant Work Ethic
It is about time I wrote about this topic on this blog. The Freakonomics podcast ran an episode last week entitled, “Is the Protestant Work Ethic Real?” The majority of the episode focused on research by Gharad Bryan, James Choi, and Dean Karlan evaluating the effects of a faith-based development program implemented by International Care…
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Podcasting with the Accord Research Alliance
I while back I posted about a neat new podcast run by some of the individuals who make up the Accord Research Alliance. The Accord Research Alliance is a group of people who are interested in implementing monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning initiatives in their work with faith-based international development. One of their members, Nathan…
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The Effect of School Vouchers on Spiritual Practices
A new working paper, by Daniel Hungerman, Kevin Rinz, and Jay Frymark, entitled, “Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances“, was just released via the NBER working paper series. Although the paper still needs to be peer reviewed, I think it provides valuable insight. Here is the abstract (emphasis added):
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Measuring what Matters (a new podcast on evaluation in faith-based development)
Last week I was introduced to a new podcast organized by the Accord Research Alliance (a group of faith-based development organizations) focusing on the intersection of faith-based development and impact evaluation. This is much overdue service and one that I hope survives the test of time. The Soundcloud page for the podcast is here.
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Evaluating ‘Transformational Development’ – Forthcoming in F&E
I’m happy to report that a paper stemming from my fieldwork in Kenya is (finally) being published in the Faith & Economics journal. Although F&E is a relatively niche journal, it is my first peer-reviewed research publication in an academic journal and reports on work I performed before I even began my MS program. The paper…
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An Economist Takes on the Parable of the Good Samaritan
Who will help those in less-fortunate situations when everyone believes that someone else will do the job? This is the question that Ted Bergstrom addresses in a new paper published in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics entitled: “The Good Samaritan and Traffic on the Road to Jericho“.
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[Book Review] Slow Kingdom Coming
Over the past few weeks – in the break between semesters – I’ve been able to find time to read. I’ve read less than I wanted to (of course), but have thoroughly enjoyed each of the books I read. In this post, I will review one of these books, Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice,…
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Reflections on the Past Week
Like many people, I’ve spent the last week numb – and to be perfectly honest – shocked. I process best by writing and I’ve written a lot over the past week. Most of this writing won’t be shared (not on this blog anyway). I’ve thought a lot about what the role of this blog is…
Jeffrey R. Bloem 