Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.

1.2 A new momenttim

"One purpose of this book is to respond to this shift: to look beyond the more abstract and ideological discussions of the nature of socio-economic rights in order to engage empirically with how such rights have manifested in international practice". -- INTRODUCTION.

The Bible might seem like the last place one would look for information and guidance on economics, but in fact the Bible deals with all aspects of life. Richard Horsley's Covenant Economics explores economic issues in the Bible, offering pastors, students, and laity a clearer understanding of the Bible's clarion call for economic justice for all--an issue that is sure to resonate during today's trying economic times. Questions for discussion and suggestions for further reading are included in this volume--a work that will spark lively conversation.

This book is the first collection of the drafting records of the one of the world's two foremost human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of 1966. It makes an important contribution to understanding the origins and meaning of economic and social rights, which were drafted over almost two decades years between 1947 and 1966. There is increasing global interest in the stronger protection of economic, social, and cultural rights, which are vital to the survival, dignity, and prosperity of everyone. Since 2013, individuals have been able to complain to the United Nations about violations of their rights, and action can also often be taken through regional and national human rights procedures. In this context, many of the current debates surrounding economic and social rights can be best understood in the light of their drafting history. This book judiciously selects, and chronologically presents, the most important drafting documents or extracts thereof between 1947 and 1966. The book contains an extensive annotated table of documents, allowing researchers to track the progress of the key rights and issues in the drafting. It also includes an original analytical introductory essay, which summarises and analyses the main procedural and substantive developments during the drafting. The essay charts the many influences on the recognition of economic and social rights at a key moment in history: the aftermath of the Second World War, which demonstrated the need to eliminate the economic and social causes of threats to global peace and security. This book is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and students of international human rights law.

In Commonwealth and Covenant Marcia Pally argues that in order to address current socioeconomic problems, we need not more economic formulas but rather a better understanding of how the world is set up -- an ontology of how we and the world work. Without this, good proposals that arise lack political will and go unimplemented. Pally describes our basic setup as "separability-amid-situatedness" or "distinction-amid-relation." Though we are all unique individuals, we become our singular selves through our relations and responsibilities to the people and environments around us. Pally argues that our culture's overemphasis on "separability" -- individualism run amok -- results in greed, adversarial and deceitful political discourse and chicanery, resource grabbing, broken relationships, and anomie. Maintaining that separability and situatedness can and must be considered together in public policy, Pally draws on intellectual history, philosophy, and -- especially -- historic Christian and Jewish theologies of relationality to construct a new framework for addressing present economic and political ills.

American Christians today, says Michael Barram, have a signifi­cant blind spot when it comes to economic matters in the Bible. In this book Barram reads biblical texts related to matters of money, wealth, and poverty through a missional lens, showing how they function to transform our economic reasoning. Barram searches for insight into God’s purposes for economic justice by exploring what it might look like to think and act in life-giving ways in the face of contemporary economic orthodoxies. The Bible repeatedly tells us how to treat the poor and marginalized, Barram says, and faithful Christians cannot but reflect carefully and concretely on such concerns. Written in an accessible style, this biblically rooted study reflects years of research and teaching on social and economic justice in the Bible and will prove useful for lay readers, preachers, teachers, students, and scholars.