Challenges Facing Social Economists in the Twenty-First Century: A Catholic’s Perspective

Abstract

In his charge to the contributors to this special issue of the Review of Social Economy, special editor James Henderson stated that the idea for the general theme derived from Alfred Marshall's address in 1896 to the Cambridge Economic Club. The same can be said of this contribution but in ways that probably were not foreseen by Henderson. In brief, a fundamental premise of this essay is that economics has not been well served by infusing the discipline with the terse and powerful phrases of physical science because, whereas physical science studies physical objects, properly understood economics studies human beings in production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. That differ? ence introduces the first of three types of challenges facing social economists in the twenty-first century. The three types of challenges correspond to the three components of social economics as articulated by William R. Waters in his Presidential Address to the Association for Social Economics in