Blog - Centre for Enterprise Markets and Ethics

December 8, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: A Guide to Rerum Novarum, Part Two: The Church, the family, the state and the use of riches

This is a repost of an article originally published on the Catholic Social Teaching blog of St Mary’s University We ended Part One of this guide to Rerum novarum with the encyclical’s reminder to the rich that they would have to answer to God if they were not generous with their riches. The focus of that...

December 1, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: Back to Budget Basics

Back to Budget Basics Providing Christian commentary on the recent budget is not especially easy. There was a measure to remove the two-child cap on Universal Credit payments that was welcomed by many Christians. But the rest of the budget was really a collection of bits and pieces with many deferred tax rises, on which...

November 27, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: A Guide to Rerum Novarum, Part One: The Political Context and the Right to Property

This is a repost of an article originally published on the Catholic Social Teaching blog of St Mary’s University (https://catholicsocialthought.org.uk/). Historical Context Upon his election, Pope Leo XIV said that he was inspired to take the name ‘Leo’ by Pope Leo XIII’s work on Catholic social teaching. The newly-elected pope especially mentioned Pope Leo XIII’s...

November 20, 2025 Blog

Philip Krinks: Ethics, Economics and the Environment

Environmental sustainability is a central challenge for humanity. In areas of the United Kingdom water has been rationed in two of the last four years, partly because we have not managed to build a major reservoir for over 30 years. Not only greenfield, but also brownfield land on which housing could be built to ease...

November 13, 2025 Blog

Neil Jordan: Welfare, Government Support and the Good

It has been reported that executives within the motor industry have expressed frustration at the Chancellor’s intention to end the provision of luxury cars through the Motability scheme, which assists those in receipt of disability benefits with funding to lease a new vehicle. Motability itself is a private company and accounts for about a fifth...

November 5, 2025 Blog

Philip Krinks: Working People

You may work, but are you a working person? This might just sound like an annoying exam question: probably one from the exams once sat by CEME’s philosophers and theologians, rather than by our economists. In fact it now appears to be crucial. It could determine your, and Britain’s, prosperity. Enter ‘Working People’ Back in...

October 27, 2025 Blog

Neil Jordan: The Council Tax Premium: Possible Indications

In March this year, I raised the question of whether the council tax premium on second homes constituted a solution to difficult problems – namely shortages of housing in some areas and straitened local authority finances – or was in effect a sumptuary law of sorts. The Moral Issue An important question was whether there...

October 15, 2025 Blog

Brian Griffiths: Margaret Thatcher – A Life & Legacy: Mrs Thatcher’s Economic Policy

Talk given at the Danube Institute’s Conference, Budapest, 2nd October 2025. Brian also gave an interview about related topics. Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister in May 1979 at a time when the UK economy was suffering from ‘the British disease’ and known as ‘the sick man of Europe’. We had just emerged from the ‘Winter of Discontent’, during...

September 22, 2025 Blog

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas and Christopher Wong Michaelson: Work as a Calling: Religious and Secular Approaches

How We Found Our Callings While all definitions of calling share in common the notion that work becomes meaningful within a person’s life, they differ on whether the source of the calling is internal, based on one’s own values, needs, and preferences, or external, based on either a calling from a higher power, a ‘transcendent summons,’ or...

August 11, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: God and Government

This is a repost of a consideration of religious principles in political life by CEME Fellow, Professor Philip Booth, first published on the Catholic Social Teaching blog of St Mary’s University The idea that government should be based on Christian principles is continually under attack – not least on several occasions in the assisted suicide debate. Not...

July 29, 2025 Blog

Conversation with Andrew Haldane

In this discussion with CEME Senior Research Fellow John Kroencke, Andrew Haldane discusses his view that economic growth is a failed lodestar for policy, presents the case for increasing opportunity for those at a disadvantage, and considers the problems with British public finance. This is the first entry in our Conversations with CEME Series which...