It is common amongst politicians and economists to suggest that we should tax bad things and subsidise good things. It is on these grounds that, for example, we have sugar taxes and cigarette taxes. The justification for taxing “bads” becomes stronger if the ill effects are felt more widely through society and not just by […]
Some of the toughest and most complex challenges faced by businesses and corporations in today’s world involve ethics and morality. This is in part why the study of business ethics has now become central in MBA and other programmes. But the very complexity of these challenges, in an increasingly pluralized as well as globalized world, […]
In the last few years, increasing numbers of people across the political spectrum and across the developed world have begun to recognize the effects of restrictive housing rules on high housing prices in many global cities. In these cities, the physical cost of producing an additional unit of housing is lower than the value at […]
CEME was delighted to co-host, in partnership with St Mary’s University and CCLA Investment Management, an in-person event on The Morality of Government Debt: insights from economics and Christian social thought. One economic consequence of the pandemic has been the accumulation of large amounts of public debt. This has huge ramifications and raises a wide […]
Terry Smith, chief executive of investment management company, Fundsmith, began his January 2022 letter to investors, ‘This is the twelfth annual letter to owners of the Fundsmith Equity Fund.’ Pretty routine stuff one might think. Except. Unilever was the second worse performing stock in the Fund. Smith did not hold back: “Unilever seems to be […]
60 per cent of business leaders and, indeed, 75 per cent of leaders in larger businesses, think profit is incompatible with a society in which people are happy. Incompatible. The figure for the general public is just 37 per cent. Similar percentages of business leaders think business should be taxed more and executives are paid […]
It’s all too easy for politicians and commentators to take a pop at businesses, casting them in the role of greedy capitalists bent on exploiting their workers to make a quick buck. Fortunately, the British public don’t seem to share that rather dismal view of the private sector. Indeed, new polling commissioned by the Centre […]
The meaning of Advent I must first make a confession. I love carol services. I love singing carols. I love the Christmas tree. I love Christmas decorations. I love the festivities of Christmas. They remind me of when I was very young singing carols from house to house in Fforestfach which was then a village. […]
Despite criticising the actions of big business being a favourite pastime of many a business minister, John Kroencke writes that wider opinion of big business is actually more favourable than we might expect. Like many I rely on Amazon. In fact, there is rarely a week where a package doesn’t arrive on my doorstep. While […]
Committed churchgoers – defined as those who attend weekly – have a considerably more positive view of business and the market economy than those who lead them and teach them. This is the result of polling conducted for the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics. Savanta ComRes polled six audiences between 10th May 2021 and […]
Our purpose is to bridge the interface of theology, economics and business in promoting an enterprise economy built on solid ethical foundations. CEME’s distinctive contribution comes from the promotion of the market economy from a Christian perspective within a framework of calling, integrity and ethical behaviour.
This book is a collection of eighteen separate but thematically connected papers which were given at an international academic conference in Belgium in May 2018. The organising principle is an enquiry as to whether the ‘will to serve’ must always be ‘crowded out in the real economic arena of hard competition’ (page vi). The authors […]
Link to Full Text: Saving for a Property-Owning Democracy – Andrei E. Rogobete About the Author: Andrei E. Rogobete is Associate Director with the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics. He is the author of several publications, including Ethics in Global Business: Building Moral Capitalism and The Challenges of Migration and The UK Savings […]
Most people today who pay any attention to the news will be familiar with key economic concepts – consumption, investment, public expenditure, output, exports, imports, unemployment, economic growth, the balance of payments, public borrowing, interest rates, inflation, the national debt. Yet the one measure we hear little about is saving. Saving has become the Cinderella […]
Full Text Link: Local and Personal: The Principles and Practice of Saving in Victorian England – Revd Dr Richard Turnbull About the Author: Richard Turnbull is the Director of CEME. He brings to the Centre a wide range of experience in business, the church and public life. He holds a degree in Economics and […]
Link to Full Text: Who Needs Barns? – Bishop Peter Selby About the Author: Peter Selby was the Bishop of Worcester and Bishop to HM Prisons until his retirement in 2007, and was President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards from 2008 to 2013. He is the author of Grace and Mortgage: […]
Link to Full Text: The Case for Normalised Interest Rates – Dr Peter Warburton About the Author: Peter Warburton has worked as an applied economist in the UK since 1975, starting out as a researcher at the London Business School. He gained his PhD from City University in 1987 and has worked as a […]
Jan Carlzon, the dynamic architect of the rescue of Scandinavian Air Services in the 80s, had a good deal to say about what it is to be a leader. We would do well to listen because he counters some of the common misconceptions about leadership. One of those things is that the leader should […]
“[i]t is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” (Quadragesimo anno, 79). In the current crisis, there is much talk of “policy reset”. Some of that talk seems strange. We […]
As we approach a second possible lockdown to deal with the coronavirus crisis – but this time with different local, regional and national characteristics – it reminds me of my experience of the first lockdown last March. Back then, the UK government advised the over-70s to self-isolate and Rachel and I did so in […]
The Royal Academy of Engineering predicts that algorithms or Artificial Intelligence, will become prevalent in “…most, if not all, aspects of decision-making” (April 2017). Algorithms benefit from a growing presence in key areas such as government, healthcare, education, financial industries, and of course, technology. Yet this is for good reason: they are incredibly efficient and […]
Steve Morris FRSA grew up in a family business. He argues that the model could provide some answers as we look at the future of capitalism. The experience of growing up in a family business shaped my life, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I learned so much about values from my parents; […]
As an economic system, unfettered capitalism in the post-recession era has come under considerable scrutiny. Reports of business scandals and misdealings, as well as serious social inequalities, are but a few of the most cited examples. In the face of these criticisms, proponents of capitalism have come to its defence. In “The Ethical Capitalist”, […]
In a recent interview with the BBC our Associate Director, Andrei Rogobete was invited to discuss the highly contested topic of socioeconomic inequality in the UK. The full interview can be found here – some of Andrei’s main arguments include: Inequality becomes a large-scale societal problem when those at the lower end of the income […]
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Crumbling Foundations is a stimulating and largely informative introduction to money and monetary systems. It includes a brief account of the history of money, an analysis some of the issues and problems of contemporary monetary systems, and some thoughts about how money might develop and diversify in the future. It also claims to be a […]
This book is a collection of previously published articles and one unpublished conference paper, with a new 46 page long introduction. It is therefore not a book that develops an argument skillfully and steadily, rather it hammers away at certain themes, sometimes repetitively. Streeck acknowledges this in his Note on the Text, where he […]
This is an excerpt from the The Mais Lecture: Restoring Trust in the Banking System at Cass Business School, May 24th 2017. For the full text, please click here. It is a great honour to be invited to deliver the Mais Lecture this year, the 38th occasion on which it has been given. It […]
“Who cares wins – why good business is better business” by David Jones is a welcome addition to the emerging cohort of literature on the impact of Social Media on 21st Century contemporary life. The book seeks to address one the most pressing questions of our time: how is the internet and more specifically, Social […]
On the 17th June 2015, Dr Christopher M. Hays, Professor of New Testament at the Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia held a talk on Economics in situations of humanitarian crisis: Forced Internal Displacement in Colombia. Christopher built upon his previous work, as well as drawing upon his experience in Colombia. His speech brought great insight and expertise on the […]