Ethical foundations for a market economy
The Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics (CEME) helps people in business, policy and public life think seriously about markets and enterprise from an ethical perspective rooted in the Christian tradition. We believe that the most pressing questions in economic and public life today are not purely technical matters of economics or politics. They require the kind of moral and cultural thinking that these disciplines alone cannot provide.
Questions that many had considered settled — about the merits of free trade, the dangers of price controls, the costs of mounting public debt — are once again live political debates. Persistent low growth, perceptions of deepening inequality, and the erosion of trust in institutions have unravelled the economic and political consensus that defined recent decades. And new challenges have emerged: artificial intelligence, the future of work, environmental sustainability, and a more interventionist state. Purely economic analyses of these issues seem insufficient, and there are growing questions about the values that should guide our economic and social life.
We make the moral case for a market economy that generates wealth, employment and innovation, drawing on the resources of the Christian tradition to address questions that economics alone cannot answer. We set the behaviour of enterprise within a framework of calling, integrity, values and ethics. Across business and public life, we find a growing willingness to engage with that contribution.
We pursue this through research, publications and events that bring together people from across the worlds of business, economics and theology, equipping people in business, policy and the church to think seriously about these questions, and to act on what they find.
We think there are three propositions around which many people can agree:
