Seminars/Conferences : Faith and Economics
Conference: Faith and Economics: A Study Meeting
Place: The European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Date: March 18-19, 2007
Host: Harold James
Click here for a report on how the conference proceeded.
There is a widespread feeling that the practice of economics has become technocratic and detached from commitments to broader ethical, moral and religious values. That feeling has contributed to pervasive, destructive backlashes against globalization. Recognizing the truth in these sentiments, this meeting advances from two premises: first, that mankind’s spiritual and practical developments cannot be separated from each other; and second, that spiritual poverty engenders social and economic fragmentation and erosion. Four prominent international economic policy-makers — Anwar Ibrahim, Michel Camdessus, Emma Rothschild, and Amartya Sen — will explore the relationship between faith, economic and distributional justice, and policy applications. These four experts have been assembled not only to tap their personal knowledge, but to initiate a new dialogue among the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Schedule and Content
This meeting will begin with dinner on Sunday, March 18, 2007. The exchange itself will take place in morning and evening sessions on Monday, March 19.
The discussion will deal with such questions as: has policy-making become too technocratic and too separated from an awareness of the dignity of the individual? What kinds of conceptions of freedom help to form a just approach to policy questions? Are there commonalities between the approaches of the major religious traditions of the Abrahamic faiths? What is the relationship of those faiths to doctrines sometimes preached in the name of radical fundamentalism? Is fundamentalism of any stripe compatible with economic growth? What links can be established — or debunked — between poverty and spiritual condition?
As session chairs, Harold James, professor at Princeton University and Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, and James Boughton, Assistant Director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund, will structure and moderate the dialogue. A group of distinguished guests will be invited to attend and to ask questions relevant to the topic. In the late afternoon of the meeting day, a larger audience from the European University Institute and the city of Florence will be invited to hear the four main participants present their arguments.
Participants: Harold James, James Boughton, Michel Camdessus, Anwar Ibrahim, Emma Rothschild, and Amartya Sen.
Harold James (moderator) was educated at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow of Peterhouse for eight years. He then moved to Princeton University in 1986, where he serves as a professor in the History Department. He was a member of the Independent Commission of Experts investigating the political and economic links of Switzerland with Nazi Germany and of commissions to examine the roles of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank. He is also Chairman of the Editorial Board of World Politics, and is a member of the executive committee of Princeton's Institute for Regional and International Studies. He has authored many books, including: The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression, The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War against the Jews, Europe Reborn: A History 1914-2000, Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model (Harvard University Press, 2006), and The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire, (Princeton University Press, 2006).
James Boughton (moderator) is Assistant Director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund. He also has been an Advisor in the Research Department at the IMF, and from 1992-2001 he was the Fund's Historian. Dr. Boughton holds a Ph.D. in economics from Duke University, and before going to the IMF in 1981, he was Professor of Economics at Indiana University and had served as an economist at the OECD in Paris. His publications include a textbook on money and banking, a book on the U.S. Federal funds market, two IMF books that he co-edited, and articles in professional journals on international finance, monetary theory and policy, and international policy coordination. His latest book, Silent Revolution, on the history of the IMF from 1979 to 1989, was published in October 2001.
Michel Camdessus was the Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) beginning in January 1987. On May 22, 1996, the Executive Board of the IMF unanimously selected Mr. Camdessus to serve a third five-year term as Managing Director, beginning January 16, 1997. Mr. Camdessus was educated at the University of Paris and earned postgraduate degrees in economics at the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and the National School of Administration. Following his appointment as Administrateur Civil in the French Civil Service, Mr. Camdessus joined the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Policies in 1960. After serving as Financial Attaché to the French delegation at the European Economic Community in Brussels from 1966 to 1968, he returned to the Treasury and went on to become Assistant Director in 1971, Deputy Director in 1974, and Director in February 1982. During the period 1978-84, Mr. Camdessus also served as Chairman of the Paris Club, and was Chairman of the Monetary Committee of the European Economic Community from December 1982 to December 1984. In August 1984, Mr. Camdessus was appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, and was appointed Governor of the Bank of France in November 1984. He served in this post until his appointment as Managing Director of the IMF.
Anwar Ibrahim was Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1993-1998. He also served as Minister of Finance, Agriculture, Education, and Youth and Sports during his career in government. Anwar also was Chairman of the Development Committee of World Bank and International Monetary Fund in 1998. During his tenure he strongly endorsed the initiatives of debt cancellation and reprieve for poor countries, particularly those in Africa. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Since 2004 he has also held lecturing positions at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Anwar is a consultant to the World Bank in the areas of governance and accountability and in March 2006 he was appointed as Honorary President of the London based group AccountAbility.
Emma Rothschild is Director of the Centre for History and Economics, and has been a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, since 1988. Starting in 2004, she is Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University. She was born in London in 1948, graduated from Oxford University in 1967, and was a Kennedy Scholar in Economics at MIT. From 1978 to 1988, she was an Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Humanities and the Program on Science, Technology, and Society. She has also taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is chairman of the Kennedy Memorial Trust and of the United Nations Foundation Board Executive Committee. She has written extensively on economic history and the history of economic thought. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment was published in 2001 by Harvard University Press, and in Italian and Portugese translation in 2003.
Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University and was until recently the Master of Trinity College. He has served as the President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor. He has received honorary doctorates from major universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Among the awards he has received are the “Bharat Ratna” (the highest honor awarded by the President of India, and the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Outcome of Study Group
The Witherspoon Institute is keen to disseminate the proceedings of the Faith and Economics study group. The variety of perspectives represented between the featured speakers and the invited guests promises a lively exchange with new insights.
To that end, the papers delivered by the four main discussants will be gathered together in a critical edition, with commentaries from various invited attendants. An editor for this volume will be named in the near future, with the hope that the volume will be ready by the end of 2007. The Witherspoon Institute will undertake to promote this volume heavily, given its potential impact on policy debates related to the rebuilding of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Editing such a volume will require deftness to manage the disparate viewpoints of the various contributors, making this project more time-consuming than perhaps other conference proceedings.
Though the Faith and Economics study group will meet for just one full day, the Witherspoon Institute anticipates that the discussion will produce a number of ideas for further research in our Program on Ethics, Culture, and Economic Development. Already we expect to apply some of the considerations from this study group to the Program’s next event, a conference entitled “Globalization and the Rise of the (Radical) Left in Latin America,” tentatively slated for December 7-9, 2007.
Updated April 2, 2007