Economics and the Seven Deadly Sins

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Through the centuries, Catholic theologians have identified seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust. These sins are considered "deadly" as they kill the soul. In this class, using the tools of modern economic analysis, we will consider how academics have examined the economic cause, consequence, and control of these sins. The course will be built around a series of academic readings and a special emphasis will be placed on how economists produce formal empirical tests of economic hypotheses. Each section will begin with a writing by a Catholic theologian that outlines the nature of the sin. Examples of topics covered in the class will be: the terrible levels of gun violence in the US (anger), the twin problems of obesity and drugs in the US (gluttony), how corruption negatively impacts economic growth (avarice), the growing ranks of idle young men in the US (sloth), markets for human trafficking (lust), the health consequences of economic inequality (envy), and the persistence differences in self-perceived ability across sexes (pride). This is a writing intensive course where students have to produce an original piece of research that asks and answers an empirical question of interest to economists within the broad subject matter.