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Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.,discovered and elucidated an unstated assumption made by Adam Smith, the founder of modern-day economics. Smith, and with him most of modern economics, took for granted that somehow helpless children grow into functioning adults capable of making contracts, keeping promises and having empathy for others. In other words, she discovered that the economy depends on the intact family raising children. Religious thinkers and ordinary moms and dads knew this all along, of course. But Dr. Morse brought this common sense observation into direct contact with economic analysis. This discovery, which she fully develops in her seminal workLove and Economics, is the basis for all of her subsequent work promoting what are now called “socially conservative” issues.
Dr. Morse earned her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Rochester in 1980. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University. She has served as a Research Fellow for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty and has held fellowships at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Cornell Law School, and the University of Chicago’s economics department. She authored many scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, such the Journal of Political Economy, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the University of Chicago Law Review. She has written opinion and analysis pieces that appeared in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Reason, Policy Review, National Review Online, and many others.
With two college-aged children of their own, she and her husband are keenly aware of the pressures facing young adults today.