Stephen T. Worland

Stephen T. Worland (February 19, 1923 – July 29, 2017) was an American economist and professor at the University of Notre Dame. Worland's specialties included the history of economic thought, social economics, and welfare economics. Worland is the author of the book "Scholasticism and Welfare Economics", published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1967. He also authored the "Economics and Justice" chapter in the book "Justice: Views from the Social Sciences", edited by Ronald L. Cohen and published by Springer in 1986.
Biography.
Worland was born in Neoga, Illinois and began his education in the Neoga public schools. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy on the USS Idaho (BB-42) battleship. He held a B.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois. His dissertation, completed in 1956, was on the economic thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Worland held faculty appointments at Michigan State University and the University of Dayton before he joined the University of Notre Dame in 1957. He taught at Notre Dame for 30 years. In 1987, he joined the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University faculty for two years as the first occupant of the Clemens Chair in Economics and the Liberal Arts. He died in Columbus, Indiana in 2017.
Research.
Worland's research and writing focus on defining and clarifying economic justice as a social and moral concept. Worland was an adherent to neoclassical welfare economics and analyzed the writing of Aristotle through the eyes of modern economics.
In his "Scholasticism and Welfare Economics" book, Worland demonstrated that welfare economics shares the philosophical premises of scholastic economic reasoning and helps clarify the significance of economic efficiency in the scholastic doctrine of the just price. In the "Justice: Views from the Social Sciences" book, to which he contributed the "Economics and Justice" chapter, Worland examined classical economics, Marxism, and neoclassical economics, and concluded that distributive justice cannot be achieved in a market society without considering more than simply contributions to production.
Worland's research often focused on Catholic social teaching. For example, his 2001 "Just Wages" article in the journal "First Things" explains the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding a living wage for workers. In his 1994 presentation to The Association for Christian Economics,
Worland wrote that although there should be no such thing as "Christian
Economics" or "Catholic Economics," as "Christian faith will not 
produce a body of economic knowledge different from that to be 
discovered by honest, secular scientific effort,” the Judeo-Christian 
message makes an important and unique contribution to an understanding 
of a modern market society.
Teaching philosophy.
Worland wrote that economics should be taught in such a way that 
students learn about the real-world problems of injustice and human 
development, and not just the theory and mathematical underpinnings of 
economics. In 1975, in "Forum for Social Economics", he wrote that 
at Notre Dame, where he taught, a decision was made to restructure the 
Ph.D. program to focus on socioeconomic issues and social justice, and 
to teach and research the fundamental problems of social economy that 
"should be a major concern for every economist with a truly humane 
interest in his profession."
Honors.
In 1987, Worland was awarded the Reinhold Niebuhr
Award, an annual award that honors a faculty member or college 
administrator whose work and life promote or exemplify social justice.
In 1993, Worland was awarded the Thomas F. Divine award. Named for one of the founding fathers of the Association for Social Economics,
the Thomas F. Divine Award is presented annually to an Association 
member who over a lifetime has made important contributions to social 
economics and the social economy.