Bernard Lonergan is best known for the methodological approaches to philosophy and theology he laid out in his two books: Insight: a Study of Human Understanding¹ and Method in Theology². But he also produced some twenty-five volumes, his Collected Works, among which are two volumes of economic writings: For a New Political Economy³ and Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis⁴. The former text presents Lonergan’s economic essays written in 1942 and 1944. The latter presents his work on economics at Boston College from 1978-1983. Both volumes were published posthumously, thanks to the work of Lonergan’s colleagues and editors.

From 1930 to 1944, spurred on by the economic crisis of the Great Depression, Lonergan in his spare time worked on understanding economic processes; meanwhile, he was either teaching full time or working on his Ph.D. in theology at Gregorian University in Rome. We know from the Lonergan Archives that he read Schumpeter and Hayek, among other economists⁵, and he himself also mentions Keynes, Wicksell, Kalecki, and Kaldor. In June 1940, Lonergan returned to Canada from his studies in Rome. By 1944, working from his base in Montreal, he had taught theology at the Jesuit seminary of the French-Canadian province, l’Immaculée; defended his thesis; written the two essays on economics, and had three papers based on his thesis on theology published in the Theological Studies journal⁶.

Lonergan wrote the economics essays to explain how key variables interact and change over time. He studied the following variables: investment and consumption in production and spending, income distribution, relative and money prices, money flows and circuits, governments in the economy, and international trade and currencies. These variables are related via changing circular flows.

How the circular flows operate depends on how people function in their economic activities. Lonergan argued that the failure to understand the changes in the economic system during innovative growth, or to adapt to their requirements, explains the occurrence of booms and slumps in the economy. His economics proposes an ideal, or norm, of equilibrium economic development and growth that offers the potential to avoid business cycle crises.

This website aims to draw attention to Lonergan’s economics through my own work on his economic thought as it relates to other economists’ ideas and to contemporary economic issues.