The mission of the Department of Economics and Policy Studies is to teach economics at the undergraduate and graduate levels and to conduct research in economics in a distinctive way.

The Department is distinctive in a number of ways, including:

• It has a strong commitment to analyzing issues relating to socio-economic justice and ethics in economics. It focuses on policy-related topics such as poverty, income distribution and social justice, which stress the human dimension of economics.

• Its faculty members have a strong interest in the development and use of alternative methodological approaches - such as post-Keynesian, radical and institutional economics- to the study of economics in addition to the orthodox neoclassical approach. They are committed to an openness to alternative methodological approaches in economics.

• Its faculty members are concerned with the ethical dimensions of individual economic behavior and epistemological questions, and go beyond the narrowly defined boundaries of economics to examine the interaction between economic, political and social phenomena.

• Its faculty uses broader political economy approaches emphasizing the roles of history and institutions, in addition to formal theoretical and quantitative analysis.

This distinctiveness is related to the Catholic identity of the University of Notre Dame and is reflected in the research activities of the Department’s faculty and in the courses offered to undergraduate and graduate students.