Addressing the big questions of human behavior and flourishing with an economist’s toolkit and traditional Christian perspective.
In my work with students, scholars, and many audiences outside of academia, I aim to draw connections across disciplines including economics, theology, and political philosophy.
As a professor, I want to nurture today’s college students in the economic way of thinking and share with them first principles that they might find them both timeless and timely.
In my scholarship and my public speaking, I work to engage diverse audiences—including traditional students, scholars from other disciplines, and lifelong learners—in conversations around social order, morality, prosperity, and human well-being, that is, the questions that pervade human history.
Sarah Estelle, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
Director of Markets & Morality
Dr. Sarah Estelle is a professor of economics at Hope College. Sarah enjoys extending the theories and empirical techniques of microeconomics broadly, reflecting her belief that economics is everywhere. Her empirical work focuses on policy-relevant questions of human flourishing, including topics like criminal justice reform, education choices, adolescent risky behaviors, and parents’ investments in their children. Sarah is also the developer and author of a new dataset and statistical index project that measures the extent of religious liberty protections at the state level.
More broadly yet, Sarah is intrigued by the role of governments, civil society, communities, and families in human flourishing and the development of the human person. She finds the big ideas of Nobel Laureate economist F. A. Hayek—including those related to knowledge, cultural evolution, and spontaneous order—extremely helpful in her work bridging classical liberal political economy and traditional Christian theology. Sarah’s current work focuses on what mainstream economics can contribute to loving our neighbors well, where love is thickly construed as facilitating real good.
Sarah is also the founding director of Hope’s Markets & Morality student program, which explores economic issues through a Christian lens and brings speakers and film screenings to campus to enrich the Hope community’s understanding of markets and other dimensions of a liberal society.
Education
Ph.D., Economics
University of Virginia
B.A., Economics
Hillsdale College
Areas of Expertise
Applied Microeconomics
Hayek and Christianity
Labor Economics
Public Economics