Biography

John P. Tiemstra taught economics at Calvin College from 1975 to 2012. He earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his mentor was the late, distinguished economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger. Prof. Tiemstra’s research has focused on methodological issues surrounding the integration of Christianity and economics. His institutionalist approach to economics has also informed his research on government regulation of business, globalization, and environmental policy. As a visiting professor, he taught for a semester at Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education in South Africa. Major publications include three books. He published an introductory one-semester textbook, Economics: A Developmental Approach (Mohican 1999). His first book was Reforming Economics (Edwin Mellen 1990), a group project of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship. His latest book, Stories Economists Tell (Pickwick, 2012), is a collection of fifteen of his best articles published over the last 25 years. He served on the Working Group on Ethics and the Earth of the Reformed Church in America, resulting in the report "Globalization, Ethics and the Earth." In 2007 he served as President of the Association for Social Economics, an international learned society of economists who are interested in the ethical dimensions of economic theory and policy. In 2009, the Association presented him with the Thomas F. Divine Award “for lifetime contributions to social economics."