Rachel M. McCleary (born 29 September 1953) is a lecturer in the Economics Department at Harvard University and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Biography
McCleary has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University and a B.A. from Indiana University. Her work is interdisciplinary with theoretical grounding in the fields of political science, sociology and economics. Within these disciplines, she conducts research on the political economy of religion. Her research focuses on how religion interacts with economic performance and the political and social behavior of individuals and institutions across societies. She studies how religious beliefs and practices influence productivity, economic growth and the maintenance of political institutions such as democracy. Her scholarly work in philosophy focuses on issues of moral agency, consciousness and reasoning.
Her and her husband Robert Barro's work was cited in the March 25, 2013, edition of Bloomberg.
Publications
Books
Seeking Justice: Ethics and International Affairs (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992) Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the End of Violent Revolution (University Press of Florida, 1999 English; Artemis-Edinter 1999 Spanish) Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Agencies and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1939 to Present (Oxford University Press 2009) (Winner of the Skystone Partners Prize for Research on Fundraising and Philanthropy, 2010) Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion (editor). (Oxford University Press, 2011) The Wealth of Religions: The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging, (co-author Robert Barro). (Princeton University Press, 2019)