Of all post-Enlightenment social sciences, economics might be easily classified as having the least in common with natural law theory. To the extent, for example, that economics is concerned with matters such as utility maximisation, cost–benefit analysis or identifying unintended consequences of particular decisions, its goals differ from natural law theory’s central focus on individuals and communities (including the state) knowing and choosing the good through right reason. Typically, what is called ‘positive economics’ – famously defined by the British economist Lionel Robbins as ‘the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses’ (Robbins 1952: 16) – brackets off the type of normative questions with which natural law theory is concerned.

Those engaged in natural law reflection have, however, always brought their methods of reasoning to bear upon questions with significant economic components.