Late last year, journalist Bob Smietana e-mailed Charles North, associate professor of Economics at Baylor University, with an alluring book-writing pitch: "Christian Freakonomics." North applied his expert economic analysis to the proposal for, oh, about three seconds before sending his future co-author a response: "Of course!"

"I had an incentive to do it," North chuckles. "And the opportunity presented itself at a very low cost."

For several years North and his colleagues have been trying to improve upon the way they integrate faith-based and ethical perspectives into introductory economics courses. While faith and ethics perspectives have long been part of core business classes, economics is about more than business and, for that reason, had so far eluded an ideal blend with faith and ethics components.

"What was needed was a book that could be read in conjunction with the standard textbook that would enlighten some of the issues discussed in the text book from a faith perspective," he explains. "The book would give the students something to read and think about before class. That way there would be more depth to the ensuing discussions."

Good Intentions: Nine Dicey Social and Economic Issues Viewed through the Eyes of Faith, published by Moody Publishing and co-authored by North and Smietana, will be available for inclusion on the syllabus next year.

The desire to do good represents the book's overriding theme. "Good intentions," North says in explaining the book's message, "need to be followed by effective actions, and an economic way of thinking can help in determining whether actions will be effective in achieving one's well-intentioned goals."

Although North and Smietana, who writes for a variety of Christian publications, have jokingly referred to their project as "Jesus Freak-onomics," the similarities to Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's best seller are more structural than qualitative. Like Freakonomics, Good Intentions features a co-authorship model with an economist and a journalist, and a story-driven style. However, rather than building the book around a single economist's research, as Freakonomics does, Good Intentions' foundation rests on social and economic issues that are important to mainstream audiences in general and to Christians, in particular.

The book's topics include self interest vs. greed; the power of education; economic development around the world; the living wage movement; CEO compensation; numerous issues related to Wal-Mart; links between capitalism and the environment; the "benefits and costs" of globalization and more.

"In all of these topics, we will talk about how Christian individuals and organizations can make effective contributions to solving the problems, and these statements are backed up by good economic research on what works and what doesn't," North explains.

The original idea for the book was hatched within Moody Publishing, where an editor contacted Smietana to gauge his interest in serving as the author. Smietana was interested, as long as he could bring on an economist as a co-author. Smietana recalled conducting a lengthy interview with North for an article he wrote on multi-site franchise-style churches and being impressed with North's ability to distill complicated economic ideas into language non-economists could relate to.

North and Smietana discussed various directions for the effort and agreed that complex social, political and business discussions conducted by a wide range of Christian groups might be strengthened by a better understanding of economic fundamentals.

"People in general and Christian people in particular tend to make moral arguments, which sometimes are not well-informed about an issue's underlying economics," North notes. For example, three years ago, when North spoke at a Baylor University forum related to poverty and the minimum wage, it struck him that he was one of the only people raising cautionary arguments against establishing a national "living wage" that would essentially boost the minimum wage.

"In general, the arguments were very emotional, and understandably so," he recalls. "The plight of the poor is a major problem in the United States. I completely agree with that. Poor people need more money to live on because $5.85 an hour is not enough. I would also agree with that."

However, he raised a red flag in response to the solution of boosting the minimum wage across the board. "There is a lot of research on the effects of increases in the minimum wage," he explains. "And it's not at all clear from that research that it does anything to alleviate poverty."

A chapter in the book tackles the same topic in much greater detail. "We're not saying yes or no to [further] raising minimum wage," North notes. "We are saying that doing so is not free, and that it is not a simple issue."

That caution gets back to one of North's incentives for writing the book. "We want to say, ‘If you have good intentions, complement them with appropriate actions,'" he says. "Don't do things that will not work and don't do things that will make the problem you're trying to solve worse."

That insight, North hopes, will inspire readers to develop more effective solutions that make good on their intentions.