The Association for Social Economics was founded by  American Jesuits Thomas Divine("Interest, an historical and analytical study in economics and modern ethics") and Bernard William Dempsey("Interest and Usury" ).
The association was founded as the Catholic Economic Association (CEA) by American Jesuits Thomas Divine and Bernard William Dempsey (19031960), who received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1940, and was a student of Joseph A. Schumpeter. Dempsey published "Interest and Usury" in 1943. Divine published "Interest, an historical and analytical study in economics and modern ethics" in 1959. 
