Across the country, Timur Kuran, Professor of Economics and Law and King Faisal Professor in Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, is using his Spiritual Capital grant to pursue “The Role of Religion in the Economic Performance of Civilizations”.

Kuran’s project will advance ongoing research on the role of Islam, and especially Islamic law, in the economic performance of the Middle East from its rise in the 7th century to the present. This study of civilizations will also work to bring together a network of scholars, to be known as the Institute for Economic Research on Civilizations (IERC), to promote comparative research and raise the level of discourse on the role of various religions and forms of Spiritual Capital in the economic performance of civilizations.

A central part of the project for Kuran are the series of books he is writing that explore the cyclical nature of the Middle East’s economic rise and fall, and specifically the role that Islam, Islamic law and Islamic institutions have played. “Islam is a religion that has 14 centuries of history and it’s only recently that the region has been characterized as under-developed,” says Kuran. “I’m hoping to come up with some general answers to the question of why civilizations rise and decline. And what are some of the unintended mechanisms that lead to this?”

The goal of the IERC is to provide a home for academics to develop research on links between economic development and religion on a large scale. “One of the purposes of the Institute is to encourage scholars to take on big questions about civilizations across long time periods. For instance, China had an experience very similar to that of the Middle East. It was very successful over the long term and under-developed in recent centuries. Africa and India are the same way. Why did this happen? The Institute is a place designed to stimulate thinking about these questions.” Kuran says that they have doubled the size of the faculty involved and have been surprised and encouraged by the response from the larger academic community to the focus of their work. “We want to use my project as a springboard for a broader set of studies.”

Kuran and the IERC meet with scholars in regular work groups as well as organizing frequent seminars. The first conference of the IERC will be held in February 2007. The focus of the conference is to address the role of religion in the economic performance of civilizations. Although Islam and Western Christianity will be central to the investigations as a whole, other religious traditions will be explored as well. “I always encourage my younger colleagues to tackle the biggest questions possible. That way you get the most attention,” says Kuran.

The third Spiritual Capital grant was given to Robert Woodberry, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, for the “Project on Religion and Economic Change”. This project seeks to evaluate the influence of various religions on health, education and the economy by measuring religious distinctions and the resulting impact on national, community and individual levels in societies around the world. One section is analyzing the impact of 150 years of missionary activity; a second section is analyzing the economic consequences of Pentecostal conversions in Brazil; a third section is focusing on the influence of revivalist Islam and Christianity in rural Malawi.

The breadth of the research that the three winners have begun only underscores the long-term aim of Spiritual Capital, which is not only to support empirically rigorous research, but also to catalyze the formation of an innovative, productive and highly-regarded field that will build productive bridges between economics, sociology, religious studies and other social sciences.

Robert Woodberry, University of Texas at Austin
Laurence Iannaccone, George Mason University
Timur Kuran, University of Southern California