Topic: Economics
Max Weber theorized about the influence of faith on economic behavior, leading to tests of his theory by Sascha Becker and Peter Becker. I find those tests interesting, but incomplete. All these sociologists looked for the indirect influences of faith with too little scrutiny of overt differences in economic systems stemming from religious practices.
I would posit, as does Hernando DeSoto in The Mystery of Capitalism, that the different banking, inheritance and property laws found in various regions affected by differing faiths strongly influence the extent of economic development and equity for each area. Regions affected by the Protestant movement attained the most useful forms of lending and property rights. Jewish traditions and external influences on them limited usury in ways that constrained utility of capital. Catholicism, and Moorish influences led to Anticretico or weaker property rights and lending through convoluted leasing. Muslim influences led to Ijara, the shariah-compliant leasing, in lieu of lending. While avoiding gharar (uncertainty asociated with gambling by Islam), this specialized usufruct leasing curtails much risk exposure, and therefore often causes borrowers and investors to lose or overlook potential rewards routinely gained elsewhere under less capital-restrictive regimes.
Although the religious assumptions about the nature of man (total depravity, predestination, et al) may seem to provide some explanations for disparites in development and equity between peoples of differing faiths, I think the more obvious religious constraints on capital utility present an almost quantifiable cause and effect relationship. Except for cross-infuences in places like India, Moorish-Hispanic regions and Turkey, one might be able to test the relationship with relatively simple economic measures such as a Granger Causality test. Timur Kuran at Duke University seems to find these overt differences stemming from religious differences and to characterize them as economically beneficial or hamful. He points to Hindu laws that strengthen families economically and Islamic laws that weaken family wealth. Like Hernando DeSoto, Kuran contrasts the economic well-being of different cultures with an eye for attributable causation. I find the arguments of DeSoto and Kuran quite compelling and I look forward to statistical tests of their assertions.
