När islam diskuteras – vilket ju rätt ofta sker – fokuseras mest på dess värderingar och dess syn på lagstiftning (sharia). Men Timur Kuran uppmärksammar den forskning som undersöker denna religions ekonomiska konsekvenser. I översiktsartikeln ”Islam and Economic Performance: Historical and Contemporary Links”, nyligen publicerad i Journal of Economic Literature, presenterar han vad nationalekonomiska studier på området har kommit fram till (sedan 1997). Genomgången är omfattande och obligatorisk läsning för var och en som vill bilda sig en uppfattning i denna fråga.

Några av de resultat som presenteras:

Ramadan fasting by pregnant women harms prenatal development; Islamic charities mainly benefit the middle class; Islam affects educational outcomes less through Islamic schooling than through structural factors that handicap learning as a whole; Islamic finance hardly affects Muslim financial behavior; and low generalized trust depresses Muslim trade. The last feature reflects the Muslim world’s delay in transitioning from personal to impersonal exchange. The delay resulted from the persistent simplicity of the private enterprises formed under Islamic law. Weak property rights reinforced the private sector’s stagnation by driving capital out of commerce and into rigid waqfs. Waqfs limited economic development through their inflexibility and democratization by restraining the development of civil society.

Själv tycker jag inte minst att den negativa kopplingen mellan islam och social tillit är intressant. (Christian Bjørnskov och jag har tidigare funnit att religiositet i allmänhet är negativt relaterad till social tillit.) Kuran skriver mer om saken:

Low generalized trust, which harms economic performance by narrowing the domain of feasible exchanges, is a legacy of the Muslim world’s history. Not until the 1850s, and in some places much later, were institutions conducive to impersonal exchange put in place. Prior to the transplant of modern commercial and financial laws to replace indigenous institutions dating from the Middle Ages, personal exchange was the norm. Commercial contracts involved natural people known to one another. Enterprises were small and short-lived. No demand existed for the firm, which is a profit-seeking organization meant to outlive its founders and employees. Commercial capital accumulation was severely limited. The legal system responsible for low generalized trust developed in the early Islamic era, the 7th to 10th centuries. High inequality of land productivity, which favored predation over production as an enrichment strategy and also encouraged income redistribution, may have 80 contributed to its specifics.

Denna syn knyter an till Henrik Jordahls och min studie om att kvaliteten på de legala institutionerna kan vara viktig för social tillit. Men hur man reformerar institutioner i en situation med låg tillit, där det dessutom finns inslag i den dominerande religionen som verkar mot att etablera tillitsstimulerande institutioner,  är inte helt enkelt att se.

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