New Cambridge white paper on Religions and economic development

CIP Programme Manager Dr Iona Hine reports from a 6 July launch event at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge: 

Earlier this week, Prof Sriya Iyer and her team in the Faculty of Economics published a White Paper based on a comprehensive survey of the scholarly landscape. Searching theses and publications from the past four decades, the goal was to understand how and where research has shed light on connections between religions and economic development and what future research should be prioritised to fill gaps in understanding. 

The new White Paper emerges as part of a wider enquiry, asking:

• How do religious communities interact with development processes? 
• Under what institutional, political, and socioeconomic conditions do religions promote prosperity, inclusion, and wellbeing, and when might religion hinder these outcomes? 
• And to what extent can development policies be more effectively designed by incorporating a systematic understanding of spiritual capital, faith-based institutions, and religious networks?

Approach and key findings

Iyer et al analysed the body of relevant literature, assembling a concentrated corpus of more than 300 publications with the assistance of Scopus and the citations of four formative texts. They also scrutinised the scholarly pipeline at dissertation level, observing that a majority of studies were located in sociology (26%), political science (18%) and religion and theology (17%)—with barely 4% of relevant work originating within economics. Iyer and colleagues’ own commitment to stimulating new scholarship within economics included inviting local school students to visualise major findings. The results were on show as posters at the launch event.

Quantifying the publication corpus by theme (major and minor) revealed that much existing literature focuses on intersections of religion with growth, governance and human capital. This contrasts with sparsely populated subdomains such as (religion, economics and) conflict, finance, climate, insurance, mental health, and technology. When viewed in terms of citation influence, these areas had yet to yield definitive works. 

The report, published as Working Paper 2645 in the Cambridge Economics series, represents the first fruits of a ten-year initiative under the Social Consequences of Religion umbrella, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust. A one-day conference to launch the report heard from highly esteemed and influential scholars (Prof Robert Barro and keynote Prof Steven Durlauf, alongside Prof Iyer) while also introducing early career scholars (Dr Lars Harhoff Andersen, Dr Daniela Solá and Dr Kishen Shastry, in a panel chaired by Dr Rachel McCleary—another field-shaper).

Takeaways 

As something of an outsider to the project—and by no means an economist—a couple of things stood out: 

Since questions concern change over time, economists are limited by the available data, what has been and can be gathered. This makes any opportunity to shape future survey data (a Gallup religion module, for example) highly significant. It also means that there is considerable opportunity for creativity to address gaps in direct data—using first names to estimate parental religiosity and examine how this interacts with pursuit of scientific and/or religious professions, for example (as Dr Andersen illustrated).

It was also noticeable that much of the scholarship in this domain is collaborative. For the most part, speakers presented multi-author studies, speaking appreciatively of absent co-authors. Prospective economists of religion should find a promising and positive pathway awaits.

I also spent more time discussing bible translation than I have for nearly a decade. Make of that what you will!

Congratulations to Prof Iyer, Dr Shastry, Dr Ksenija Iljina, Mikkel Wiemann and Celia Powell on the successful delivery of such an important white paper and an engaging launch event.