This chapter tries to synthesize the progress that economists have made towards understanding various aspects of the role of religion in human societies from a development economics perspective. We start by reviewing the contributions that consider religious beliefs as exogenously given and try...

As a result of widespread mistreatment and overt discrimination in all dimensions of their lives, women lack significant autonomy. The central preoccupation of this book is to explore key sources of female empowerment and discuss the current challenges and opportunities for the future....

The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of being a Muslim-dominated country and indicators of political performance and democracy. This suggests the possible existence of a relation between religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard...

On the basis of detailed information on inheritance practices collected in the course of an in-depth survey of three Andean communities of Peru, and unlike most empirical studies which rely on remittance functions, we have been able to estimate an inheritance function with a view to identifying...

Increased attention to the issue of aid effectiveness has sparked a flurry of empirical studies attempting to measure the macro-level impact of aid flows on the performances of developing countries. These studies yield ambiguous and even contradictory results and one possible source of confusion...

In this book, economist Jean-Philippe Platteau addresses the question: does Islam, the religion of Muslims, bear some responsibility for a lack of economic development in the countries in which it dominates? In his nuanced approach, Platteau challenges the widespread view that the doctrine of...

The question as to whether religion can block economic development and institutional change assumes particular importance today because of the rise of Islamist movements and the disappointing economic performances in the lands of Islam. This paper starts from a critical examination of the thesis...