Timur Kuran
Professor of Economics and Political Science &
Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University
Research Highlights
Social Mechanisms - I have written on the evolution of preferences and institutions, with contributions to the study of hidden preferences, the unpredictability of social revolutions, the dynamics of ethnic conflict, the evolution of morality, perceptions of discrimination, and cultural change. Many of these works deal with the repercussions of concealing knowledge.
Middle East, Islam, and Economics - Another of my research interests concerns the economics of the Middle East. I have critiqued and analyzed contemporary attempts to restructure economies according to Islamic teachings. Recently I completed a work that explores why the Middle East, once economically advanced by global standards, subsequently fell behind in various realms, including organizational efficiency, technological creativity, and commercial competitiveness. My current interests include the economic trajectories of India's religious communities, especially its Hindus and Muslims; and effect of Islam on the evolution of political institutions in the Middle East.
What's New
The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). There is a discussion forum for this book on Facebook. Reviews include: "The Crescent and the Company," by Schumpeter in the Economist; "Is Islam the Problem?" by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times; "The Long Divergence," by Ziauddin Sardar in the Independent; "Prophet Motive," by John Cassidy in the New Yorker; "Selling Out the Koran," by Chris Berg in the National Times of Australia; "Long Divergence," by L. Carl Brown in Foreign Affairs; "What Made the Middle East Fall Behind the West?," by Şahin Alpay in Today's Zaman; "Timur Kuran," by Tyler Cowen in the Marginal Revolution. Some answers to common questions on Nicholas Kristof's blog: "Questions from My Islam Column." Kai Ryssdal's radio interview on Marketplace: "Historical Roots of Middle Eastern Uprisings." An essay summarizing key arguments: "Legal Roots of Economic Underdevelopment in the Middle East," European Financial Review (Feb-Mar 2011): 10-11. Peter Passell provides a review and long excerpt in the Milken Institute Review, 13 (2011): 59-76.
(Ed.) Mahkeme Kayıtları Işığında 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul’unda Sosyo-Ekonomik Yaşam / Social and Economic Life in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul: Glimpses from Court Records, 10 vols. (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010-11 (Volumes 1-6 in print, 7-10 in press).
Op-ed: "Phase III of the Arab World's Modernization: Building Accountability and Boosting Creativity," pp. 10-11 in World Economic Forum, The Compendium on Economic Governance in the Arab World 2011.
Podcast of BBC Forum program on "World Economic Crisis," moderated by Bridget Kendall. Participants: Timur Kuran, Danny Quah (LSE) and Robert Skidelsky (British House of Lords)
Op-ed: "The Weak Foundations of Arab Democracy," New York Times, May 28, 2011.
Podcast of interview with Anthony Gill of University of Washington, on why the Middle East fell behind Western Europe during the millennium preceding the Industrial revolution.
(paper with Scott Lustig) "Structural Inefficiencies of Islamic Courts: Ottoman Justice and Its Implications for Modern Economic Life“ (August 2011).
(paper with Anantdeep Singh) “Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences” (August 2011).
“Modern Islam and the Economy,” in New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 6, general editor Michael Cook, volume editor Robert Hefner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 473-94.
"West is Best? Why Civilizations Rise and Fall." Foreign Affairs, 90 (January-February 2011): 159-63. Printer friendly version.
Op-ed on Arab uprisings: "The Politics of Revolutionary Surprise," Project Syndicate, February 2, 2011. (available in seven languages)
Islam and Economic Development Conference, April 1-3, 2010
"The Scale of Entrepreneurship in Middle Eastern History: Inhibitive Roles of Islamic Institutions," in The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. William Baumol, David Landes & Joel Mokyr (Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 62-87.
"Explaining the Economic Trajectory of Civilizations: The Systemic Approach." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 71 (2009): 593-605.
The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East
In the year 1000, the economy of the Middle East was at least as advanced as that of Europe. But by 1800, the region had fallen dramatically behind—in living standards, technology, and economic institutions. In short, the Middle East had failed to modernize economically as the West surged ahead. What caused this long divergence? And why does the Middle East remain drastically underdeveloped compared with the West? The Long Divergence provides a new answer to these long-debated questions.
The book argues that what slowed the economic development of the Middle East was not colonialism or geography, still less Muslim attitudes or some incompatibility between Islam and capitalism. Rather, starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on development by slowing or blocking the emergence of central features of modern economic life, including private capital accumulation, the corporation, large-scale production, and impersonal exchange. By the nineteenth century, modern economic institutions began to be transplanted to the Middle East, but its economy has not caught up. And there is no quick fix today. Low trust, rampant corruption, and weak civil societies—all characteristic of the region’s economies today and all legacies of its economic history—will take generations to overcome.
For Turkish readers: (1) the transcript of a talk given in June 2010 in Istanbul, on the basic themes of The Long Divergence, and (2)-(3) two review articles in Turkish.
Türk okurlar için:
(1) The Long Divergence kitabındaki ana temaları kapsayan bir konuşmanın metni: "Orta Doğu’da Ekonomik Azgelişmişliğin Kurumsal Kökenleri" (Kayseri Ticaret Odası Dergisi (Ekim 2010): 50-58).
(2) Metin Under'in kitap hakkındaki yazısı, "Bin Yılın Sorusu," Newsweek Türkiye, 112 (12 Aralık 2010): 62-67 (Pdf).
(3) Şahin Alpay’ın yorumu: “Ortadoğu Niye Geri Kaldı?” Zaman, 4 Ocak, 2011.
Social and Economic Life in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul: Glimpses from Court Records
In the seventeenth century, when the modern global economy began to take shape, what institutions governed socio-economic life in the Eastern Mediterranean? Were the region’s traditional economic institutions in flux?
A ten-volume set running about 7500 pages present original historical sources that are helping to generate answers.
The culmination of a data-gathering project initiated in 2003 as part of research that led to The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, the set contains Ottoman-Turkish transliterations, along with English and modern Turkish summaries, of thousands of cases found in 15 seventeenth-century Islamic court registers from Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the commercial center of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The cases are grouped under seven topical headings:
Guilds and Guildsmen (Vol. 1), Communal Affairs of Christians and Jews (Vol. 1), Foreigners (Vol. 1), Commercial Partnerships (Vol. 2), State-Individual Relations, including Taxation (Vols. 3-4), Waqfs (Vols. 5-8), Credit Markets and Uses of Interest (Vols. 9-10).
Volumes 1-8 are in print. Volumes 9-10 will be published in the near future.
Table of contents: Volume 1
Table of contents: Volume 2
Table of contents: Volume 3
Table of contents: Volume 4
Table of contents: Volume 5
Table of contents: Volume 6
Table of contents: Volume 7
Table of contents: Volume 8
All six volumes available online through Nadirkitap.com:
Volume 1 (932 pp.)
Volume 2 (659 pp.)
Volume 3 (544 pp.)
Volume 4 (708 pp.)
Volume 5 (584 pp.)
Volume 6 (650 pp.)
