Iyer S., Kitson M. and Toh B. (2005) Social capital, economic growth and regional development, Regional Studies 39 , 1015-1040. This paper examines the relationships between social capital, economic performance and regional development, and it stresses the complexity and variability across space of such relationships. In contrast to the conventional macroeconomic approach of using indicators of social capital in formal growth models, what is required is a more nuanced analysis that evaluates the impact of social capital by region. To support this argument, the paper examines social capital data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey 2000, which provides social capital data for more than 24�000 individuals living in 40 communities, grouped into nine regions, in the USA. These data show remarkable diversity of social capital by region. Multivariate analysis is used to examine the impact of economic and social determinants of social capital and shows that education is important for nearly all indicators of social capital, and that ethnic diversity is associated with lower levels of social capital. Furthermore, analysis indicates the need to distinguish between local and non-local forms of social capital. The paper concludes by suggesting that future analysis of social capital will benefit from a more region-specific approach towards examining its development and impacts.Social capital, Regional growth, Ethnic diversity, USA, Valeur de l'interaction sociale, Croissance regionale, Diversite ethnique, Etats-Unis, Sozialkapital, regionales Wachstum, ethnische Vielfalt, USA, Capital social, Desarrollo regional, Diversidad etnica, Estados Unidos, JEL classifications: O51, R11, Z13,

The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. This survey serves two purposes—it is backward-looking in that it traces the historical and sociological origins of this field, and it is forward-looking in that it examines the insights and research themes that are offered by economists to investigate religion globally in the modern world. Several factors have influenced the economics of religion: (1) new developments in theoretical models including spatial models of religious markets and evolutionary models of religious traits; (2) empirical work that addresses innovatively econometric identification in examining causal influences on religious behavior; (3) new research in the economic history of religion that considers religion as an independent, rather than a dependent, variable; and (4) more studies of religion outside the Western world. Based on these developments, this paper discusses four themes— first, secularization, pluralism, regulation, and economic growth; second, religious markets, club goods, differentiated products, and networks; third, identification including secular competition and charitable giving; and fourth, conflict and cooperation in developing societies. In reviewing this paradoxically ancient yet burgeoning field, this paper puts forward unanswered questions for scholars of the economics of religion to reflect upon in years to come. (JEL D64, D72, L31, O43, Z12, Z13)

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This article investigates two hypotheses put forward to explain the effect of religion on the decision to use contraception in India. The first hypothesis is the "pure religion effect," that the intellectual content of religion influences contraceptive behavior. This hypothesis is explored by examining women's views on the theological content of Islam and Hinduism in relation to birth control, provided by a sample of 186 rural Hindu and Muslim women from southern India. The second hypothesis examined is the "characteristics" hypothesis, that religious differences in contraceptive adoption are explained by socioeconomic characteristics of religious groups. This is tested by a logit model that shows that there is no statistically significant difference between Hindus and Muslims in the effect of religion on contraceptive adoption, after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. Taken together, the qualitative and quantitative findings have significant implications for religious groups and for population policies in India.Even as the population of India surpassed the one billion milestone in the year 2000, the research that has examined recent fertility trends (Dharmalingam and Morgan 1996; Säävälä 1999) has not taken into account adequately the causes of religious differentials in fertility found among subgroups of the population, such as between Hindus and Muslims. This article evaluates whether religion in India influences one proximate determinant of fertility-the decision to use contraception-even after controlling for the impact of other socioeconomic factors that influence contraceptive use. The first section puts forward why we should care about religion and contraception in India in the context of research on Hinduism, Islam, and contraceptive behavior. The next section describes the data and methods used to investigate this issue empirically. To explore the relationship specifically between religion and contraception, a detailed micro-level data set was collected in five villages and the town of Ramanagaram in Ramanagaram taluk in the south Indian state of Karnataka. This data set consists of detailed demographic information on a sample of rural Hindu and Muslim women in order to understand the relationship between their adherence to religion and the decision to use contraception, a relationship that is notoriously difficult to unravel in fieldwork. This information is presented in the third section. Next is an outline of a binomial logit model of the socioeconomic and religious determinants of contraceptive use for the sample. Results of this estimation follow and then the implications of the quantitative and qualitative findings are discussed for state-level population policies in India. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT RELIGION AND CONTRACEPTION?There are two hypotheses that propose certain links between religion and contraceptive adoption; these are the "pure religion effect" hypothesis-that the intellectual content of religion or theology affects contraceptive use; and the "characteristics" hypothesis-th...

This paper investigates the effect of jobs reservation on improving the economic opportunities to persons belonging to India"s Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). Using employment data from the 55 th NSS round we estimate the probabilities of different social groups in India being in one of three categories of economic status: own account workers; regular salaried or wage workers; casual wage labourers. We use these probabilities to decompose the difference between group X and forward caste Hindus in the proportions of their members in regular salaried or wage employment. This decomposition allows us to attribute a proportion of this difference to "attribute" differences" between group X and forward caste Hindus, the remainder being due to "coefficient" differences. We measure the effects of positive discrimination in boosting the proportions of ST/SC persons in regular salaried employment and the discriminatory bias against Muslims who do not benefit from such policies. We conclude that the boost provided by jobs reservation policies was around 5 percentage points. We also conclude that an alternative, and more effective, way of raising the proportion of men, from the SC/ST groups, in regular salaried or wage employment would be to improve their employment-related attributes.