Jean-Philippe Platteau, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Research on the Economics of Development, University of Namur (Belgium), speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Jeffrey Nugent speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Metin CoÅŸgel speaks at the The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Molly Greene speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Naomi Lamoreaux speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Ramzi Rouighi speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Richard Swedberg speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Robert Woodberry speaks at The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Ron Harris, Professor of Law and Legal History, School of Law, Tel Aviv University, speaks about the evolution of commercial institutions. Part of the The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

Said Arjomand, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, talks about Islamic Law, Administration & Public Finance. Part of the The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference.

The purpose of this conference is to make progress toward identifying and isolating the effects of religion, cultures and legal systems on the economic trajectories of civilizations. The participants belong to several disciplines and they vary greatly in geographic emphasis. The civilizations to be studied comparatively include those of East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Contexts to be emphasized include commercial organizations, public finance, state formation, property rights and industrial organizations. The conference is co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.