Timur Kuran

Introduction

Timur Kuran is Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor in Islam and the Social Sciences at Duke University. His teaching and research draw on multiple disciplines, including economics, political science, history, and legal studies.

Early Life and Education

Born in New York City, where his parents lived while graduate students at Yale, Kuran was raised from infancy in Istanbul, just off the campus of Bogazici University, where his father was president and professor of Islamic architectural history. He graduated from Robert Academy in Istanbul in 1973 and went on to study Economics at Princeton, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1977, before going to Stanford to obtain a doctorate in Economics under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow.

Career

Professor Kuran has written extensively 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, perceptions of discrimination, and the evolution of morality. His best known theoretical work is Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Harvard University Press), which deals with the repercussions of being dishonest about what one knows and wants. Since its original publication in 1995, this book has appeared also in German, Swedish, Turkish, and Chinese.

Kuran has also written on Islam and the Middle East, with an initial focus on contemporary attempts to restructure economies according to Islamic teachings. Several of his essays on this topic are included in Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press), which has been translated into Turkish and Arabic. Since the mid-1990s he has turned his attention to the conundrum of why the Middle East, which once had a high standard of living by global standards, subsequently fell behind in various realms, including economic production, organizational capability, technological creativity, democratization, and military strength.

His thesis is that the economic and educational institutions of Islam, though well-suited to the era in which they emerged, were poorly suited to a dynamic industrial economy. These institutions fostered social equilibria that reduced the likelihood of modern capitalism emerging from within Islamic civilization. His recent articles have identified obstacles involving inheritance practices, contract law, procedures of the courts, the absence of corporations, the financial system, and the delivery of social services.

From 1990 to 2008 Kuran served as editor of an interdisciplinary book series published by the University of Michigan Press, re-established in 2009 as Cambridge Studies in Economics, Cognition and Society by Cambridge University Press. He has served, or currently serves, on the editorial or advisory boards of numerous scholarly journals. He taught at University of Southern California between 1982 and 2007. From 2005 to 2007, he has been Director of USC's Institute for Economic Research on Civilizations, which he founded. In 1989-90 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; in 1996-97 he held the John Olin Visiting professorship at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago; and in 2004-05 he was Visiting Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He is also currently a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association.

Research

Four themes stand out in Timur Kuran’s works

i) Preference Falsification

According to Professor Kuran, preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. In Private Truths, Public Lies, he argues that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Among the most important of these consequences are the following:-

a) Unanticipated revolutions. “A feature shared by certain major revolutions is that they were not anticipated. Here is an explanation, which hinges on the observation that people who come to dislike their government are apt to hide their desire for change as long as the opposition seems weak. Because of this preference falsification, governments that appears unshakeable might see its support crumble following a slight surge in the opposition's apparent size, caused by events insignificant in and of them-selves. Unlikely thought the revolution may have appeared in foresight, it will in hindsight appear inevitable because its occurrence exposes a panoply of previously hidden conflicts.”. Kuran’s theory of the unpredictability of revolutions due to preference falsification cited here was first outlined in his Public Choice article “Sparks and Prairie Fires”, published in April 1989 a few months before the pattern he described for the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions was repeated in Eastern Europe. Kuran then published a paper “Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989” in World Politics in October 1991, analyzing the changes in the former Soviet bloc and further developed the implications of preference falsification for the predictability of revolutions in “The East European Revolution of 1989: Is it surprising we were surprised?” in the American Economic Review in 1991, and chapters 15 and 16 of Private Truths, Public Lies

b) Ethnification Cascades. In “Ethnic Norms and their Transformation through Reputational Cascades” in the Journal of Legal Studies, Kuran analyzes the "ethnification" process through which ethnic norms become more demanding. The argument hinges on interdependencies among individual behaviors. These allow one person's adjustments to trigger additional adjustments through a reputational cascade-a self-reinforcing process by which people motivated to protect and enhance their reputations induce each other to step up their ethnic activities. According to the analysis, a society exhibiting low ethnic activity generates social forces tending to preserve that condition; but if these forces are overcome, the result may be massive ethnification. One implication is that similarly developed societies may exhibit very different levels of ethnic activity. Another is that ethnically based hatreds constitute by-products of ethnification rather than its main-spring

c) Caste System and Slavery. In chapters 8 and 12 of Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran demonstrates the role of preference falsification in generating acceptance of a belief system amongst oppressed groups which justifies their own subordination, and thereby helps to maintain social relations such as slavery and the caste system. “Why would latrine cleaners participate in the ostracism of a fellow latrine cleaner seeking a better life? Given that successful defections would undermine the caste system, one might think that they would encourage anticaste behavior. But punishing offenders is an effective way to reaffirm one’s loyalty to the established order. By ostracizing a peer who has taken a better job, the latrine cleaners can protect their own personal and collective reputations….the subjugated castes contributed to the system’s persistence through their willingness to uphold caste regulations and to sanction their nonconformist peers”.

d) Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation. In his 1999 article of the same title co-authored with Cass Sunstein, Kuran argues that “an availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs – activists who manipulate the content of public discourse- strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes bring harm, which suggests the need for safeguards”

ii) Islam and Economic Underdevelopment

Kuran notes that though economically advanced in the Middle Ages, the Middle East was exhibiting clear signs of economic backwardness by 1700. The reason for this transformation in his view is that key components of the region’s legal infrastructure stagnated as Western Europe experienced economic modernization. Among the institutions that he identifies as generating evolutionary bottlenecks are the Islamic law of inheritance, which inhibited capital accumulation; the absence in Islamic law of the concept of a corporation, which hindered the exploitation of advanced technologies; and the waqf (vakıf), which, for all its advantages, locked vast resources into unproductive organizations for delivering social services. These obstacles to economic development were largely overcome through radical reforms initiated in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, for Kuran, traditional Islamic law remains a factor in the Middle East’s ongoing economic disappointments. The lasting consequences of traditional Islamic law include the weakness of the region’s private economic sectors and its human capital deficiency.

iv) Islam and Political Underdevelopment

Recently, Professor Kuran has turned his attention to the puzzle of why most countries of the Islamic Middle East have autocratic regimes. One of his most recent papers is entitled “The Rule of Law in Islamic Thought and Practice: A Historical Perspective”. In it, he draws three conclusions – firstly that various early Islamic institutions were meant, in some respect, to serve one or more principles of the rule of law, secondly, that the institutions in questions lost effectiveness over time and thirdly that the relevant Islamic institutions are now out of date.

Publications

A. Books

2D. Arabic translation: Al Islam Wal Thara’ Al Malo’un: Ma’zeq Al Iktissad Al Islami (by Salah Abdul Haq), with a preface for Arabic readers (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2008). 2C. South Asian trade edition (New Delhi: Tulika Press, 2006), xviii+194 pp. 2B. Turkish translation: İslâm’ın Ekonomik Yüzleri (by Yasemin Tezgiden), with an original introduction (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 303 pp. 2A. Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), xviii + 194 pp.

1E. Chinese translation (by Ding Zhen Huan and Ou Yang Wu): Pian Hao Wei Zhuang De She Hui Hou Guo (Changchun: Changchun Publishing House, 2005), 287 pp. 1D. Turkish translation (by Alp Tümertekin), with an additional preface: Yalanla Yaşamak: Tercih Çarpıtmasının Toplumsal Sonuçları (Istanbul: YKY, 2001), 498 pp. 1C. Swedish translation (by Margareta Eklöf): Privat Sanning, Offentlig Lögn (Stockholm: City University Press, 1999), 424 pp. 1B. German translation (by Ekkehard Schöller), with an additional preface: Leben in Lüge: Präferenzverfälschungen und Ihre Gesellschaftlichen Folgen (Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr, 1997), xviii + 462 pp. 1A. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), xv + 423 pp.

B. Articles and Essays

“The Scale of Entrepreneurship in Middle Eastern History: Inhibitive Roles of Islamic Institutions,” in Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Economic History, ed. William J. Baumol, David S. Landes, and Joel Mokyr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), in press. “Modern Islam and the Economy,” in New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 6, gen. ed. Michael Cook, vol. ed. Robert Hefner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), in press. (with William H. Sandholm) “Cultural Integration and Its Discontents.” Review of Economic Studies, 75 (2008): 201-228 (with Edward McCaffery) “Sex Differences in the Acceptability of Discrimination.” Political Research Quarterly, 61 (2008): 228-238. “The Absence of the Corporation in Islamic Law: Origins and Persistence.” American Journal of Comparative Law, 53 (July 2005): 785-834. “The Logic of Financial Westernization in the Middle East.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 56 (April 2005): 593-615 (with Edward McCaffery) “Expanding Discrimination Research: Beyond Ethnicity and to the Web.” Social Science Quarterly, 85 (September 2004): 713-30. Reprint in The Development Economics Reader, ed. Giorgio Secondi (London: Routledge, 2008):107-25. Chinese translation: “Zhong Dong Di Qu He Yi Jing Ji Luo Hou: Jing Ji Ting Zhi De Li Shi Ji Li.” Kai Fang Shi Dai (Open Times), 183 (March 2006): 89-105. Arabic translation: “Asbāb Takhalluf al-Sharq al-Awsat Iqtisadiyyan Al-Āliyyat al-Tārikhiyyah lil-Rukūd al-Mu‘assasatiy.” http://www.mishahalhurriyya.org, April 2006. Italian translation: “Perché il Medio Oriente èEconomicamente Arretrato: Meccanismi Storici di Stagnazione Istituzionale.” QA: Rivista dell’ Associazione Manlio Rossi-Doria, 2005: 45-73. “Why the Middle East Is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (Summer 2004): 71-90. “The Economic Ascent of the Middle East=s Religious Minorities: The Role of Islamic Legal Pluralism.” Journal of Legal Studies, 33 (June 2004): 475-515. Chinese translation:”Jing Ji Fa Zhan De Wen hua Zhang Ai: Jing Chang Bei Kua Da, Tong Chang Shi Duan Zan De.” Kai Fang Shi Dai (Open Times), 184 (April 2007): 72-88. “Cultural Obstacles to Economic Development: Often Overstated, Usually Transitory,” in Culture and Public Action: Understanding the Role of Culture and Development Policy in an Unequal World, ed. Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 115-37. Reprint in Historical Methods in the Social Sciences, vol. 4, ed. John Hall and Joseph Bryant (New York: Sage, 2005), pp. 45-82. “The Islamic Commercial Crisis: Institutional Roots of Economic Underdevelopment in the Middle East.” Journal of Economic History, 63 (June 2003): 414-46. “Islamic Redistribution Through Zakat: Historical Record and Modern Realities,” in Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts, ed. Michael Bonner, Mine Ener, and Amy Singer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 275-93. “The Provision of Public Goods under Islamic Law: Origins, Impact, and Limitations of the Waqf System,” Law and Society Review, 35: 4 (2001): 841-897. Turkish translation: “OsmanlıLonca Teşkilâtı Üzerinde İslâmî Etkiler,” in Güler Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, vol. 3 (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 2000), pp. 97-112. (With Cass R. Sunstein), “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation,” Stanford Law Review, 51 (April 1999): 683-768. “Ethnic Norms and Their Transformation through Reputational Cascades,” Journal of Legal Studies, 27 (Summer 1998, pt. 2): 623-59. “Moral overload and its alleviation,” in Avner Ben-Ner and Louis Putterman (eds.), Economics, Values, and Organization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 231-66. “Social mechanisms of dissonance reduction,” in Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg (eds.), Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 147-71 “The genesis of Islamic economics: A chapter in the politics of Muslim identity,” Social Research, 64 (Summer 1997): 301-338. “The discontents of Islamic economic morality,” American Economic Review, 86 (May 1996): 438-442 “Islamic economics and the Islamic subeconomy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9 (Fall 1995): 155-73 "The inevitability of future revolutionary surprises,” American Journal of Sociology, 100 (May 1995): 1528-51. “Religious economics and the economics of religion,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 149 (December 1994): 769-775. “The unthinkable and the unthought,” Rationality and Society, 5 (October 1993): 473-505. “The economic impact of Islamic fundamentalism,” in M. Marty and S. Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 302-341. “Fundamentalisms and the economy,” in M. Marty and S. Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 289-301 “Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics, 44 (October 1991): 7-48. “The East European Revolution of 1989: Is it surprising that we were surprised?” American Economic Review, 81 (May 1991): 121-125. “Private and public preferences,” Economics and Philosophy, 6 (April 1990): 1-26. “On the notion of economic justice in contemporary Islamic thought,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 21 (May 1989): 171-191. “Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution,” Public Choice, 61 (April 1989): 41-74. “The tenacious past: Theories of personal and collective conservatism,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 10 (September 1988): 143-171. “Preference falsification, policy continuity and collective conservatism,” Economic Journal, 97 (September 1987): 642-665. “The economic system in contemporary Islamic thought: Interpretation and assessment,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (May 1986): 135-164. “Asymmetric price rigidity and inflationary bias,” American Economic Review, 73 (June 1983): 373-382.

Timur Kuran, a professor of Economics and Political Science and the Gorter Family Chair in Islamic Studies at Duke University, is an authority on the economics of the Middle East. He recently created the USC Institute for Economic Research on Civilizations [1].

Before ariving at Duke University in the fall of 2007, Kuran served as Professor of Economics and Law, as well as King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Having received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1982, Kuran is an editor of the book series, Economics, Cognition, and Society, published by the University of Michigan Press since 1989.

Further recent works are Islam and Mammon (2004) and an article on the same theme Why the Middle East Is Economically Underdeveloped: Historical Mechanisms of Institutional Stagnation, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2004.

External links

• Prof. Kuran's Profile at Duke