Economists now recognize that, along with physical and human capital, environmental resources should be viewed as important economic assets, which can be called natural capital . Three recent debates have emerged over the role of natural capital in economic development. First, as many ecological services are unique, does the environment have an “essential” role in sustaining human welfare, and ...

In this paper, we outline a research project to investigate whether and how spiritual capital affects the economic behavior of individuals. We define spiritual capital as a set of intangible objects in the form of rules for interacting with people, nature, and spiritual beings (God, gods, buddhas, angels, evil spirits as believed to exist by individuals and in different religions) and believed ...

According to conventional or traditional wisdom, countries that possess rich mineral deposits are fortunate. Such deposits are assets, and so are part of a country’s natural capital. Like an individual or family, the more capital and wealth a nation possesses, the richer and better off it is. In this view of the world, mining is the key that converts dormant mineral wealth into schools, homes, ...

Many political economists believe that competition among countries—or regions within them—to attract mobile capital disciplines their governments, motivating them to invest more in infrastructure, reduce waste and corruption, and spend less on non-productive public goods. The result should be convergence on business-friendly policies and clean government. The notion that mobile capital discipli...