In Times of Stress, Can Religion Serve as Insurance? - New York Times

Virginia Postrel:

Economists are increasingly interested in the role of such networks in economic life. They want to understand "the way that an individual's social connections somehow translate into an economically valuable tool," Rajeev Dehejia, a Columbia University economist currently visiting at Harvard, said in an interview.

Difficult to summarize more than Postrel already has. Read the whole thing. Another source for the Postrel's column here.