Religious, Civil, and Economic Freedoms: What’s the Chicken and What’s the Egg?

Christos Makridis

Journal of Economics, Management and Religion (JEMAR), 2021, vol. 02, issue 02, 1-34

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between religious liberty and economic freedom. First, three new facts emerge: (a) religious liberty has increased since 1960, but has slipped substantially over the past decade; (b) the countries that experienced the largest declines in religious liberty tend to have greater economic freedom, especially property rights; (c) changes in religious liberty are associated with changes in the allocation of time to religious activities. Second, using a combination of vector autoregressions and dynamic panel methods, improvements in religious liberty tend to precede economic freedom. Finally, increases in religious liberty have a wide array of spillovers that are important determinants of economic freedom and explain the direction of causality. Countries cannot have long-run economic prosperity and freedom without actively allowing for and promoting religious liberty.

Keywords: Economic development; economic freedom; human flourishing; religious liberty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1142/S2737436X21500011

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