Is God in the Details? A Reexamination of the Role of Religion in Economic Growth

Steven N. Durlauf, Andros Kourtellos () and Chih Ming Tan ()

No 613, Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University

Abstract: Barro and McCleary (2003) is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs. This paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims. We evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness. While we find that their analysis meets the standard of statistical replicability, we do not find that the results are robust to changes in their baseline statistical specification. Taken together, we conclude that their analysis cannot be taken to provide useable evidence on how religion might affect aggregate outcomes.

Keywords: Economic growth; Religion; Model Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C59 O40 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-soc
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0613

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