Does Religiosity Promote Property Rights and the Rule of Law?

Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University

Abstract: Social and cultural determinants of economic institutions and outcomes have come to the forefront of economic research. We introduce religiosity, measured as the share for which religion is important in daily life, to explain institutional quality in the form of property rights and the rule of law. Previous studies have only measured the impact of membership shares of different religions, with mixed results. We find, in a cross-country regression analysis comprising up to 112 countries, that religiosity is negatively related to our institutional outcome variables. This only holds in democracies (not autocracies), which suggests that religiosity affects the way institutions work through the political process. Individual religions are not related to our measure of institutional quality.

Keywords: Religion; religiosity; rule of law; property rights; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K11 K42 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2012-03-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-evo, nep-law, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does religiosity promote property rights and the rule of law? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Religiosity Promote Property Rights and the Rule of Law? (2012)
Working Paper: Does Religiosity Promote Property Rights and the Rule of Law? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aah:aarhec:2012-08

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