Personal liberties, religiosity, and effort

Joan Esteban (), Gilat Levy and Laura Mayoral

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this paper, we study the role of religiosity in influencing the choice of labor effort. Many religions promote restrictions on personal liberties such as divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage, often regulated by law. We assume that the higher the degree of religiosity of an individual, the less he enjoys such personal liberties, and the less he likes to be in a society which allows them, while seculars enjoy such liberties. By standard consumer theory, the differential valuation induced by religiosity influences individual decisions on other dimensions as well, notably labour supply. We show empirically that this nexus holds and that the size of the effect is large. Specifically, we construct an index of personal liberties and find solid evidence in support of the joint effect of religiosity and liberties on labor effort. Our empirical results indicate that religiosity interacted with the legal level of liberties has a significant and strong negative effect on labor supply and that increases in the cap on liberties have a negative effect on the labor supply of the religious individuals and positive for the secular.

Keywords: Religiosity; Personal Liberties; Labor supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in European Economic Review, 1, November, 2019, 120. ISSN: 0014-2921

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101594/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Personal liberties, religiosity, and effort (2019)
Working Paper: Personal Liberties, Religiosity, and Effort (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:101594

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().