In common anti-immigrant rhetoric, concerns are raised that immigrants bring diseases with them to the host country that threaten the health of the resident population. In reality, extensive empirical research over several decades and across multiple regions and host countries has documented...

Die Kirchen fordern immer wieder eine gerechtere Verteilung ein. Bei der Besteuerung ihrer eigenen Mitglieder weichen sie jedoch regelmäßig von der durch den Einkommensteuertarif vorgegebenen durchgängigen Progression ab: bei der Kirchensteuer gibt es regional unterschiedliche Kappungssätze....

We model religious faith as a "demand for beliefs," following the logic of the Pascalian wager. We then demonstrate how an experimental intervention can exploit standard elicitation techniques to measure religious belief by varying prizes associated with making choices contrary to one's belief...

The Catholic sex abuse scandals reduced both membership and religiosity in the Catholic Church. Because government spending on welfare may substitute for the religious provision of social services, we consider whether this plausibly exogenous decline in religiosity affected several measures of...

Recent studies analyzing the effects of religion on various economic, social, health and political outcomes have been largely associational. Although some attempts have been made to establish causation using instrument variable (IV) or difference-in-difference (DID) methods, the instruments and...

J11; J15; Z12; Z13 </AbstractSection> Copyright Garcia-Muñoz and Neuman; licensee Springer. 2013

The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at...

We exploit information on compulsory schooling reforms in 11 European countries, implemented mostly in the 1960s and 70s, to identify the impact of education on religious adherence and religious practices. Using micro data from the European Social Survey, conducted in various years between 2002...