Preferences, including preferences for children, are shaped during the formative years of childhood. It is therefore essential to include exposure to religious practice during childhood in an attempt to establish a link between religiosity and fertility. This path has not been explored in the...

Data from the Austrian Family and Fertility Survey are used to examine for the first time the contemporary relationship between religion and fertility in first unions in Austria. Although Austria is a Catholic country, results from a Poisson hurdle model show that both women s denominational...

Economic theory, applied economic modeling and econometric methods offer advantageous tools for analyzing numerous organizations, institutions and social contexts which are not inherently downright economical by nature, as religious markets. In contemporary rational choice religious market...

Religion as a determinant of individuals’ behavior has only recently found its way in the economic literature. In this analysis, four waves of ISSP-data covering the time between 1991 and 2002 are used to examine the relationship between religion and attitudes towards working mothers across...

This paper explores a highly controversial issue: while most European countries are undergoing a clear and well-documented process of secularization, the governments of these countries widely support religious institutions. The arguments put forward by the median voter seem insufficient to...

Following Max Weber’s seminal work, much recent work has turned to religious values to explain socio-economic developments. We present a test of Weber’s original thesis that addresses fundamental limitations of previous research. A novel method that builds on happiness research is used to...

This paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income. The violation of the homogeneity assumption would have two consequences. First, results based on country studies might not be applicable to other...

This paper explores the effect of religious observance and affiliation to the dominant religion (Catholicism) on trust in institutions, towards others and market attitudes. The analysis is performed using a Latin American database of twenty thousand respondents from 2004 by means of ordered...

This paper attempts to explain several empirical findings regarding religion. The main one is between religion and the fear of death. Some empirical evidence indicates moderately religious individuals fear death more than either atheists or extremely religious individuals. The model also...

This paper focusses on the insurance role of religion in buffering the well-being impact of stressful life events, and the ensuing economic and social implications. Using two large-scale European data sets, we show that the religious enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction, and that religion...