This paper explores the significance of Islamic banking in Malaysia for stability in the country's economy as a whole. Neither conventional theory nor Islamic economics puts forward a systematic explanation of financial intermediation; consequently, neither is capable of identifying...

This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity, religion and education are not responsible for the increasing marital instability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce...

This study documents the size and nature of 'boy-girl' and 'Hindu-Muslim' gaps in children's school participation and attainments in India. Individual-level data from two successive rounds of the National Sample Survey suggest that considerable progress has been made in decreasing the...

Religious leaders sometimes condemn progressive social norms. In this paper, I revisit David Hume's hypothesis that secular states can "bribe" churches into adopting less strict religious doctrines. The hypothesis is difficult to test due to reverse causality: more liberal theologies may attract...

We report agent-based simulations of religiosity dynamics in a spatially dispersed population. Agents' religiosity responds to neighbors via pairwise interactions as well as via club goods effects. A simulation run is deemed fundamentalist if the final distribution contains a sizable minority of...

Fundamentalist organizations and the terrorists they spawn do not arise of a vacuum. Combating terrorism requires understanding the principles of groups’ formation, development and growth. We use economic theory to explain the creation and development of fundamentalist groups. In this paper we...

In this paper we develop a theory of “Kosher Wars” under which Rabbis (certifying authorities) compete to enhance the level of Jewish observation of their congregations. The level of observance can be seen as the Rabbi’s rents. Our rent-seeking model explains the establishment...

Using a dataset of 15,000 subjects from 32 western countries, the current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and at some stage of their lives left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as 'no religion'. A battery of explanatory variables...

This study reviews and evaluates the motives and incentives behind immigrants' religiosity, focusing on the two sides of the Atlantic - Europe and the United States. The contribution of the study is mainly empirical, trying to identify indicators for the type of incentive - whether immigrants'...

This study explores the effect of several personal religion-related variables on social behaviour, using three paradigmatic economic games: the dictator (DG), ultimatum (UG), and trust (TG) games. A large carefully designed sample of a Spanish urban adult population (N=766) is employed. From...