The Catholic Church has been making saints for centuries, typically in a two-stage process featuring beatification and canonization. We analyze determinants of rates of beatification and canonization (for non-martyrs) over time and across six world regions. The research uses a recently assembled...

Barro and McCleary look at differential investment in education across types of Protestantism. They find that literacy is enhanced more by Mainline Protestant schools then by Other Protestant schools and that Catholic schools have the weakest relation with literacy, likely because the ouster of...

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, since becoming Pope Francis in March 2013, is focusing on martyrdom in the Roman Catholic Church.

Barro and McCleary interpret the lowering of saint-making criteria combined with a geographic broadening of candidates as an intentional effort on the part of the Catholic Church hierarchy to universalize its relevance. More specifically, the Catholic Church - the world's longest-lasting...

Economic and political developments affect religiosity, and the extent of religious participation and beliefs influence economic performance and political institutions. We study these two directions of causation in a broad cross-country panel that includes survey information over the last 20...

Two important theories of religiosity are the secularization hypothesis and the religion-market model. According to the former theory, economic development reduces religious participation and beliefs. According to the latter theory, religiosity depends on the presence of a state religion,...

We have constructed a new and substantial data set from 1939 to 2004 on U.S.-based private voluntary organizations (PVOs) engaged in international relief and development. The universe comprises PVOs registered with the federal government (U.S. Agency for International Development since the early...

For 188 independent countries in 2000, 72 had no state religion in the years 2000, 1970, and 1900; 58 had a state religion at all three dates; and 58 had some kind of transition. Among the 58 transitional countries, 12 had two transitions, 4 of which (former Soviet Republics in Asia) involved two...

Religion has a two-way interaction with political economy. With religion viewed as a dependent variable, a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs. With religion viewed as an independent variable, a key issue is how...