Why is African financial system less developed in general and how can it impact the real economy? Is Islamic finance development instrumental for inclusive and pro-poor financial system in Africa? Does it matter in improvement of financial development impact on GDP per capita in particular? Are...

Do variations in the degree of religiosity across countries translate into predictable differences in cross-country growth experiences? We apply a model averaging procedure to investigate the empirical robustness of linkages between religiosity and growth when other fundamental growth...

The hypothesis that the coefficients on variables of religious affiliation are jointly equal to zero can frequently be rejected at conventional levels of statistical significance (i.e., religion matters), but no robust relationship between adherence to major world religions and national economic...

Barro and McCleary (2003) is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs. This paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims. We evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness. While we find...

This article reflects the renewed interest of economics and the social science discipline in value systems and religion. The World Values Survey provided a data framework of global value change, whose quantitative results led members of the economic profession, most notably, Barro, 2004 to...

A fundamental question about the determinants of civil conflict is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary tastes of 130,000 people living in 61 nations...