[Part I] The leading part of this volume focuses on the role of the state in capitalist society, beginning by showing the welfare state as an historical product of the class structure of English agrarian capitalism. The second chapter indicates how, in European colonies such as in Africa,...

We investigate empirically whether political institutions or culture and religion underlie gender inequality in education. The dataset contains up to 157 countries over the 1991-2006 period. The results indicate that political institutions do not significantly influence education of girls:...

I trace the arc of my thinking about political economy and Christian theology from my early interactions with the work of Richard Whately and Frank Knight to more recent economic and theological reflections on innovation. The general theme is that life is more than economics, despite the...

There has been much study of the consequences of economic freedom but, outside of the role of political institutions, there has been little study of the determinants of economic freedom. We investigate whether religion affects economic freedom. Our cross-sectional dataset includes 137 countries...

Differences between the voting behavior of men and women have become one of the most significant issues in social science research in recent years. In this study, we examine whether there is gender gap in voting behavior in Turkey. Using European Social Survey data, we find that education level...

Usually, studies analyzing terrorism focus on the total number of casualties or attacks in a given county. However, per capita rates of terrorism are more likely to matter for individual welfare. Analyzing 214 countries from 1970 - 2014, we show that three stylized findings are overturned in...

In "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy", Robert D. Woodberry (2012) claims that the emergence of stable democracies around the world was influenced by conversionary Protestantism. While Woodberry's historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe...

This paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first econometric investigation into the role of television in the formation of political consensus in Italy. Based on probit and instrumental variables estimates, we find trust in television to be the most significant predictor of...

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies that are beneficial to gay men's quality of life by making use of a unique new cross-country dataset covering 110 countries, the Gay...

This paper finds evidence that more democratic political institutions increase trust. Second generation immigrants with ancestries from 115 countries are studied within 30 European countries. Comparing individuals born and residing in the same country, those whose father was born in a more...