Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the North Caucasus is known as a politically unstable region and as a melting pot for terrorism and all kinds of criminal activity, reaching from drugtrafficking and illegal arms trade to hijacking and extortion. Furthermore, the North Caucasus is one of...

This paper explores determinants of church attendance and the formation of 'religious human capital' in Germany within a Becker-style allocation-of-time framework. The analysis is based on data derived from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Taking advantage of the longitudinal structure...

On behavioural theory basis, this article analyses whether religion influences married women in Germany in their decision to supply labour. Gender roles and accompanying attitudes toward the appropriate division of labour among spouses might differ across religious groups depending on the...

In this paper I consider how individuals allocate their time between church attendance (and other religious activities) and secular leisure activities. Moreover individuals use a cognitive style, which is either intuitive-believing or reflective-analytical. I assume that the full benefit from...

In this study we investigate the relationship between religious and charitable giving. We test how income, the tax-price of giving and the German church tax, differently affect charitable donations of church members, individuals leaving church and nonchurch members. We find crowding in between...

I analyze the interplay between culture and economic incentives in decision-making. To this end, I study birth timing decisions of second generation migrant women to France and the US. Only the probability to have three or more children increases with the home country fertility norm, whereas the...

This paper provides novel evidence on differences in health outcomes of children in religious and non-religious families in Russia. The health indicators analyzed include the subjective health status and anthropometric outcomes. The endogeneity of religiosity is accounted for. The empirical...

The Reformation provided a powerful source of legitimacy for secularization of governance and enabled the regional authorities to change the institutional structure to eliminate the inefficiencies under the prevailing (Catholic) regime. We investigate this idea in a simple model of regime change...

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...

For a panel of 122 cities observed over 300 years in medieval northern-central Italy, we document that the occurrence of an earthquake retarded institutional transition from the feudal regime to the commune (free city state) in cities where the political and the religious leaders were one and...