This contribution examines the role of religion as source of social trust. Going beyond the scope of the existing literature, I jointly evaluate the effect of individual religiosity and regional religious context by means of multilevel analysis. The results suggest that there is a double...

The public health literature focusing on the detrimental effects of social isolation has shown that the quantity of social connections is positively correlated with individual health. Drawing on pooled cross-sectional data, we test this hypothesis on a representative sample of the Italian...

The Indian Constitution is committed to the equality of citizens and the responsibility of the State to preserve, protect and assure the rights of minorities in matters of language, religion and culture. That is why our national leaders while framing the Constitution, emphasized the doctrine of...

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...

We suggest a methodology for identifying the implications of alternative cultural and social norms embodied by religious denomination on labour market outcomes, by estimating the differential impact of Protestantism versus Catholicism on the propensity to be an entrepreneur, on the basis of the...

Approximately 1.2% of Colombia’s GNP is spent every year on the war on drugs, but very little is known about coca farming decisions at the household level. In order to understand the decision to cultivate coca as well as that of the amount of land to use for its cultivation, we develop an...

Islamic Banking ist in aller Munde. Waehrend sich OEkonomen mit den finanztechnischen und Juristen mit den religioes-rechtlichen Eigenheiten des islamischen Finanzmarktes auseinander setzen, soll Islamic Banking hier aus wirtschaftsethischer Perspektive betrachtet werden. Anhand empirischer...

The intense debate on the effectiveness of the war on drugs contrasts with the lack of empirical evidence on its impacts. To evaluate the effectiveness of control-supply policies, we use micro data from an original survey with farmers living in a coca growing area in Colombia. We find that while...

We provide evidence on the significant effect of religiosity (measured by attendance to religious services) on reducing depression. In particular, it is found a significant negative effect of religiosity on the probability of being depressed. Findings of previous studies are extended by showing...

We investigate why female labour market participation is low in the Arab region. Utilising Akerlof and Kranton’s (2000) ‘identity economics’ approach, we show in a simple gametheoretic framework that women socialised in a traditional family environment violate their identities by taking a...