IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/smu/ecowpa/705.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Values, Beliefs and Development

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffry Jacob

    (St. John’s University)

  • Thomas Osang

    (SMU)

Abstract

This paper investigates the consequences of religion for economic development. In particular, we examine whether religious attitudes, beliefs, participation and preference contribute to differences in per capita income across countries. Using a large scale international survey on values and religious behavior, we estimate both cross-section and panel data models, controlling for the “deep determinants” of development: Institutions, geography and trade. Our results indicate that religion plays an important role in economic development, but mostly in a non-linear manner. Countries with moderate religious values and behavior tend to have higher income levels than countries on both ends of the religious spectrum.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffry Jacob & Thomas Osang, 2007. "Values, Beliefs and Development," Departmental Working Papers 0705, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:smu:ecowpa:705
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ftp1.economics.smu.edu/WorkingPapers/2007/Osang/jacob_osang.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2003. "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, March.
    2. Jean-Marie Dufour, 2003. "Identification, weak instruments, and statistical inference in econometrics," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, November.
    3. Dollar, David & Kraay, Aart, 2003. "Institutions, trade, and growth : revisiting the evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3004, The World Bank.
    4. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    5. Jean‐Marie Dufour, 2003. "Identification, weak instruments, and statistical inference in econometrics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, November.
    6. Guido Tabellini, 2010. "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 677-716, June.
    7. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    8. World Bank, 2003. "World Development Indicators 2003," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13920.
    9. Dollar, David & Kraay, Aart, 2003. "Institutions, trade, and growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 133-162, January.
    10. Adrian R Pagan & Anthony D Hall, 1983. "Diagnostic tests as residual analysis," Published Paper Series 1983-1, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    11. Hall, Alastair R & Rudebusch, Glenn D & Wilcox, David W, 1996. "Judging Instrument Relevance in Instrumental Variables Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(2), pages 283-298, May.
    12. Alberto Abadie, 2006. "Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 50-56, May.
    13. McCleary, Rachel & Barro, Robert, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth across Countries," Scholarly Articles 3708464, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    14. Arthur Lewbel, 1997. "Constructing Instruments for Regressions with Measurement Error when no Additional Data are Available, with an Application to Patents and R&D," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1201-1214, September.
    15. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 2001. "Estimating Wealth Effects Without Expenditure Data—Or Tears: An Application To Educational Enrollments In States Of India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(1), pages 115-132, February.
    16. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Filmer, Deon & Pritchett, Lant, 1998. "Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data - or tears : with an application to educational enrollments in states of India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1994, The World Bank.
    18. John Shea, 1997. "Instrument Relevance in Multivariate Linear Models: A Simple Measure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 348-352, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Panibratov, Andrei & Chen, Xinchuan, 2018. "The role of informal institutions in the internationalization process of Chinese and Russian firms," Working Papers 15115, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    2. Amjad Naveed & Cong Wang, 2018. "Can religion explain cross-country differences in inequality? A global perspective," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(3), pages 481-518, March.
    3. Julie Salaber, 2007. "The Determinants of Sin Stock Returns: Evidence on the European Market," Working Papers halshs-00170219, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin Sabro, 2012. "Specification Tests with Weak and Invalid Instruments," MPRA Paper 40185, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "The Power of Positional Concerns: A Panel Analysis," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-19, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    3. Stephen Knowles & P. Dorian Owen, 2010. "Which Institutions are Good for Your Health? The Deep Determinants of Comparative Cross-country Health Status," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 701-723.
    4. Martin Strieborny & Madina Kukenova, 2016. "Investment in Relationship-Specific Assets: Does Finance Matter?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(4), pages 1487-1515.
    5. Barry Eichengreen & David Leblang, 2008. "Democracy And Globalization," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 289-334, November.
    6. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2007. "Enhanced routines for instrumental variables/GMM estimation and testing," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 667, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 05 Sep 2007.
    7. Oyèkọ́lá, Ọláyínká, 2021. "Where do people live longer?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 21-44.
    8. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2008. "The Power of Positional Concerns," CREMA Working Paper Series 2008-07, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    9. Dufour, Jean-Marie & Taamouti, Mohamed, 2007. "Further results on projection-based inference in IV regressions with weak, collinear or missing instruments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 133-153, July.
    10. Givens, David, 2013. "Defining governance matters: A factor analytic assessment of governance institutions," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 1026-1053.
    11. Balan, David J. & Knack, Stephen, 2012. "The correlation between human capital and morality and its effect on economic performance: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 457-475.
    12. Daniel L. Millimet & Thomas Osang, 2007. "Do state borders matter for U.S. intranational trade? The role of history and internal migration," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(1), pages 93-126, February.
    13. Schaffer, Mark & Kleck, Gary & Kovandzic, Tomislav, 2005. "Gun Prevalence, Homicide Rates and Causality: A GMM Approach to Endogeneity Bias," CEPR Discussion Papers 5357, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "The Power of Positional Concerns: A Panel Analysis," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-19, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    15. Asadul Islam & Dietrich K. Fausten, 2008. "Skilled Immigration and Wages in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(s1), pages 66-82, September.
    16. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin & Dufour, Jean-Marie, 2020. "Exogeneity tests, incomplete models, weak identification and non-Gaussian distributions: Invariance and finite-sample distributional theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 218(2), pages 390-418.
    17. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2007. "Enhanced routines for instrumental variables/generalized method of moments estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(4), pages 465-506, December.
    18. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    19. Chintrakarn, Pandej & Millimet, Daniel L., 2006. "The environmental consequences of trade: Evidence from subnational trade flows," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 430-453, July.
    20. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin, 2012. "On the Validity of Durbin-Wu-Hausman Tests for Assessing Partial Exogeneity Hypotheses with Possibly Weak Instruments," MPRA Paper 40184, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Development; Economics of Religion; Institutions; Openness; Geography;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion
    • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:smu:ecowpa:705. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ömer Özak (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.smu.edu/economics .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.