Is God in the details? A reexamination of the role of religion in economic growth

Barro and McCleary (2003, Religion and economic growth across countries. American Journal of Sociology 68: 760—781) 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....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied econometrics (Chichester, England) England), 2012-11, Vol.27 (7), p.1059-1075
Main Authors: Durlauf, Steven N., Kourtellos, Andros, Tan, Chih Ming
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Average
Belief & doubt
Church attendance
Econometrics
Economic growth
Economic growth models
Economic growth theories
Empirical evidence
Estimation methods
Gross domestic product
Income
Islam
Judaism
Macroeconomics
Religion
Religiosity
Religious beliefs
Statistical analysis
Studies
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Summary:Barro and McCleary (2003, Religion and economic growth across countries. American Journal of Sociology 68: 760—781) 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. Overall, their analysis generally meets the standard of statistical replicability, though not perfectly. On the other hand, we do not find that their results are robust to changes in their baseline statistical specification. When model-averaging methods are employed to integrate information across alternative statistical specifications, little evidence survives that religious variables help to predict cross-country income differences.
ISSN:0883-7252
1099-1255
DOI:10.1002/jae.1245