Is God in the Details? A Reexamination of the Role of Religion in Economic Growth
Journal of Applied Econometrics, 27(7), p. 1059-1075, 2012
32 Pages Posted: 3 Oct 2006 Last revised: 20 Aug 2013
Date Written: January 31, 2011
Abstract
Barro and McCleary (2003) 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.
Keywords: Economic Growth, Religion, Model Uncertainty
JEL Classification: C59, O40, Z12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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