Premium
Religion, Corruption, and the Rule of Law
Author(s) -
NORTH CHARLES M.,
ORMAN WAFA HAKIM,
GWIN CARL R.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of money, credit and banking
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.763
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1538-4616
pISSN - 0022-2879
DOI - 10.1111/jmcb.12024
Subject(s) - language change , sample (material) , rule of law , control variable , econometrics , variable (mathematics) , control (management) , variables , economics , law , political science , mathematics , statistics , politics , philosophy , chemistry , mathematical analysis , linguistics , management , chromatography
In a 207‐country sample, we find that rule of law and corruption are both associated with a country's religious heritage, thereby partially explaining the correlation between religion and economic growth found in previous research. We also show that our results change when we control for some variables lacking data for all countries in the sample but that these differences are attributable to changes in sample composition rather than the effects of the control variables. Our research suggests that researchers doing cross‐country analysis should distinguish between the effects of adding a control variable and the resulting sample composition effects.