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In an era of increasing economic liberalization, much has been written on the challenges facing alternative trade movements. Religion is often overlooked in such research, and I examine how the faith identity of one set of actors influenced their involvement in the Central American coffee trade. On the basis of ethnographic research in Nicaragua, I examine how religious networks, ethics, and values shaped the economic behaviors of ah evangelical Christian coffee network. Ultimately, I find religion had a mixed impact. Local networks brought actors together in a common mission for economic justice, although transnational connections mattered little beyond providing aid. Although religious ethics promoted a sense of fairness, more radical was a focus on transparency, which altered economic relationships among those in the coffee chain. Finally, actors leveraged their spiritual vision to challenge market dynamics and redefine the coffee product, although this vision both constrained and advanced efforts toward true empowerment of farmers. En una era de liberalizacion economica en aumento, se ha escrito mucho sobre los desafios que enfrentan los movimientos para un intercambio comercial alternativo. La religion se echa a un lado en estudios sobre la globalizacion. En este articulo examino como la identidad religiosa de un grupo de participantes influyo en su involucramiento en el comercio del cafe en America Central. Haciendo uso de la etnografia, examino como las redes religiosas, la etica y los valores han impactado los comportamientos economicos de una red de cafetaleros en Nicaragua. Como resultado, he encontrado que la religion tuvo un impacto mixto. Las redes locales unieron a varios protagonistas en una mision comun para la justicia economica, porque, aparte de dar ayuda financiera, a las conexiones transnacionales les importaba poco lo demas. Mientras que la etica religiosa ha promovido un sentido de justicia, el tema de la transparencia ha sido el foco mas radical, lo que altero las relaciones economicas entre los del sector cafetalero. Por ultimo, aunque la vision espiritual intento desafiar la dinamica del mercado y redefinir al cafe como producto, esta vision restringia y aumentaba los esfuerzos para un verdadero empoderamiento de los agricultores., ********** In a small conference room in El Salvador, coffee producers listened to the conversion testimony of a successful businessman. The coffee exporter was sharing his story not with coreligionists [...]

In recent decades there has developed a veritable cottage industry of commentary, criticism and reiteration of so-called secularization theory. I will not delve here into the details of what has [...]

Despite interest in the influence of religion on economic activity by early economists like Adam Smith, modern economists have done little research on the subject. In light of the apparent religious fervor in many parts of the global economy, economists' seeming lack of interest in studying how religious cultures enhance or retard the globalization of economic activity is especially surprising. This article makes a contribution toward filling this void by examining how religion affects international trade. Specifically, we examine whether the sharing of religious cultures enables the formation of exchange networks that can overcome the failure or nonexistence of other social and economic institutions necessary for completing complex international transactions. We apply an expanded gravity model of international trade to control for a variety of factors that determine trade, and we use two recently developed regression methods, scaled OLS and nonlinear least squares, to exploit the model to its fullest. We find that the sharing of Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Eastern Orthodox Catholic, and Protestant cultures by people in different countries has a significantly positive influence on bilateral trade, all other things equal. The sharing of Roman Catholic culture has a significantly negative influence on bilateral trade, and the sharing of Islamic and Judaic cultures neither promotes nor discourages international exchange. These results suggest that some religious cultures are more conducive than others for forming international trade networks.

Despite the high visibility of religiously charged international social conflicts, the unique role of religion often is overlooked in social science research and theory. Some studies ignore religion, others conflate religion with other identities. Virtually all lack adequate data. We respond to these deficiencies by testing a theory-driven model of a particular form of social conflict, religious persecution. We investigate the proposition that religious regulation leads to religious persecution. Using measures coded from the 2003 International Religious Freedom Reports, we consider how both social regulation and government regulation of religion in 143 countries affect the level of religious persecution. We also consider and test competing hypotheses, particularly Huntington's clash-of-civilizations thesis. We find strong support for the religious economies arguments and only limited support for the clash-of-civilizations thesis and other competing arguments.

Influence of religion on economic performance and vice versa is examined.

This paper examines the role of religious faith or spirituality in the work lives of low-income mothers of young children, based on forty-four in-depth interviews. Previous research on higher income workers shows that the primary role of religious faith or spirituality with regard to work is to imbue work with a greater sense of purpose and meaning. My study suggests that for very low-income mothers, the primary role is not to contribute meaning but rather to aid in surviving the low-wage service sector workplace. The paper discusses implications for faith-based social services and for future research., INTRODUCTION A 2003 report by the Gallup organization and the University of Pennsylvania notes a "surprisingly high" level of spirituality in the United States. In the poll, six out of […]

Research on the relationship between religious commitment and business ethics has produced widely varying results and made the impact of such commitment unclear. This study presents an empirical investigation based on a questionnaire survey of business managers and professionals in the United States yielding a database of 1234 respondents. Respondents evaluated the ethical acceptability of 16 business decisions. Findings varied with the way in which the religion variable was measured. Little relationship between religious commitment and ethical judgment was found when responses were compared on the basis of broad faith categories--Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other religions, and no religion. However, respondents who indicated that religious interests were of high or moderate importance to them demonstrated a higher level of ethical judgment (less accepting of unethical decisions) than others in their evaluations. Evangelical Christians also showed a higher level of ethical judgment. KEY WORDS: business ethics, ethical issues, ethical judgment, evangelical christian, interactionist perspective, religious beliefs, religion and business ethics, religious commitment, religious traditions

An economic study of how religious attitudes and practices affect an economy implies an interaction of institutions with religion. The logic followed is similar to that of Max Weber, who argued that religious belief and practice affect other attitudes which in turn affect economic decisions.

This study of how religion affects economic attitudes finds that in general, religious beliefs correlated to 'good' economic attitudes. While it is difficult to generalize, the authors conclude that Christian religions are more positively associated with attitudes that contribute to economic growth.

This paper introduces spatial-location models into the economics of religion. We offer a new explanation for the observed tendency of state (monopoly) churches to locate toward the `low-tension' end of the `strictness continuum'; obtained through the conjunction of `benevolent preferences' (denominations care about the aggregate utility of members) and asymmetric costs of going to a more or less strict church than one prefers. We derive implications regarding the relationship between religious strictness and membership. Religious market interactions and asymmetric costs of membership, highlight new explanations for some well-established stylised facts, opening the way to new empirical comparisons with more traditional explanations.

This article examines the relationship between the economy and religious transformation in neolithic societies in the Near East. The authors, analyzing archaeological evidence from 40 ancient sites and finding economic surplus preceded several religious artifacts, conclude economic change helped shape religious ideas and social institutions.

Anthropological and sociological literature points to the importance of religion as a basis for understanding the diverse nature of Britain's South Asian population. Using a rare quantitative source, the 1994 National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, and against a backdrop of relative neglect by quantitative social scientists, this article considers the religious dimension to observed differences in economic activity among South Asians. The analysis reports substantial differences between religious sub-groups (by age and sex) across a range of key measures, including: differences in the proportion who are economically active; differences in the proportion of the economically active who successfully gain employment; among the employed, differences in the type of jobs held and in reported income. The analysis suggests a more complex picture than the Muslim/non-Muslim dichotomy often inferred from analysis using conventional ethnic group classifications, with notable differences between Indian Sikhs and Hindus, and between Indian Muslims and Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. Keywords: Religion; South Asian; economic activity; employment; income; survey.

The paper uses the fortunes of religion in the Nordic and Baltic States to identify weaknesses in the supply-side model of religious behaviour promoted by Stark, Finke and Iannaccone. Changes in religious observance in the Nordic countries over the twentieth century, and comparisons between them, contradict a number of supply-side propositions. Comparisons between the Baltic states similarly show no support for supply-side claims. Instead both clusters suggest that the fate of religion owes more to its links with ethnicity, national consciousness and national conflict and to the theology and ecclesiology of the religion in question than to issues of state regulation.

The economics of religion has expanded into a remarkable body of research since its beginning during 1970s. Such dramatic expansion can be greatly attributed to the inclusion of economic approach within the sociology of religion. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, several articles were published which tackle various issues concerning the economics of religion such as the economic consequences of religion and the socioeconomic correlates of sect membership.

Because Jewish ethnicity and religion do not necessarily coincide, the income advantage associated with Jewish identity can be separated into its ethnic and religious components. We estimate the impact of Jewish ethnicity and religion on household income in 1969 and 1989. In both years, ethnically Jewish households had a considerable income advantage over other non-Hispanic White households. This advantage appears to have persisted even among households without full-time workers. Mixed-ethnicity households (those with both Jewish-born and non-Jewish workers) had a conspicuous advantage in 1969 but not in 1989. While religion brought an additional income advantage to Reform, Conservative, and nondenominational Jews, Orthodoxy was associated with a relative disadvantage. Orthodox Judaism appears to impede economic attainment, perhaps by isolating its adherents from the social and economic networks established by the broader Jewish community.

Moral philosopher Adam Smith posited that religion and philosophy are key in creating a society's structure. Both result from thought, with religion providing stability through the acceptance of a perceived order, and philosophy providing tranquillity through the acceptance of an understanding of value. While religion fosters the division of labor, philosophy offers mental occupation as an alternative from the work of the physical world.

INTRODUCTION In ordinary markets, an increase in the variety of products results in an increase in total market sales, ceteris paribus. A number of researchers have begun analyzing the 'religion' [...]

Modern capitalism is a self-transforming dynamic that proliferates market niches, new products, and techniques. The industrial revolution could take place only in the context of preexisting agricultural capitalism; that, in turn, required a breakout from the obstacles constituted by agrarian-coercive societies. Organizational conditions necessary for self-sustaining capitalist growth included markets not only for commodities but for all factors of production (land, labor, and capital), combined under control of entrepreneurs motivated by an economic ethic of future-oriented calculation and investment. Weber was mistaken in holding that the capitalist breakthrough occurred only in Christian Europe. I propose a neo-Weberian model in which the initial breakout from agrarian-coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religious organizations, with monasteries acting as the first entrepreneurs. The model is illustrated by the case of Buddhism in late medieval Japan. The leading sector of monastic capitalism spread into the surrounding economy through religious movements of mass proselytization which narrowed the gap between clergy and laity. Confiscation of Buddhist property at the transition to the Tokugawa period transferred the capitalist dynamic to the secular economy of an agricultural mass market, opening the way for a distinctive Japanese path through the industrial revolution.

Article seeks to develop a joint theory of religion and economic development, building on the initial ideas set out in Timur Kuran's article 'Islam and Underdevelopment: An Old Puzzle Revisited'. It has already been suggested that economic development can be influenced by religion, but Kuran makes these factors interrelated by suggesting that economic forces can also influence the interpretations of religious doctrines. A joint theory can be developed by using a dynamical systems perspective.

The development of monotheism among ancient Israelites can be analyzed from an economic and legal point of view. Rules of worship have been set out in Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Numbers and they can be viewed in terms of rational self interest of priests and worshippers. The development of strategy in the religious services market helps throw light on why animal sacrifices were important and why some religions were seen as competitors and others merged.

An empirical study based on the research efforts of F. Glahe and F. Vorhies uses macroeconomic data to measure the influence of religion as transmitted through both public and private institutions upon economic performance. Various US Judeo-Christian populations and economic performance by state are perceived differently. Reports show the existence of significant interrelationships between religion variables and economic performance.

Local Religious Beliefs and Mutual Fund Risk-Taking Behaviors (p. 1779) Tao Shu, Johan Sulaeman, P. Eric Yeung Do local religious beliefs affect mutual fund risk-taking behaviors? The authors suggest that [...]

Religious groups throughout the world have sought to affect economic policy and Islamic economics has made most progress in this direction. There is no homogeneity even within one branch of religion, with differences within schools finding their inspiration from Islam. Religious practice and behavior can also be seen in terms of supply and demand, which build a picture of different economic aspects of religion. Efforts to impose religion on economics tend to be made with no effort to understand economics, while economists do not seek to change religions but rather to understand them.

Economic science can be used to understand biblical texts. It is firstly a way of understanding the rhetorical presentation of the contents of the Bible, and secondly the Bible itself helped Iron Age societies organise themselves to achieve economic efficiency. An oral culture can more easily transmit information through stories which use economy of meaning, as told in the Bible. The book of Judges is a useful source of norms within the Bible and these norms could be used in societies without national governments.

Religious conversion can go together with social change in general as norms are questioned and status relationships alter. Changes in inheritance practices in religious law also have economic significance. Islamic law may run counter to modern notions of flexibility, but was an improvement on the lack of an institutional framework to regulate trade which previously existed in Africa before it was introduced. Religious norms need to be flexible if they are to help foster economic growth.

Economics has expanded to include a number of issues such as health, education, and religion. Religious behavior can be seen in terms of rational choice and faith can be viewed in terms of human capital. The clergy have been portrayed as producers of religious goods. Positive externalities are associated with religious participation while stigma can be used to exclude free riders. Denominations can be collectively viewed as a religious market, and laissez-faire policies can help satisfy demand for religion.