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We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over twenty years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that has exogenously boosted education and living standards. The main finding is that the program reduces the likelihood of membership in a Pentecostal denomination up to 20 years later when respondents are in their mid-thirties, while there is a comparable increase in membership in traditional Christian denominations. The effect is concentrated and statistically significant among a sub-group of participants who benefited most from the program in terms of increased education and income. The effects are unlikely due to increased secularization, because the program does not reduce measures of religiosity. The results help explain why the global growth of the Pentecostal movement, sometimes described a "New Reformation", is centered in low-income communities.

This special issue reflects one of the first systematic inquiries into the effects of revolutions on institutional change, a topic previously explored only tangentially across diverse social science domains. It fosters interdisciplinary discourse on revolutionary outcomes among economists, political scientists, sociologists, and economic historians informed by the public choice research program. The issue is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on regime overthrow and institutional transformation and the second of which focuses on rational-choice theoretic analyses of revolution and its results. By employing analytical narratives and comparative analyses of contemporary and historical revolutions, the issue advances both theoretical and empirical understandings of revolution, revolutionary dynamics, and their implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the way Grotius's construction of a theory of acts which aimed at dealing with legal issues, in the chapter on contracts in a book from De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) where the causes of the birth of war are discussed (bk II), gave birth to an original understanding of exchange and price. The latter is part of a more extended economic analysis which, at the difference of economic policy aspects, has been paid till now little attention. Yet, Grotius' conception of exchange and price occupies an interesting position between the scholastic analysis where price was compared to a norm of just price and the later articulation, in classical economic thought, between typically natural prices and market prices. In a way, his conception of price might be viewed as a continuation of the Scholastic approach, illustrated two centuries and a half ago by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 77, where the issues debated aim to enlighten the priest about the morality of a transaction carried out by such of his parishioners. But here, with Grotius, the issue is no longer the morality or sinfulness of the transaction, but its lawfulness. This shift from a religious to a legal approach gives birth to an attempt to explain why individuals can deviate from a commonly accepted price in an exchange, and under what conditions, in the framework of either natural law or the law of nations, this effective price can be regarded as legal by a magistrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of various Point of Sale Materials (POSM) - Free Coupons, Free Samples, BOGO, and Discounts - on consumer buying behavior in the halal cosmetic industry. It aims to provide a deeper understanding of how these marketing strategies affect the purchasing decisions of Muslim consumers, particularly in relation to their religious and ethical values. This quantitative study, employing purposive sampling, investigates the impact of POSM on the purchasing behavior of halal cosmetic products. The research spans from March 2023 to June 2023, the data were collected over four months, garnering 245 respondents out of 260 shared questionnaires, resulting in a 92% response rate. Focusing on Wardah cosmetics as the research object—a pioneer of halal cosmetics in Indonesia consistently employing POSM—the study utilizes Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) for data analysis. The findings reveal that free coupons and BOGO exert a positive and significant influence on consumer behavior, while free sample and discount demonstrate a positive but not statistically significant effect. This research contributes valuable insights into the effectiveness of distinct marketing strategies through the examination of diverse promotional tools on consumer buying behavior. This resarch provides a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of various Point of Sale Materials (POSM) in influencing consumer buying behavior, specifically within the context of halal cosmetics. This targeted focus on halal cosmetic products adds a new dimension to the understanding of consumer behavior in this rapidly growing sector.

Too much decision-making freedom in adolescence might discourage academic effort at the level parents desire since children tend to be less patient and risk-averse. Therefore, many parents limit their child's choices in order to achieve optimal effort. In this paper, we analyze how limits on autonomy affect a child's academic effort, gauged by both official transcript and child-reported grades in four core subjects. One empirical challenge is that parents might allow more independent decisions when a child exerts more academic effort, creating a downward bias. Our approach is to employ recursive bivariate models in which community differences in conservative Protestant market share produce external variations in the number of limits. We find US parents limit independent decision-making primarily to reinforce grades in high school English and math, with gains that diminish with the number of limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper deals with Sanatan Economics and explains its importance and why Sanatan Economics should be studied.

Previous studies have clearly documented the shareholder advantages and disadvantages of political connections. However, evidence of the role of political connections in ethical investment is scarce. This study investigates the relationship between political connections and the reconstructions of the Sharia index in Indonesia. Using the event study methodology, I evaluate the abnormal returns surrounding the announcement of the inclusion or exclusion of firms in or from the Indonesia Sharia Stock Index (ISSI). I further conducted a regression analysis to enhance the identification of the relationship between political connections and Sharia compliance. Neither the inclusion nor exclusion of firms in or from the ISSI yields abnormal returns, indicating that investors are not very concerned about ISSI reconstitutions. Political connections increase firm value before their inclusion in the ISSI. However, the benefits of such connections are lost after their inclusion in the ISSI. Meanwhile, I find no evidence of a relationship between political connections and the market reaction surrounding the exclusion of firms from the ISSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of private property has been controversial in Catholic social thought and teaching down the ages. The approach of the Catholic Church to the question of property rights has been discussed by a number of Austrian-school authors, though their focus has been on teaching documents from 1891 to 1931. During that period, and up to the mid-1960s, the modern teaching of the Catholic Church on the right to property tended to be extremely positive. Since that time, ambiguities have crept in, and Pope Francis in particular has given the impression of being lukewarm towards the right to property. We discuss whether Pope Francis's position is radical within the tradition of Catholic social teaching and conclude that it is not especially so, though his emphasis is more negative than that of previous popes and his reasoning not always sound. It is also found that the Catholic Church has left undeveloped the link between private property, economic development and environmental outcomes despite the interest of the Church in poverty and environmental degradation. This, together with the lack of discussion of the exceptions to the general rule of support for private property, is a real omission in Catholic Church teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sub-Saharan Africa, traditional supernatural beliefs, including belief in witchcraft, black magic, or fetishism, are widespread. Some have hypothesized that these beliefs help to sustain cooperative behavior in a setting where the state is often absent. Others have documented that, at least at a macro-level, such beliefs are negatively associated with prosocial behavior. We contribute to a better understanding of the causal effects of these traditional supernatural beliefs by using lab-in-the-field experiments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Participants complete a range of experimental tasks where one player chooses whether to act in a prosocial manner towards another player. Participants are randomly assigned to another player that has either a strong or weak belief in witchcraft, and this information is known by the players. We find that participants act less prosocially towards randomly-assigned partners who believe more strongly in witchcraft. We also find that antisocial behavior is more socially acceptable and prosocial behavior less socially acceptable when playing with a partner who believes more strongly in witchcraft. Our findings suggest that the negative relationship between witchcraft and prosocial outcomes observed in the data may, in fact, be due to the causal effect of the presence of traditional supernatural beliefs on people’s behavior.

Although many papers have examined the Saudi stock market, to date none have explored the influence of religiosity on the behavior of stock prices, taking into account the dominance of individual investors. These characteristics distinguish the Saudi stock market from other mature and immature markets. Therefore, we study the reaction of the Saudi stock market to announcements by imams regarding firms' sharia compliance, using a two-step procedure. First, we distribute a questionnaire to gauge individual opinions about imams' announcements. Then, we conduct an appropriate event-study to capture the potential abnormal returns. Our findings indicate that imams’ announcements convey valuable information to the stock market.