{"title":"The Macro-Economic Influences on a New Religious Group in Japan","authors":"Yoshinori Wada","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500060","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to examine the long-term relationships between the national economy and the membership of the New Religious group Tenrikyo in the relatively free religious supply environment in Japan. Tenrikyo has existed since the mid-nineteenth century, although it has not dominated the religious market; it has supplied non-religious services such as education, publishing and medical and social care services, as well as religious services. This has involved it in competition with both religious and secular organisations. We construct a model of the associations between religious and secular changes through competition and conduct a regression analysis using long-term data of denominational membership and the macro-economic indicators. We find that the GDP growth rate and stable economic period have a positive association with denominational membership. On the other hand, welfare benefits, the share price index and income equality are associated negatively with that membership. These empirical results confirm complementary as well as substitutive roles between a New Religious group and secular organisations in contemporary society.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126718527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wages, Religion and the Great Recession in the United States","authors":"Sedefka V. Beck, D. M. Brodersen","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500084","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the relationship between wages and religious affiliation for non-Hispanic whites in the United States before and after the Great Recession, utilising the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2005 and 2011 data. Wage differentials were estimated at the mean using longitudinal Generalised Least Squares models and along the wage distribution using quantile regressions. The results suggest a strong association between wages and religious affiliation for both men and women during both periods. Before the Recession, wage differentials by religious affiliation followed similar patterns for men and women except that gender differences were apparent for Mormons — women earned lower wages, whereas men earned higher wages than their mainline Protestant counterparts. After the Recession, all groups experienced wage declines at the mean. However, the quantile regression estimates revealed that men at low wages and women at high wages experienced wage decline, while women at low wages and men at median wages experienced wage increases.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130363212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religious, Civil, and Economic Freedoms: What’s the Chicken and What’s the Egg?","authors":"C. Makridis","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500011","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the relationship between religious liberty and economic freedom. First, three new facts emerge: (a) religious liberty has increased since 1960, but has slipped substantially over the past decade; (b) the countries that experienced the largest declines in religious liberty tend to have greater economic freedom, especially property rights; (c) changes in religious liberty are associated with changes in the allocation of time to religious activities. Second, using a combination of vector autoregressions and dynamic panel methods, improvements in religious liberty tend to precede economic freedom. Finally, increases in religious liberty have a wide array of spillovers that are important determinants of economic freedom and explain the direction of causality. Countries cannot have long-run economic prosperity and freedom without actively allowing for and promoting religious liberty.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127913183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Origin of Religious Values: Does Italian Weather Affect Individualism in Bolivia?","authors":"Lewis Davis","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500072","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I advance and empirically support the indigenous religious values hypothesis, which holds that religions espouse values indigenous to the countries in which they developed. To identify the indigenous values of a religion’s homeland, I rely on the negative relationship between individualism and rainfall variation. I find strong empirical support for the hypothesis that contemporary individualism depends on rainfall variation in the homelands of religions to which a country’s population adheres. Indeed, this relationship explains over a quarter of the international variation in individualism. This effect is robust to controls for the role of religion in institutional and technological transfers and the confluence of conversion and colonisation. In keeping with the explicitly religious nature of the mechanism proposed here, I also find that rainfall variation in religion homelands plays a greater role in explaining the values of countries with greater religious freedom and the values of individuals who are more religious or members of religious minorities.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126383702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Investigation Into Religious Peer Effects","authors":"D. Ooi","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500059","url":null,"abstract":"The communal nature of religion suggests peer effects exist in religiosity, potentially through positive spillovers in religious participation and social formation of religious beliefs. Using seven measures of religiosity, we estimate positive and negative peer effects in each case using peer group composition. We use a simultaneous equation model to account for self-selection into religious peer groups, and while we find positive peer effects are insignificant, there are significant negative peer effects operating through non-religious friends. This suggests peers affect social formation of religious beliefs, rather than through positive spillovers in religious participation.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"399 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123543231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: Pentecostalism and Intimate Partner Violence in Ghana","authors":"Sara Gundersen","doi":"10.1142/s2737436x21500035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/s2737436x21500035","url":null,"abstract":"Pentecostalism is large, influential, and growing quickly in Ghana. This growth has been argued to benefit women due to the religion’s teachings on individualism and use of female leaders. However, the religion’s focus on female submissiveness may also present a challenge to women. Whilst this theoretical paradox has been largely untested, Gundersen (Gundersen, S (2018). Will god make me rich? An investigation into the relationship between membership in Charismatic churches, wealth, and women’s empowerment in Ghana. Religions, 9(6), 195) finds that women who identify as Pentecostal exhibit less decision-making power than other Christians when it comes to big household purchases and their own health care. Using the 2008 and 2014 Demographic Health Surveys, this study examines the relationship between Pentecostalism and intimate partner violence in Ghana. Women who identify as Pentecostal are more likely to have experienced physical violence than other women, but this effect may disappear for women in the highest wealth quintiles. Higher wealth Pentecostal women are also less likely to believe a husband is justified in hitting his wife. Thus, it seems wealth may have a protective effect for Pentecostal women in Ghana.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132415997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Institutional Foundations of Religious Freedom","authors":"Mark Koyama","doi":"10.1142/S2737436X20500065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/S2737436X20500065","url":null,"abstract":"How did religious freedom emerge? I address this question by building on the framework of Johnson and Koyama’s Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom (2019). First, I establish that premodern societies, reliant on identity rules, were incapable of liberalism and religious freedom. Identity rules and restrictions on religious freedom were part of a political-economy equilibrium that ensured social order. Second, I examine developments like the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, as shocks to this premodern identity rules and conditional toleration equilibrium. Finally, I consider several examples that support the claim that the move from identity rules to general rules allowed religious freedom to flourish.","PeriodicalId":306581,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economics, Management and Religion","volume":"155 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115789899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}