The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. This survey serves two purposes – it is backward-looking in that it traces the historical and sociological origins of this field, and it is forward-looking in that it examines the insights and research themes that are offered by economists to investigate religion globally in the modern world. Several factors have infl...

Mainstream sociology of religion often presumes that its conceptual categories are universal and complete. They are, however, grounded in the Western intellectual tradition and arise from that tradition’s reflection on Euro-American history. This article outlines an alternate sociology of religion based on the writings of the 14th century Moslem historian Ibn Khaldûn – whose ideas arise from a ...

We study the opinions on prostitution that emerged from the World Value Survey. We show that individuals tends to justify prostitution more in countries where it is legal or regulated and less in countries where it is prohibited, even after controlling for religious, cultural and sociological factors. To overcome the endogeneity of the policy to the opinions, we propose an instrumental variable...