RELIGION DISTRIBUTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: A REVIEWING THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL LITERATURES

Abstract

Many theoretical studies and empirical researches have been focused on the effects of religion on the economic growth since several years ago. The influence of culture and religion as a part of culture becomes very obvious, religiosity has many effects on ethical and behavioural human preferences hence represents an important component of human capital which in turn affects directly the socio-economic and political decisions. Since that, the rational model in explaining the economic phenomena becomes questionable, the study of the relationship between religious factors and economic growth has a great meaningful. The main objective of this paper is to review some theoretical and empirical studies on the relationship between religion distribution and the economic growth and performance. A qualitative method has been used base on a systematic literature review and findings from different theoretical and empirical journal articles to explain the relationship between religion distribution and the economic growth with various backgrounds.