conclusion from reading it. Check it out, the Fed had to make changes to it and put in different charts after first posting it to their site as well, according to the editors note anyway.
What a bunch of maroons!
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/fear_of_hell.htmlsnip>
In a paper last year, economists Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary provided evidence that church attendance and economic growth are negatively related, but a belief in hell—their measure of religious beliefs—was positively related to increased economic growth. According to Barro and McCleary, increased church attendance could lower growth because of more resources flowing to the religious sector. However, the net effect would be uncertain because increased church attendance may also increase religious beliefs, which, as Weber believed, raises economic growth by spurring individual behavior and actions that are thought to encourage productivity. Interestingly, Barro and McCleary also found that economic performance was largely unrelated to the dominant religious theology of the nation.
snip>
There might, therefore, be two parts to the link between religion and economic growth: a belief in hell tends to mean less corruption, and less corruption tends to mean a higher per capita income. The first part of the link is illustrated by the first chart below. It uses the 1990-1993 World Values Survey, which asked people in 35 countries whether they believed in hell, and the Corruption Perceptions Index produced by Transparency International, which surveyed many countries’ residents about corruption.9 The first chart plots the rankings of 35 countries’ percentages of people who believe in hell against the rankings of the countries’ perceived levels of corruption. As the chart shows, there is a tendency for countries in which a larger percentage of the population believes in hell to have lower levels of corruption.
The second part of the link is illustrated by the second chart, which plots the GDP-per-capita rankings of the 35 countries against their corruption rankings.10 It shows a strong tendency for countries with relatively low levels of corruption to have relatively high levels of per capita GDP.
Combining the stories from the two charts suggests that, all else constant, the more religious a country, the less corruption it will have, and the higher its per capita income will be.
Of course, these charts are only suggestive. However, they are nonetheless consistent with Weber’s argument and the Barro and McCleary result that religious beliefs can influence economic outcomes.
end snip>
Now, after reading that last paragraph, go back and read the first snippet again. :wtf: Where the hell did they get hell from?
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