High levels of corruption in a country could be detrimental to the overall well-being of the economy. Although legal enforcement mechanisms are in place for most countries, corruption still exists, even in the most developed countries. Researchers have tried to identify the correlates of corruption across different countries in the world. One major finding is that religious affiliation in a country tends to matter for the corruption level of that country. However, previous research has rarely focused explicitly on differentiating between religion and religiosity. In this study, we test if the level of devotion to religion (religiosity) is more important than the specific type of religious denomination. We use data from multiple countries over different time periods and experiment with different measures of ‘religiosity’. The empirical evidence indicates that religiosity, rather than religious affiliation, impacts corruption levels. The more religious a society is, the higher the corruption, regardless of religious affiliation.

中文翻译：

---

宗教、宗教信仰和腐败

一个国家的高度腐败可能会损害经济的整体福祉。尽管大多数国家都设有执法机制，但腐败仍然存在，即使在最发达国家也是如此。研究人员试图确定世界不同国家腐败的相关性。一个主要发现是，一个国家的宗教信仰往往会影响该国的腐败程度。然而，以前的研究很少明确关注区分宗教和宗教信仰。在这项研究中，我们测试对宗教的虔诚程度（religiosity）是否比特定类型的宗教教派更重要。我们使用来自多个国家不同时期的数据，并尝试不同的“宗教信仰”衡量标准。经验证据表明，影响腐败程度的是宗教信仰，而不是宗教信仰。无论宗教信仰如何，一个社会越虔诚，腐败程度就越高。