Development elasticity of religious assets: a Turkish experience

Purpose - – The aim of this paper is to investigate the development elasticities of religious assets namely, the relationship between the stock of religious assets (religious buildings like mosques, mescits, turbehs, etc.) and economic development. Design/methodology/approach - – Development elasticities of religious assets with respect to development is empirically investigated for a cross-section of all Turkish cities with municipal authorities. Two different regression analyses use religious building in total number of building and percentage share of religiously conservatives parties vote as the dependent variable. Independent variables include various development measures. Findings - – It is found that the stock of religious assets is negatively related to the development. Also, it is found that economic development and the stock of religious assets have a non-linear relationship. Religious assets increase with industrialization first, however, as the industrialization increases more, they decrease. Coastal towns have smaller religious assets. Mosques/masjits and schools are complements rather than substitutes as they statistically significantly affect each other positively. For robustness check, a different measure of religiosity is used in empirical research. Vote shares of religiously conservative parties are smaller in developed regions of the country. In other words, religiously conservative parties attracted the poor or less developed parts of the country. Practical implications - – Economic development and religious assets are related to each other in a developing country case study. Increased economic development can cause religious assets to decline in this particular case study. Originality/value - – This paper uses a novel data set to study the relationship between development and religion in a developing country.