Welcome to my website! I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, CEPR Research Affiliate in Economic History and the Macroeconomics and Growth Programme, GLO Research Affiliate, External Research Associate at CAGE, Warwick University, and Research Affiliate at the SoDa Labs, Monash University.
Ultimately, I am interested in why the people in some countries fare better economically than others. This interest has brought me to focus on religion and its’ consequences for society. Religion obviously influences our internal values and beliefs, but also the institutions that surround us. My research is mainly empirical and I use datasets spanning thousands or millions of individuals or companies in multiple different societies across the globe. My general research interests are religion, political economy, cultural values, economic growth, and institutions.
I currently focus on religiosity, meaning the degree of religious beliefs, independently of the God(s) a person believes in. The idea is that people or societies are more similar in terms of their religiosity than in terms of their particular religious beliefs. For instance, along certain dimensions, a highly devout Protestant may have more in common with a highly devout Muslim than he or she does with a less religious Protestant. One challenge is measuring the intensity of religious beliefs. I am currently conducting research showing that one can use peoples’ first names to infer the religiosity of their parents. We can use these novel measures to examine how differences in religiosity matter for various outcomes.
I am currently Associate Editor at The Economic Journal and Executive Director of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture.