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.

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