Cultural and personal channels between religion, religiosity, and corruption.

Literature on the effect of religion and religiosity on corruption has failed to distinguish between direct and mediated effect and to determine the different roles of two alternative mediation channels-the personal versus the cultural channel. Using a data set of 102 countries, we found that hierarchical religions have significant positive associations with corruption levels, while the non-hierarchical Protestant Christianity has significant negative associations with corruption levels. Most of the effect is mediated by the cultural channel.