Religion and corruption: Are there any saints?

This article aims to test the hypothesis that religious leaders influence social behavior. Specifically, I examine the impact of Catholic saints on corruption. I employ a dataset on canonized saints in the Catholic Church and cross-sectional data on corruption. To address potential endogeneity, I use distance from the Vatican as an instrumental variable. Two main findings emerge. First, consistent with the overall hypothesis, there is no significant relationship between the number of Catholic saints and the level of corruption across countries in general. Second, the relationship becomes significant within predominantly Catholic countries, as hypothesized. However, the result is counterintuitive: a higher number of saints is associated with increased higher levels of corruption