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The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may better understand these trends.

This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015 Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better understand these trends.

The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.

The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and growing the church's membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342

Despite declining in 2001, foreign direct investment (FDI) surged during the 1990s. As a result, current levels of FDI flows are triple their 1990 levels. It is well documented in the literature that FDI occurs in large part among countries that are geographically close. It is also well established that the NAFTA had a significant impact on both U.S. FDI flows and hence FDI stocks. In addition, tax policies and tax treaties have been shown to be important drivers of U.S. FDI. The analysis presented in this chapter confirms these earlier results. We extend the analysis, however, to show that tax treaties have a significant impact on financing patterns of U.S. MNE activities abroad. Based on these results, we argue that bilateral tax treaties should be an important part of trade agreements between the United States and Latin American partners in anticipation of a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).

Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces and the religious refugee wishes to consume in an effort to increase their membership. The model illustrates that megachurches expect little in regard to financial or time commitment of new attendees. However, once the attendees perceive a good fit with the church, the megachurch increases its expectation of commitment. Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

The paper serves to illustrate the dynamic process by which megachurches attract new attendees and transform those that find a good fit between their needs and what the church offers into full members of the church.