The Causes and Consequences of Traditional Religious Beliefs
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (CST)
- Chair: Sara Lowes, University of California-San Diego
On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior
Abstract
Within the field of economics, despite being widespread, African traditional religions tend to be perceived as unimportant and ignored when studying economic decision-making. This study tests whether this presumption is correct. Using daily data on business decisions and performance of beer sellers in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, we study the importance of traditional religious beliefs for economic behavior and outcomes. Beer sellers perceive the risk of theft in their shops to be higher than it actually is, causing them to hold lower inventories, more frequent stock-outs, and reduced profits. We facilitate randomly-timed access to commonly-used, but typically prohibitively expensive rituals, which reduce the perceived risk of theft. We find that the rituals partially correct the beliefs about the risk of theft for sellers who report believing in the ritual's efficacy. These sellers purchase more inventory, experience fewer stock-outs, and have larger sales, revenues, and profits. To distinguish the belief in the efficacy of the ritual from other incidental effects of participation, we analyze these outcomes for sellers who do not believe in the ritual. For these individuals, we find none of the observed effects. The findings provide evidence of the importance of African traditional religions, demonstrating that they can influence behavior and outcomes that are important for economic development.Praying for Rain
Abstract
We study the climate as a determinant of religious belief. People believe in the divine when religious authorities (the “church”) can credibly intervene in nature on their behalf. We present a model in which nature sets the pattern of rainfall over time and the church chooses when optimally to pray in order to persuade people that it has caused the rain. We present evidence from prayers for rain in Murcia, Spain that the church follows such an optimal policy and that its prayers therefore predict rainfall. In our model, praying for rain can only persuade people to believe if the hazard of rainfall during a dry spell is increasing over time, so that the probability of rainfall is highest when people most want rain. We test this prediction in an original data set of whether ethnic groups around the world traditionally prayed for rain. We find that prayer for rain is more likely among ethnic groups dependent on intensive agriculture for subsistence and that ethnic groups facing an increasing rainfall hazard are 53% more likely to pray for rain, consistent with our model. We interpret these findings as evidence for the instrumentality of religious belief.Astrology and Matrimony: Social Reinforcement of Religious Beliefs on Marriage Matching in Vietnam
Abstract
This paper investigates the real consequences of religious beliefs, separately from religious norms and organizations. We focus on Vietnamese's predictive beliefs on a couple's auspiciousness based on their birth years according to Tử Vi, a pervasive system of Taoist astrological beliefs. First, a structural estimation of the assortative marriage matching model shows that those beliefs matter to matching, playing a role equivalent to 6.4% of that of the entire age and education profile. Second, using a control function for selection into marriage, we estimate that auspiciousness increases household expenditure by 3%, as auspicious couples in hardship enjoy 25% more social transfers. Survey data further show auspicious couples' stronger first-, and second-order beliefs (about their relatives' beliefs) that auspicious couples are more harmonious and luckier.JEL Classifications
- O0 - General
- Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology