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Religion and Economic Preferences

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on the relationship between religion and economic preferences. It first discusses two dimensions of religiosity conceptualized in the literature, viz., believing and belonging, and how they may differently relate to economic preferences. While believing relates to the private aspects of religion as captured by a person’s degree of belief in God and other religious concepts, belonging captures the aspects of being affiliated to a group of people sharing such beliefs. It then considers different research approaches in the literature, distinguishing between those approaches that aim to identify a causal link from religious belief or affiliation to preferences and those that can only identify associations. In the following, it then reviews in detail the empirical evidence regarding the relationship between religiosity and a set of economic preferences, namely, risk attitudes, time preferences, social preferences, honesty, and attitudes toward markets and competition. In the discussion of the evidence, it relates to the aforementioned distinction between believing and belonging, as well as distinguishing between the causal and correlational research approaches.

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Acknowledgments

Responsible Section Editor: Olga Popova. The article has benefitted from valuable comments of the editors, anonymous referees, and Christoph Becker. There is no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Stefan T. Trautmann

Authors
  1. Stefan T. Trautmann
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Correspondence to Stefan T. Trautmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, Germany

    Olga Popova

  2. CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Olga Popova

  3. Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation

    Olga Popova

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Trautmann, S.T. (2022). Religion and Economic Preferences. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_276-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_276-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57365-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57365-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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