Journal of Economics, Management and Religion

This paper examines how religion influences financial risk-taking behaviour and gambling using a survey data set from Japan, where most religious people claim they believe in Buddhism and/or Shinto. We find little association between religiousness and portfolio choice. Exceptions are that: (i) those who claimed their religion is Buddhism and the members of one Buddhist denomination are more likely to buy stock and lottery tickets than nonreligious people, and (ii) those who described themselves as devoted to religion are less likely to play pachinko.

In this paper, I estimate the causal effect of economic shocks on religious freedom violations in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sudan, using a difference-in-differences empirical strategy. Controlling for country and year effects, the timing of local conflicts and genocide, and other economic, health, and population factors; a one standard deviation increase in GDP per capita annual change caused a 0.16–0.20 standard deviation decrease in freedom of religion or belief violations in these countries between the years 1999–2020.

In this paper, we develop the rationality of oath giving and the socially functional role that oaths can play in securing the commitment of members of conflict groups. Oaths are a reoccurring feature of insurgencies, armed struggles, and revolutionary movements. Oaths grow out of a general set of cultural practices that leverage superstitious beliefs to perform socially valuable functions and to produce normative conformity within groups. Applied to insurgencies, we argue that swearing oaths can motivate and sustain commitment to a cause. We apply our theory to the case of the Mau Mau rebellion in which oaths played a conspicuous role. Originally carrying religious meaning among Kenyan tribes, Mau Mau leaders repurpose oathings to enhance commitment. In its repurposed form, oathing incentives relied less on supernatural sanctions and more on credibly threatening defectors with physical in-group and out-group punishment. The Mau Mau highlights how an old cultural form can be used to ground innovations and how superstition-based practices that confer group benefits might continue to do so by permitting the creation of worldly incentives even after (or when) the superstition is stripped from them.