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The Economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field

Augenblick, Ned; Cunha, Jesse M.; Bó, Ernesto Dal; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

We model religious faith as a "demand for beliefs," following the logic of the Pascalian wager. We then demonstrate how an experimental intervention can exploit standard elicitation techniques to measure religious belief by varying prizes associated with making choices contrary to one's belief...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969243

The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference

Galor, Oded; Özak, Ömer - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969388

Pre-colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development

Michalopoulos, Stelios; Papaioannou, Elias - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969445

Social Norms and the Enforcement of Laws

Acemoglu, Daron; Jackson, Matthew O. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

We examine the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws. Agents choose a behavior (e.g., tax evasion, production of low-quality products, corruption, substance abuse, etc.) and then are randomly matched with another agent. An agent's payoff decreases with the mismatch between...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010885300

Trust and Cheating

Giuliano, Paola; Guiso, Luigi; Butler, Jeffrey V. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

When we take a cab we may feel cheated if the driver takes an unnecessarily long route despite the lack of a contract or promise to take the shortest possible path. Is our decision to take the cab affected by our belief that we may end up feeling cheated? Is the behavior of the driver affected...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950633

Learning Capitalism the Hard Way--Evidence from Germany's Reunification

Triebs, Thomas P.; Tumlinson, Justin - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013

Communism in East Germany sought to dampen the effect of market forces on firm productivity for nearly 40 years. How … did East German firms respond to the free market after being thrust into it in 1990? We use a formal learning model and … direction of firm level errors in conjunction with contemporaneous market signals we find that, in the years immediately …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950641

Trust, Values and False Consensus

Giuliano, Paola; Guiso, Luigi; Butler, Jeffrey - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

Trust beliefs are heterogeneous across individuals and, at the same time, persistent across generations. We investigate one mechanism yielding these dual patterns: false consensus. In the context of a trust game experiment, we show that individuals extrapolate from their own type when forming...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950649

Compulsory Schooling Laws and Formation of Beliefs: Education, Religion and Superstition

Mocan, Naci H.; Pogorelova, Luiza - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

We exploit information on compulsory schooling reforms in 11 European countries, implemented mostly in the 1960s and 70s, to identify the impact of education on religious adherence and religious practices. Using micro data from the European Social Survey, conducted in various years between 2002...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950983

Economic Well-being and Anti-Semitic, Xenophobic, and Racist Attitudes in Germany

Mocan, Naci H.; Raschke, Christian - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

The fear and hatred of others who are different has economic consequences because such feelings are likely to translate into discrimination in labor, credit, housing, and other markets. The implications range from earnings inequality to intergenerational mobility. Using German data from various...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951063

On the Ethnic Origins of African Development Chiefs and Pre-colonial Political Centralization

Michalopoulos, Stelios; Papaioannou, Elias - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

We report on recent findings of a fruitful research agenda that explores the importance of ethnic-specific traits in shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals identify with their ethnic group as often as with the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951097