Recent studies report that economic inequality is associated with reduced government expenditures on social programs. Several prominent social scientists, including Putnam [2000], attribute this relationship to the detrimental Òpsychosocial effectsÓ of group heterogeneity on cooperation. We...

Observational studies frequently support the popular belief that religion is associated with more other-regarding behavior; however, such studies are well known to be susceptible to the confounding effects of unobserved determinants of cooperation and trust. We test whether religious affiliation...

We test whether religious affiliation and participation in religious services are associated with behavior in public goods and trust games. Overall, religious affiliation is unrelated to individual behavior. However, we find some weak evidence that among subjects attending religious services,...