Afterlife incentives in charitable giving

There is an expanding literature that examines the influence of religion on economic behaviour. Researchers typically do not distinguish among religions, masking important variation across doctrines. Our article adopts a typology of religions based on the construct of salvific merit. Major religious doctrines are ordered based on their linkage between charitable behaviour in this life and condition in the afterlife. Using the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS), we exploit variation in household marginal tax rates (a subsidy to charitable giving) to test the influence of major religious doctrines on charitable giving. We find that charitable giving by adherents to high-salvific-merit religions are less sensitive to changes in charitable subsidies. Adherents to low-salvific-merit religions behave more like nonreligious households. Our results suggest that religious households optimize according to specific doctrines rather than a broad notion of religion.     

Examining the Impact of Four Key Cultural Dimensions on Ethnic Restaurants in Victoria in Australia

This study examines the impact (if any) of four key cultural dimensions on ethnic restaurants in regional Victoria, Australia. Based on a modified model developed by Nguyen and King [Nguyen, T., & King, B. (2002). Migrant communities and tourism consumption – the case of the Vietnamese in Australia. In C.M. Hall (Ed.), Tourism and migration. New relationships between production and consumption (pp. 221–256). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers], this article explores the impacts of religion, co-ethnic ties, marriage and family support on the entrepreneurial behaviour of restaurants. These four cultural dimensions have been identified as influencing factors (Nguyen & King, 2002), but to what extent? It suggests that co-ethnic ties, marriage and family support are important to the daily operations of an ethnic restaurant, and potentially, long-term financial success. This is theoretically important in understanding how ethnic minority restaurants may differ regarding entrepreneurial business decisions compared to similar Western businesses. Utilising family and co-ethnic ties, labour resources offers a competitive advantage in four ways; reduced labour cost, efficiencies in communication, predictable behaviour and restaurant promotional opportunities. Religion, the fourth key cultural dimension put forward in Nguyen and King's (2002) model did not strongly influence entrepreneurial behaviour; however, it still may have relevance outside business behaviour.     

Taboo on TV: gender,religion, and sexual taboos in transnationally marketed Turkish soap operas

ABSTRACT

This study illuminates the ways in which men and women consume soap operas as a means of reflecting on and discussing sociocultural taboos. Through interpretive research we examine the ways in which religion, sexuality and gender relations are depicted in popular Turkish soap operas and how these depictions are consumed in the Balkans and the Middle East. This study challenges the assumption that consumption of taboo discourses leads to active identity modification or public defiance. Instead, in-depth interviews and online ethnography reveal that consumption of soap operas that challenge local religious and gender norms provide a liminal space for discussing taboo topics. Firstly, the findings indicate that talking about taboo topics seen in soap operas enables consumers to speak about what they expect gender and religious norms to be. Secondly, consumers get their mediated understandings of what religion is through soap operas. Thus, rather than simply offering escape, soap opera consumption facilitates the discussion of taboo topics.     

Exploring the causal effect of religious piety on dividend policy: evidence from historical religious identification

Theory suggests that religious piety is associated with greater risk aversion and more conservative financial policies. Returns to shareholders through dividends are much more certain than returns through capital gains expected to be realized far into the future. We hypothesize that religious piety leads to a higher likelihood of dividend payments. We exploit the variation in religious piety across the US counties and estimate the effect of religion on dividend policy. To draw a causal inference, we use historical religious piety in 1971 as the instrument. Our two-stage least squares results confirm that religious piety induces firms to pay larger dividends.     

树文化之再思考

“树化”是指以树为载体的社会化现象。树化有宗教形态、社会形态、民俗形态、美学形态等不同形态之分。促进树与化的互动发展,实现树与化的共生共荣,是我们应该弘扬的先进树化的发展方向。     

Religion and political economy in Saint-Simon

Abstract

The project of Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was to complete the French Revolution by a social change in order to eliminate the so-called “feudal-military” system and to bring about a new society which he named “the industrial system”. Everything had to be changed, including religion and its relation to political economy. In this paper, I examine: (i) the recurring problem of religion, raised by Saint-Simon as early as his first text; (ii) the emergence of the economic problem of identifying production with politics; (iii) and finally, the metamorphosis of the Christian religion into a moral and industrial religion.     

实验经济学视角下的宗教研究:信仰与行为

宗教对经济的影响已受到越来越广泛的重视。宗教通过价值观和信仰团体对经济个体的行为产生影响,进而影响经济。作者针对宗教对个体亲社会行为的影响,从宗教虔诚度测量方法的角度,对现有的文献的研究成果进行分类比较分析,讨论现有研究存在的问题以及未来可能的研究方向,以期为我国宗教社会科学的研究提供新的工具和分析视角。     

祭祀舞蹈中傩舞与傩舞面具的探讨

傩舞是我国古代长江流域流行的一种祭祀舞蹈,舞者戴着各种质朴而夸张的面具,带有鲜明的巫术色彩,是最早祈福和祷告的礼仪形式,具有原生态特质。在人类学、宗教学、民俗学、艺术学、戏剧学等众多领域有着巨大的学术价值和史料价值,被誉为＂中国古代文化的活化石＂。     

Religiosity and social trust: evidence from Canada

Using the latest wave of the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, I investigate whether religious identity and religious intensity associate with the degree to which people trust others, controlling for a wide range of characteristics. The analysis shows that Canadian Roman Catholics are appreciably less trusting than mainline Protestants, and religious nones are situated in between these two groups. With regard to religious intensity, I find that higher commitment negatively correlates with trust in unknown others for Roman Catholics. The reverse is true for Protestants. Results also show stark cross-denominational variations within Protestantism, as two highly committed denominations of Mennonite and Pentecostal are found to be the most and the least trusting religious groups in Canada. No non-Christian religious minority is found statistically significantly less trusting than Canadian Roman Catholics. Considering particularized trust in one’s neighbours and co-workers yields comparable conclusions.     

Ethics,Income and Religion

This paper investigates the relationship between ethics and income among individuals of different religions in the HKSAR of China. The presence of both traditional Chinese religion and Christianity from the West makes our study particularly interesting. The content of ethical beliefs varies with religion and thus the effect of ethics on income may also vary across religion. Furthermore, a reverse causal relationship may run from income to ethics. Since culture and taste affect the consumption behavior of a person, depending on the religion of the person, a person with a higher income may or may not like to ‘acquire’ more ethics. Our empirical results find that there is indeed a simultaneous relationship between income and being ethical so that a single equation estimation of income on ethics and vice versa generates biased estimates. Using a two-stage instrumental variable estimation, our study finds that being ethical contributes to higher income for Christians and the non-religious group, but lowers it for people of traditional Chinese religion. On the other hand, an increase in income increases the likelihood of a person’s being ethical for both Christians and the people of traditional Chinese religion, but reduces it for the non-religious group. Dr. Kit-Chun LAM is Professor in Economics Department of the Hong Kong Baptist University. She is also Guest Professor in the Centre for Business Ethics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economica and Labour Economics. Dr. Bill Hung is Associate Professor in Economics Department of the Hong Kong Baptist University. His work has appeared in the Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Atlantic Economic Journal, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, etc.