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God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone
God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This paper uses a novel lab experiment to test claims about the origins and functions of religion. We modify the standard public goods game, adding a computer-based agent that adjusts earnings in ways that might depend on players' contributions. Our treatments employ three different descriptions of the adjustment process that loosely correspond to monotheistic, atheistic, and agnostic interpretations of the computer's role. The adjustments neither mask players' contributions nor magnify their impact. Yet players in all three adjustment treatments contribute much more than those who play the standard public goods game. Players' contributions and survey responses show that adjustments induce …
Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti
Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Jared Rubin's Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not.
Endogenous Group Formation Via Unproductive Costs, Jason A. Aimone, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Michael D. Makowsky, Jared Rubin
Endogenous Group Formation Via Unproductive Costs, Jason A. Aimone, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Michael D. Makowsky, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Sacrifice is widely believed to enhance cooperation in churches, communes, gangs, clans, military units, and many other groups. We find that sacrifice can also work in the lab, apart from special ideologies, identities, or interactions. Our subjects play a modified VCM game—one in which they can voluntarily join groups that provide reduced rates of return on private investment. This leads to both endogenous sorting (because free-riders tend to reject the reduced-rate option) and substitution (because reduced private productivity favours increased club involvement). Seemingly unproductive costs thus serve to screen out free-riders, attract conditional cooperators, boost club production, and increase member …
Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin
Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.
Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We …