Religion, economic attitudes, and household finance

Renneboog, Luc; Spaenjers, Christophe

doi:10.1093/oep/gpr025

Cited by 222 publications

(184 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Renneboog and Spaenjers' (2011) finding that Catholics are more risk averse than Protestants. As Table 5 shows, the isolation of differences between Protestants and Catholics is marginal and only for the real payments condition.…”

Section: Catholics and Protestantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results with respect to differences in risk aversion between Christian denominations are mixed. Kumar et al (2011), Barsky et al (1997) and Benjamin et al (2010) find that Protestants are more risk averse or make safer financial investments than Catholics, while Renneboog and Spaenjers (2011) and Dohmen et al (2011) observe the opposite. 1 While some of these studies control for a variety of social and economic variables that differ between the countries in which they were conducted (the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany), international differences in doctrine and 1 Sociologists have explored how differences in beliefs and practice between Catholicism and Protestantism might account for the some of the differences in economic outcomes between countries in which each is dominant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is to correlate data on religiosity with measures of financial risk taking at the individual level. Barsky et al (1997), Dohmen et al (2011), Renneboog and Spaenjers (2011), and Liu (2010 rely on hypothetical risk preference decisions in large population samples. Benjamin et al (2009) use a student sample and a risky experimental decision task with monetary stakes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Risk Aversion and Religion

et al. 2012

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Using a dataset for a demographically representative sample of the Dutch population, containing a revealed preference risk attitude measure, as well as very detailed information about participants' religious background, we study three issues raised in previous literature.First, we find strong confirmatory evidence that more religious people, as measured by church membership or attendance, are more risk averse. Second, we obtain some evidence that Protestants are more risk averse than Catholics. Third, our data suggest that the link between risk aversion and religion is driven by social aspects of church membership, rather than by religious beliefs themselves.

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Section: Catholics and Protestantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Risk Aversion and Religion

et al. 2012

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“…Mookerjee and Beron (2005) show that religion is related to the level of happiness registered in society. Several studies, such as Renneboog and Spaenjers (2012), fi nd that religiosity is positively correlated with trust while religious persons reveal a preference for longer planning horizons. Investments in mutual funds are considered to be long-term oriented and less risky than other alternatives on the stock market.…”

Section: Socio-cultural Values and Investment Behaviour: Related Studmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of Development of the Mutual Fund Industry. A Socio-Cultural Approach

Dragotă¹,

Tatu-Cornea²,

Tulbure³

2016

Prague Economic Papers

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The mutual fund industry has grown considerably in many countries since the 1990s. Its evolution has been explained primarily in terms of its economic and fi nancial determinants. We draw on a dynamic set of measures for socio-cultural values to explain the diff erential development of mutual funds across the world. Using a sample of 38 countries for the period 1996-2009, we fi nd a positive relation between the perception of happiness and the size of the mutual fund industry. Freedom of choice, a feature of countries that are dominated by individualistic behaviours and values, has a positive impact on the development of the industry. We also explain the positive relation between individuals' preference for private ownership and the development of mutual funds. Moreover, we prove that the industry is larger in developed countries with greater stock market liquidity, with low ratios of remittance infl ows to GDP, and in which the industry is older.

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“…and Renneboog and Spaenjers (2012) suggest that all these attributes may be significantly influenced by the ethical principles inherent in Protestantism and Catholicism. The economic literature on entrepreneurship introduces a generic entrepreneurship ability and the level of risk aversion as the fundamental determinants of the individual decision to become an entrepreneur (see Parker, 2005 for a review).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Protestant ethic and entrepreneurship: Evidence from religious minorities in the former Holy Roman Empire

Nunziata

Rocco

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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We propose a new methodology for identifying the causal effect of Protestantism versus Catholicism on the decision to become an entrepreneur. Our quasi-experimental research design exploits religious minorities' strong attachment to religious ethics and the exogenous historical determination of religious minorities' geographical distribution in the regions of the former Holy Roman Empire in the 1500s. We analyse European Social Survey data, collected in four waves between 2002 and 2008, and find that religious background has a significant effect on the individual propensity for entrepreneurship, with Protestantism increasing the probability to be an entrepreneur by around 5 percentage points with respect to Catholicism. Our findings are stable across a number of robustness checks, including accounting for migration patterns and a placebo test. We also provide an extended discussion of the assumptions' validity at the basis of our research design. This paper is one of the first attempts to identify a causal effect, rather than a simple correlation, of religious ethics on economic outcomes.

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Religion, economic attitudes, and household finance

Cited by 222 publications

References 41 publications

Risk Aversion and Religion

Risk Aversion and Religion

Determinants of Development of the Mutual Fund Industry. A Socio-Cultural Approach

The Protestant ethic and entrepreneurship: Evidence from religious minorities in the former Holy Roman Empire

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