IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/biu/wpaper/2009-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Big Carrot:High-Stakes Incentives Revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Pablo Brañas-Garza

    (Universidad de Granada)

  • Teresa García-Muñoz

    (Universidad de Granada)

  • Shoshana Neuman

    (Department of Economics Bar-Ilan University)

Abstract

Using an international dataset of about 35,000 subjects, this paper provides an empirical example of high-stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. First, we show that incentives (based on absolute belief) play a salient role in religious performance. Second, we find that, when both positive (heaven) and negative (hell) incentives are available, the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estimating the production of religious commodities (church-attendance and praying equations).

Suggested Citation

  • Pablo Brañas-Garza & Teresa García-Muñoz & Shoshana Neuman, 2009. "The Big Carrot:High-Stakes Incentives Revisited," Working Papers 2009-23, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:biu:wpaper:2009-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.biu.ac.il/soc/ec/wp/2009-23.pdf
    File Function: Working paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pablo BraÒas-Garza & Shoshana Neuman, 2004. "Analyzing Religiosity within an Economic Framework: The Case of Spanish Catholics," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 5-22, March.
    2. Nikiforakis, Nikos, 2008. "Punishment and counter-punishment in public good games: Can we really govern ourselves," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 91-112, February.
    3. Robert J. Barro & Rachel McCleary, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 9682, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaime Ortiz, 2009. "Does Religion Distribution Matter in the Economic Growth of Latin America?," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 8(3), pages 183-199, December.
    2. Pyne, Derek Arnold, 2010. "A model of religion and death," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 46-54, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Antonio M. Espín & Shoshana Neuman, 2013. "Effects of Religiosity on Social Behaviour: Experimental Evidence From a Representative Sample of Spaniards," Working Papers 2013-07, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    2. Pablo Brañas‐Garza & Máximo Rossi & Dayna Zaclicever, 2009. "Individual's Religiosity Enhances Trust: Latin American Evidence for the Puzzle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2‐3), pages 555-566, March.
    3. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Shoshana Neuman, 2007. "Parental religiosity and daughters’ fertility: the case of Catholics in southern Europe," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 305-327, September.
    4. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Neuman, Shoshana, 2006. "Is Fertility Related to Religiosity? Evidence from Spain," IZA Discussion Papers 2192, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Pyne, Derek Arnold, 2010. "A model of religion and death," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 46-54, January.
    6. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Teresa García-Muñoz & Shoshana Neuman, 2007. "Unravelling Secularization: an International Study," Papers on Economics of Religion 07/05, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    7. Oliveira, Livio Luiz Soares de & Neto, Giácomo Balbinotto & Cortes, Renan Xavier, 2012. "Quem vai à igreja? Um teste de regressão logística ordenada do modelo de Azzi-Ehrenberg para o Brasil [Who goes to church: A test of the ordered logistic regression model of Azzi-Ehrenberg to Brazi," MPRA Paper 45092, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Esa Mangeloja, 2004. "Interrelationship of economic growth and regional religious properties," ERSA conference papers ersa04p94, European Regional Science Association.
    9. Christoph Engel, 2016. "Experimental Criminal Law. A Survey of Contributions from Law, Economics and Criminology," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_07, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    10. Gürerk, Özgür, 2013. "Social learning increases the acceptance and the efficiency of punishment institutions in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 229-239.
    11. Cameron Harwick, 2020. "Inside and Outside Perspectives on Institutions: An Economic Theory of the Noble Lie," Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 140(1), pages 3-30.
    12. Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Vogel, Claudia, 2008. "Religion and trust: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 832-848, December.
    13. Mariya Aleksynska & Barry Chiswick, 2013. "The determinants of religiosity among immigrants and the native born in Europe," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 563-598, December.
    14. Tiago Neves Sequeira & Marcelo Santos, 2019. "Technology in 1500 and genetic diversity," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1145-1165, April.
    15. Annie Tubadji & Peter Nijkamp, 2015. "Cultural Gravity Effects among Migrants: A Comparative Analysis of the EU15," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 91(3), pages 343-380, July.
    16. Christian Thöni, 2014. "Inequality aversion and antisocial punishment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 529-545, April.
    17. Juan Pineiro Chousa & Haider Ali Khan & Davit N. Melikyan & Artur Tamazian, 2005. "Institutional and Financial Determinants of Development: New Evidence from Advanced and Emerging Markets," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-326, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    18. Gilat Levy & Ronnie Razin, 2009. "Religious Organizations," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series 544, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    19. Djankov, Simeon & Nikolova, Elena & Zilinsky, Jan, 2016. "The happiness gap in Eastern Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 108-124.
    20. Anne Corcos & Yorgos Rizopoulos, 2011. "Is prosocial behavior egocentric? The “invisible hand” of emotions," Post-Print halshs-01968213, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:biu:wpaper:2009-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Department of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debaril.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.