IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/17976.html

Religion and Cooperation across the Globe

Author

Listed:
  • Valencia Caicedo, Felipe
  • Dohmen, Thomas
  • Pondorfer, Andreas

Abstract

Social science research has stressed the important role of religion in sustaining cooperation among non-kin. We contribute to this literature with a large-scale empirical study documenting the relationship between religion and cooperation. We analyze newly available, experimentally validated, and globally representative data on social preferences and world religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism). We find that individuals who report believing in such religions also exhibit more prosocial preferences, as measured by their levels of positive reciprocity, altruism and trust. We further document heterogeneous patterns of negative reciprocity and punishment—two key elements for cooperation—across world religions. The association between religion and prosocial preferences is stronger in more populous societies and weaker in countries with better institutions. The interactive results between these variables point again towards the substitutability between religious and secular institutions, when it comes to sustaining cooperation.

Suggested Citation

  • Valencia Caicedo, Felipe & Dohmen, Thomas & Pondorfer, Andreas, 2023. "Religion and Cooperation across the Globe," CEPR Discussion Papers 17976, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17976
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP17976
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Sascha O. Becker & Amma Panin & Steven Pfaff & Jared Rubin, 2025. "Religion and Economic Development: Past, Present, and Future," CESifo Working Paper Series 11724, CESifo.
    3. El Hajjar, Samah & Gebka, Bartosz & Duxbury, Darren & Su, Chen, 2024. "Does religiosity affect stock investors’ herding behaviour? Global evidence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(PA).
    4. Hoch, Georg & Pondorfer, Andreas & Shkola, Viktoriia, 2025. "Conflict and social capital: Evidence from the Russian War against Ukraine," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 461-471.
    5. Huang, Ling & Lin, Zhiyang & Zhang, Huan & Zhang, Yifan, 2025. "Melting pot: Linguistic diversity and collaboration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • P35 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Public Finance
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    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:cpr:ceprdp:17976. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.