Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
Traditional Religion and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from China
Abstract
We study the role of traditional religion in the origins of private entrepreneurship in China. Our focus is on the historical and contemporary influence of a prominent Chinese wealth god, Wutong. We leverage the facts that (i) in traditional Chinese folklore, the God of Wealth governs the distribution of wealth, and (ii) a policy reform in 1895 eased restrictions on private enterprise establishment in China. We construct a unique dataset on temples devoted to the Wealth God to capture a more ingrained culture of wealth worship. Combining an instrumental variable approach with a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the 1895 liberalization reform led to a greater number of new private enterprises in prefectures with a Wealth God culture. Moreover, the influence of the Wealth God shows strong persistence. Remarkably, the Wealth God culture still affects the contemporary incidence of registered new businesses, occupational choice favoring entrepreneurship, and attitudes towards income and wealth. This paper helps improve our understanding of the enduring impact of previously overlooked cultural and religious factors on entrepreneurship and regional disparities within China
About the speaker
Gunes Gokmen is an associate professor of economics at Lund University. His research interests span Political Economy, Development Economics, International Economics, Economic History, and Applied Microeconometrics.
Language
English
This is a free seminar. Registration is mandatory
Supported by the Fond National de la Recherche,
Luxembourg (19441346)