eprintid: 2655 rev_number: 8 eprint_status: archive userid: 6 dir: disk0/00/00/26/55 datestamp: 2015-03-31 08:40:26 lastmod: 2015-03-31 08:40:26 status_changed: 2015-03-31 08:40:26 type: monograph metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Bénabou, Roland creators_name: Ticchi, Davide creators_name: Vindigni, Andrea creators_id: creators_id: davide.ticchi@imtlucca.it creators_id: andrea.vindigni@imtlucca.it title: Religion and innovation ispublished: submitted subjects: BL subjects: HB divisions: EIC full_text_status: none monograph_type: discussion_paper keywords: Keywords: attitudes, beliefs, creativity, culture, dogma, growth, ideas, innovation, religion, risk‐taking, science, technical progress, tolerance and values - JEL classification: D83, O31, O35, O43, Z1 and Z12 abstract: In earlier work (Bénabou, Ticchi and Vindigni 2013) we uncovered a robust negative association between religiosity and patents per capita, holding across countries as well as US states, with and without controls. In this paper we turn to the individual level, examining the relationship between religiosity and a broad set of pro‐ or anti‐innovation attitudes in all five waves of the World Values Survey (1980 to 2005). We thus relate eleven indicators of individual openness to innovation, broadly defined (e.g., attitudes toward science and technology, new versus old ideas, change, risk taking, personal agency, imagination and independence in children) to five different measures of religiosity, including beliefs and attendance. We control for all standard socio‐demographics as well as country, year and denomination fixed effects. Across the fifty‐two estimated specifications, greater religiosity is almost uniformly and very significantly associated to less favorable views of innovation. date: 2015-03 date_type: published number: 10518 publisher: Centre for Economic Policy Research pages: 18 institution: IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca issn: 0265-8003 official_url: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=10518# citation: Bénabou, Roland and Ticchi, Davide and Vindigni, Andrea Religion and innovation. Discussion Paper #10518/2015 Centre for Economic Policy Research ISSN 0265-8003. (Submitted)