Religious beliefs and practise: spanish facts

Este trabajo muestra una serie de regularidades entre la religiosidad de los sujetos y algunas de sus características personales. Usando la base de datos ISSP-98 de la UNESCO y, a través de un análisis de componentes principales, obtenemos un índice de actividad (religiosa) y otro de creencias para cada sujeto. Los resultados más relevantes del trabajo son: 1) La actividad religiosa de los individuos y sus creencias están (positivamente) relacionadas. 2) La experiencia del sujeto cuando niño (la asistencia de sus padres a la iglesia y su propia asistencia) también explican la práctica actual. 3) Las mujeres, los casados (más todavía si lo están con católicos) y los que tienen más edad también muestran mayor nivel de religiosidad. 4) Los que tienen mayor nivel educativo son menos religiosos pero estos tienen mejores salarios. 5) No hay relación entre fertilidad y actividad religiosa actual.This paper explores a number of regularities in religious behaviour, among subjects and their personal features. We use the 1998 wave of the International Social Survey Program dataset. Through principal components analysis we obtain two indexes (practise and religious beliefs) that are used as dependent variables in several estimations with socio-demographics as exogenous determinants. Our main results are: 1) practise and religious beliefs are positively correlated; 2) childhood religious experiences (attendance and parental practise) are positive determinants of current religious practise; 3) women, married and older people are more prone to be religious; 3) education is negatively correlated with religiosity; 4) there is no correlation among fertility and current religious activity

Sequential versus Simultaneous Schelling Models: Experimental Evidence

This article shows the results of experiments where subjects play the Schelling’s spatial proximity model. Two types of experiments are conducted: one in which choices are made sequentially and a variation of the first where the decision making is simultaneous. The results of the sequential experiments are identical to Schelling’s prediction: subjects finish in a segregated equilibrium. Likewise, in the variant of the simultaneous decision experiment, the same result is reached: segregation. Subjects’ heterogeneity generates a series of focal points in the first round. To locate themselves, subjects use these focal points immediately, and as a result, the segregation takes place again. Furthermore, simultaneous experiments with commuting costs allow us to conclude that introducing positive moving costs does not affect segregation.Schelling models; economic experiments; segregation

Pro-sociality and strategic reasoning in economic decisions

We study the relationship between pro-social preferences and strategic reasoning. These aspects are typically studied separately but little is known about their joint distribution. In an experiment, for each participant we elicit individual concerns toward pro-sociality—inequality aversion and efficiency—as well as the number of steps of reasoning through a guessing game. We report that self-regarding and pro-social participants exhibit similar levels of strategic reasoning, which supports the view that pro-sociality and strategic reasoning can be studied independently.Funding for this research was provided by Purdue University, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, thorugh grant ECO2011-29445, the European Commission through Project CIT3Â513420, the ERC Starting Grant no. 241196 STRANGERS the Italian Ministry of Education FIRB-Futuro in Ricerca (Grant no. RBFR084L83)