The Price of Everything (44 page)

 

162-165 What Culture Does:
The working habits among daughters of immigrants to the United States are found in Raquel Fernandez, “Women, Work, and Culture,” NBER Working Paper, February 2007. The impact of fines in Israeli day-care centers is discussed in Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,”
Journal of Legal Studies
, Vol. 29, No. 1, January 2000, pp. 1-17. The statistic about Japan’s high prices comes from Robert Lipsey and Birgitta Swedenborg, “Explaining Product Price Differences Across Countries,” NBER Working Paper, July 2007.

 

165-168 Where Culture Comes From:
Discussion of the economic implications of trust draws from Jeff Butler, Paola Giuliano, and Luigi Guiso, “The Right Amount of Trust,” CEPR Discussion Paper, September 2009; and the World Values Survey, 2005-2008 wave (
www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeSample.jsp
, accessed 07/18/2010). Different views on the deformed lips of Mursi girls are from Mursi Online, Oxford University Department of International Development (
www.mursi.org/
); and Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, “Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
, Vol. 20, Spring 2006, pp. 23-48. The results of experiments using the Ultimatum Game around the world are described in Joseph Heinrich et al., “ ‘Economic Man’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
, Vol. 28, 2005, pp. 795-855. The use of myth to manage caribou populations among the Chisasibi is described in Fikret Berkes,
Sacred Ecology
, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 128-129. Data about cultural proximity between societies that share similar environments is found in Mathias Thoenig, Nicolas Maystre, Jacques Olivier, and Thierry Verdier, “Product-Based Cultural Change: Is the Village Global?,” CEPR Discussion Paper, August 2009. The impact of the choice of economic system on the worldview of East and West Germans is drawn from Alberto Alesina and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, “Good-bye Lenin (or Not?): The Effect of Communism on People’s Preferences,” NBER Working Paper, October 2005.

 

168-173 Who Can Afford Animal Rights?:
Data on attitudes toward premarital sex are drawn from Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Jeremy Greenwood, and Nezih Guner, “From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and Its Destigmatization,” NBER Working Paper, January 2010; and Kaye Wellings, “Poverty or Promiscuity: Sexual Behaviour in Global Context,” London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, paper presented at the Training Course in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research, Geneva, Switzerland, February 23, 2009. The reasons for England’s crummy cuisine are discussed in Paul Krugman, “Supply, Demand and English Food,”
Fortune
, July 1988. International comparisons of the share of income devoted to food, the price elasticity of food demand, and preferences for treating farm animals humanely are drawn from the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (
www.ers.usda.gov/Data/InternationalFood-Demand/Index.asp?view=PEF#IFD
, accessed 07/18/2010); David Dickinson and DeeVon Bailey, “Experimental Evidence on Willingness to Pay for Red Meat Traceability in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Japan,”
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics
, Vol. 37, No. 3. December 2005, pp. 537-548; and World Values Survey, average of first four waves: 1981-2000 (
www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeSample.jsp
, accessed 07/18/2010). The analysis of the relationship between the price of labor and the availability of services is in Robert Lipsey and Birgitta Swedenborg, “High-Price and Low-Price Countries: Causes and Consequences of Product Price Differences Across Countries,” University of Pennsylvania Workshop Presentation, 2008; Robert Lipsey and Birgitta Swedenborg, “Explaining Product Price Differences Across Countries,” NBER Working Paper, July 2007; and Robert Lipsey and Birgitta Swedenborg, “Wage Dispersion and Country Price Levels,” NBER Working Paper, 1997. The commentary on the different views on fairness and luck in Europe and the United States draws from Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole, “Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics,” NBER Working Paper, March 2005; and World Values Survey, 2005-2008 wave (
http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeStudy.jsp
, accessed 08/09/2010). The discussion on racial diversity and support for redistributive policies draws from William Julius Wilson,
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
(New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. 202. Data on tipping patterns in the United States come from Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler, “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market,”
American Economic Review
, Vol. 76, September 1986, pp. 728-741; and Michael Lynn, “Tipping in Restaurants and Around the Globe: An Interdisciplinary Review,” in Morris Altman, ed.,
Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics, Foundations and Developments
(Armonk, N.Y.: M .E. Sharpe Publishers, 2006), pp. 626-643.

 

173-177 The Price of Repugnance:
Discussion on different attitudes about eating horse fillet are drawn from Alvin Roth, “Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
, Vol. 21, No. 3, Summer 2007, pp. 37-58;
maville.com
, Caen et ça region (at
www.caen.maville.com/actu/actudet_-Cyril-ouvre-une-boucherie-chevaline-boulevard-Leroy-_loc-822159_actu.htm
, accessed 07/18/2010); and Tara Burghart, “Last US Horse Slaughterhouse to Close,”
Huffington Post
, June 29, 2007 (
www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070629/horse-slaughter/#
, accessed 07/18/2010). The discussion about attitudes toward egg donations draws from the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Financial Compensation of Oocyte Donors,”
Fertility and Sterility
, Vol. 88, No. 2, August 2007, pp. 305-309; David Tuller, “Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny,”
New York Times
, May 10, 2010; United Kingdom Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, “Egg Donation and Egg Sharing” (at
www.hfea.gov.uk/egg-donation-and-egg-sharing.html
. , accessed 07/18/2010); and Alvin Roth, op. cit. The discussion about opposition to dwarf tossing in France comes from Alvin Roth, op. cit. Brigitte Bardot’s campaign against Koreans’ taste for dog meat is discussed in William Saletan, “Wok the Dog,”
Slate
, January 16, 2002. Data on kidney transplants are found in Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (at
www.ustransplant.org/csr/current/nationalViewer.aspx?o=KI
, accessed 07/18/2010). The discussion on how kidney sales would increase the supply of kidneys for transplant draws from Gary S. Becker and Julio Jorge Elías, “Introducing Incentives in the Market for Live and Cadaveric Organ Donations,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
, Vol. 21, Summer 2007, pp. 3-24; Anne Griffin, “Kidneys on Demand,”
British Medical Journal
, Vol. 334, March 10, 2007, pp. 502-505; Ahad J. Ghods and Shekoufeh Savaj, “Iranian Model of Paid and Regulated Living-Unrelated Kidney Donation,”
Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology
, Vol. 1, 2006, pp. 616-625; and Hassan Ibrahim, Robert Foley, LiPing Tan, Tyson Rogers, Robert Bailey, Hongfei Guo, Cynthia Gross, and Arthur Matas, “Long-Term Consequences of Kidney Donation,”
New England Journal of Medicine
, Vol. 360, No. 5, January 2009, pp. 459-469.

 

177-178 Darwin’s Price System:
The experiments about monkeys’ sense of fairness are described in Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay,”
Nature
, Vol. 425, September 18, 2003, pp. 297-299.

 

179-181 The Price of Faith:
Pascal’s wager is described in Blaise Pascal,
Pensées
, translated by W. F. Trotter, 1910, Section IV: On the Means of Belief, paragraph 233 (at
oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/pascal/pensees-contents.html
, accessed 07/18/2010).

 

182-185 The Benefits of Belief:
The discussion of mutual assistance patterns in religious groups draws from Eli Berman, “Sect, Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2003, pp. 905-953; David Landau,
Piety and Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), p. 263; Buster Smith and Rodney Stark, “Religious Attendance Relates to Generosity Worldwide,” Gallup Report, September 4, 2009 (
www.gallup.com/poll/122807/religious-attendance-relates-generosity-worldwide.aspx
. , accessed 07/18/2010); Daniel Chen, “Club Goods and Group Identity: Evidence from Islamic Resurgence During the Indonesian Financial Crisis,”
Journal of Political Economy
, Vol. 118, No. 2, 2010, pp. 300-354. The discussion about the impact of religious faith on trust, moral behavior, happiness, and mortality draws from Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, “People’s Opium? Religion and Economic Attitudes,”
Journal of Monetary Economics
, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 225-282, 2003; Azim Shariff and Ayan Norenzayan, “God Is Watching You,”
Psychological Science
, Vol. 18, No. 9, 2007, pp. 803-809; Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Tony Foleno, “For Goodness Sake: Why So Many Want Religion to Play a Greater Role in American Life,”
Public Agenda
, 2001; Robert Hummer, Richard Rogers, Charles Nam, and Christopher Ellison, “Religious Involvement and U.S. Adult Mortality,”
Demography
, Vol. 36, No. 2, May 1999, pp. 273-285; Jonathan Gruber, “Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?” NBER Working Paper, May 2005; and Timothy Brown, “A Monetary Valuation of Individual Religious Behavior: The Case of Prayer,” University of California Berkeley Working Paper, September 2009. The relation between religious attitudes and people’s opportunities in the secular world is discussed in Jonathan Gruber and Daniel Hungerman, “The Church vs. the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?” NBER Working Paper, July 2006; Jonathan Gruber, “Pay or Pray? The Impact of Charitable Subsidies on Religious Attendance,” NBER Working Paper, March 2004; and Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, “Education and Religion,” NBER Working Paper, 2001.

185-188 What Does It Cost?:
Maimonides’ comment on circumcision is found in Moses Maimonides,
The Guide for the Perplexed
, translated from the original Arabic text by M. Friedlander, 2nd edition (Charleston, S.C.: Forgottenbooks. com, 2008), pp. 646-647. The description of the mystic religion of Pythagoras is in Bertrand Russell,
A History of Western Philosophy
(London: Routledge, 1991), p. 51. The survival rates of religious versus secular communes in the nineteenth century are found in Richard Sosis and Eric Bressler, “Cooperation and Commune Longevity: A Test of the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion,”
Cross-Cultural Research
, Vol. 37, No. 2, May 2003, pp. 211-239.

 

189-192 When Belief Is Cheap:
Efforts by the religious to segregate themselves from other groups are discussed in Laurence Iannaccone, “Introduction to the Economics of Religion,”
Journal of Economic Literature
, Vol. 36, September 1998, pp. 1465-1496. The description of the emergence of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Europe is drawn from Eli Berman, “Sect Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, Vol. 115, No. 3, August 2000, pp. 905-953. Membership in the Catholic Church is found in Carol Glatz, “Vatican: Priest Numbers Show Steady, Moderate Increase,”
Catholic News Service
, March 2, 2009.
Time
magazine’s famous God article is “Toward a Hidden God,”
Time
, April 8, 1966. The discussion on the weakening of the Catholic Church since the 1960s is drawn from the Association of Religion Data Archives (
www.thearda.com/Denoms/D_836.asp
, accessed 07/18/2010); the Pew Global Attitudes Project, “The U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion,” December 19, 2002; and the World Values Survey (
www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeSample.jsp
, accessed 07/18/2010). Pope Benedict’s reintroduction of plenary indulgences is described in Paul Vitello, “For Catholics, Heaven Moves a Step Closer,”
New York Times
, February 10, 2009.

 

192-195 What the Church Wants:
The medieval Catholic Church’s tinkering with its rules, penalties, and prices is described in Robert Ekelund Jr., Robert Hébert, and Robert Tollison, “An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation,”
Journal of Political Economy
, Vol. 110, No. 3, 2002; and Robert Ekelund, Robert Tollison, Gary Anderson, Robert Hébert, and Audrey Davidson,
Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 96-98.

 

195-198 Sin vs. the Secular World:
The decline of the belief in God across the industrial world is documented in Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris,
Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004). The divergence from this trend in the United States is discussed in Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, December 19, 2002; Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, “The Dynamics of Religious Economies,” in Michele Dillon, ed.,
Handbook of the Sociology of Religion
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Association of Religion Data Archives (
www.thearda.com/quickstats/qsdir.asp
, accessed 08/19/2010).

 

198-200 Will God Bounce Back?:
The relation between poverty and religion is discussed in Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, op. cit.; and Eli Berman, op. cit. Data on fertility, poverty, and religious fervor in the United States is drawn from Census Bureau, Fertility of American Women 2006 (
www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-558.pdf
, accessed 08/19/2010); Census Bureau, State Median Family Income 2007 (
www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/statemedfaminc.html
. , accessed 08/19/2010); and Frank Newport, “Religious Identity: States Differ Widely,” Gallup Report, August 7, 2009 (
www.gallup.com/poll/122075/religious-identity-states-differ-widely.aspx
, accessed 07/19/2010).