A popular view is that economics is about inflation, unemployment, prices, and quantities, but not about religion or culture. And surely, soft factors such as religion do not matter for economic outcomes, do they? Not surprisingly, students of economics would not typically come across these in their lectures on microeconomics, macroeconomics, or econometrics.
When  economic  issues  are  debated  in  the  media,  they  do  not  feature  highlyeither. But religion matters for economics and vice versa. This talk will illustrate several ways in which religion still influences today’s economy and society, either directly or indirectly.

Professor Sascha  O.  Becker (FASSA) is  Xiaokai  Yang Chair of Business and Economics at Monash University, Melbourne (Australia), and part-time Professor at the University of Warwick, England.  Previously, he held positions at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich and at the University of Stirling, Scotland. He  studied Economics in Bonn, Paris, Florence, and Berkeley. His research has appeared in international  journals, including the American  Sociological Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economicsand the American Economic Review. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.