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 lectureson 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, Mel-bourne(Australia), and part-time Professor at the University of  Warwick, England.  Previously,  he  held  positions  at  Lud-wig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich and at the Univer-sity  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 Ameri-can Economic Review.He is an elected Fellow of the Acad-emy of the Social Sciences in Australia