On Teaching the Economics of Religion: Incorporating Some Insights from Hinduism

This brief paper is based on my experience with teaching of the economic consequences of religion at the undergraduate level for many years. There was an almost exclusive focus in the literature on the Judeo-Christian religions at the time of my teaching. In this paper, I discuss two separate and independent phenomena from Hinduism drawn from my own work (one of which is coauthored) to show how the economics of religion can be enriched by including the analysis of phenomena and institutions from other religions. One phenomenon I discuss is the origin of the caste system of India, which shows why gender issues are at the heart of the institution. The other is the practice of karma yoga, which results in an increase in economic productivity as an unintended consequence. Since work is urged to be practiced as worship in Christianity and Islam also, the analysis also sheds some light on how religious beliefs affect economic productivity.