Voodoo Economics

This dissertation collects three essays that aim to contribute to the field of cultural economics. There is growing recognition among economists and policy makers that culture matters for economic development, but in many cases this trend has not resulted in a thorough understanding of the role of culture, or a proper integration of existing knowledge in policy. This is particularly true for the area of food security. The second chapter addresses this issue by reviewing existing cross-disciplinary research on the impact of culture on food security, with the aim of getting a better handle on what we (do not) know, and assessing how existing knowledge can improve policy design and implementation. For the second and third essay we narrow our focus to a particular domain within cultural economics that studies the economics of magic and the supernatural – or ‘Voodoo economics’. A growing body of anthropological, psychological, and evolutionary literature suggests that magical and supernatural belief systems have real-world implications that reach beyond traditional rural village societies and will not necessarily disappear over time. The third essay therefore aims to contribute to a better understanding of the economic effects of magical belief systems by studying the contemporary effects of traditional fishery institutions embedded in the Voodoo religion in Benin. In particular, we analyze the impact of Voodoo-related traditional fishing rules on the use of unsustainable fishing gear, and compare this effect with the impact of a more recent secular institution (fishing committees). The fourth essay looks not at economic effects, but aims to improve our understanding of how magical beliefs arise over the long run. We focus on witchcraft beliefs in sub-Saharan Africa, and investigate whether historical exposure to a heavy disease burden explains witchcraft beliefs today. Several strands of literature offer psychological and economic arguments for why a heavy disease burden could promote the emergence and persistence of witchcraft beliefs, but to date there is no large-scale empirical evidence for this hypothesis. We therefore test it for the case of sub-Saharan Africa, where witchcraft beliefs continue to hold great power today.