  Estimating the influence of religion on innovation is challenging because of
both complexness and endogeneity. In order to untangle these issues, we use
several measures of religiosity, adopt an individual-level approach to
innovation and employ the instrumental variables method. We analyse the effect
of religiosity on individual attitudes that are either favourable or
unfavourable to innovation, presenting an individual's propensity to innovate.
We instrument one's religiosity with the average religiosity of people of the
same sex, age range, and religious affiliation who live in countries with the
same dominant religious denomination. The results strongly suggest that each
measure of religiosity has a somewhat negative effect on innovation attitudes.
The diagnostic test results and sensitivity analyses support the main findings.
We propose three causality channels from religion to innovation: time
allocation, the fear of uncertainty, and conventional roles reinforced by
religion.
