The Basis Of The Economic System Of Belief

In this article we try to understand the relation between religion and institutions. During the process of the evolution of institutions, we know that cultural foundations can influence institutional change. But it is sheer intuition. So, in order to prove this intuition, we choose one of the most significant cultural phenomena, religion, as the subject of our analysis.We argue that the Economics of Religion does not realize the relationship between religion and institutions. So it cannot articulate the causality of religion and economic performance.We believe that in a community religion can affect the evolution of institutions, so there has a link between religion and economic performance. We do not use the rational choice model to analyze religious phenomena directly, but try to understand the religious influence to the process of institutional change from a new viewpoint.Firstly, we consider the social institutional changes in history, especially some great transformations of the economic structures and religious faith. Historical data gives us an important intuition: there is a certain relationship between religion and economic institutions.Secondly, we give a definition to the meaning of the word "religion". And we argue that "religion" have three factors: rite, dogmatics and faith. We also outline the method of evolutionary game theory which we use in this paper. We find there are some links between religious factors and the evolution of institutions.Then we analyze in ancient society how rites affect the formation of institutions, and we use the gift exchange as an example. After that we consider the role of dogmatics during the process of economic changes. We find that as the ideological authority religion can promote institutional changes through dogmatics. At last, we examine the most important factor: religious faith. And we try to use rational choice model to explain Weber Thesis. We believe, in modern society religious faith still has a profound influence.Finally, we use this theory to test its applicability in traditional Chinese society. And give a brief conclusion about our theory.