Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas?

Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav and Oren Rigbi

Economic Journal, 2010, vol. 120, issue 545, pages 612-630

Abstract: We use individual-level survey and county-level expenditure data to examine the extent to which Hanukkah celebrations among US Jews are driven by the presence of Christmas. We document that Jews with young children are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah, that this effect is greater for reform Jews and for strongly-identified Jews, and that Jewish-related expenditure on Hanukkah is higher in counties with lower shares of Jews. All these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that celebration of religious holidays is designed not only for worship and enjoyment but also to provide a counterbalance for children against competing cultural influences. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2009.02305.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:120:y:2010:i:545:p:612-630

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is edited by Martin Cripps, Steve Machin, Woulter den Haan, Andrea Galeotti, Rachel Griffith and Frederic Vermeulen

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing ().