Cultural beliefs play an important crucial role in shaping individuals’ decision-making and behavior. This study uses data from the 2011 and 2013 waves of the China Household Financial Survey to investigate the impact of a specific Chinese spiritual belief, known as the “zodiac year”, on individual risk aversion behavior. The findings reveal a significant correlation between the zodiac year and individuals’ risk attitudes, indicating that people tend to adopt more risk-averse behaviors during their zodiac year. Additionally, we explore the influence of Eastern religions and education on the relationship between the zodiac year and individuals’ risk aversion behavior. The results indicate that Eastern religions amplify the impact of the zodiac year, whereas educational attainment has the potential to mitigate the influence of this superstitious belief. This study contributes to the growing body of literature examining the influence of spiritual beliefs on individual economic behavior, providing empirical support for the hypothesis that spiritual beliefs can shape individuals’ risk aversion behavior.

Tax revenue sharing reshapes fiscal relations between central and local governments, thereby influencing local fiscal capacity, expenditure behavior, and development strategies, and ultimately playing a pivotal role in urban growth. Yet, little is known about how tax revenue sharing affects urban entrepreneurship. This paper investigates this relationship by exploiting China’s 2016 value-added tax (VAT) revenue-sharing reform as a quasi-natural experiment, applying a difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The findings reveal that an increased local VAT retention ratio significantly promotes urban entrepreneurship, with the effect being more pronounced in non-resource-based cities and eastern regions. Mechanism analysis suggests that the reform fosters entrepreneurship primarily by incentivizing local governments to expand public services and infrastructure investment. Further evidence indicates that the positive effect of tax revenue sharing on entrepreneurship is stronger in regions with higher fiscal self-sufficiency, more intense intergovernmental tax competition, and lower levels of government intervention. JEL Code： H71