The Royal Economic Society held its annual conference this week to debate and analyse the pressing economic issues of the day. Naturally, the best-attended lectures focused on the credit crisis. Yet investment bankers in distress might have been intrigued by research presented in one of the more obscure parallel sessions.

There, in one of the rather cute pieces of statistical analysis that have become all the rage in recent years, the economist Andrew Clark presented the discovery that religious belief cushions the impact of adverse events. It is not that divine intervention is at work to protect the faithful. Rather, Catholics and Protestants alike are less depressed when bad things happen to them – for example, when they lose their jobs. Religious belief provides comfort in troubled times.

Fine. An economist once again states the obvious in technical terms, backed up by a battery of statistical tests. Even if this result was surprising – it is not – it would not change the behaviour of the devout. Christians do not hold to their faith because it is convenient or useful, but because they believe it is true. (And in case you were wondering, Easter is not about the chocolate eggs.)

Still, we can at least rely on economists to teach us some economics, and there are two lessons to be learned from this research.

First, when incentives change, so does behaviour. The study suggests that not only are Christians likely to bear unemployment with fortitude, they are also less likely to search for a job. Similarly, if your investment banker feels little pain when he loses all your money, small wonder if he takes a few risks.

Second, just because a statistical pattern can be discovered does not mean it can be exploited. Hedge funds found that their quantitative models broke down as too many financial wizards used the same strategies. All quantitative analysis must be tempered with judgment. When the econometrician is studying religion, at least it is easy to remember that.