Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes

Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes
Author: Jonathan Gruber
Publisher:
Total Pages: 62
Release: 2005
Genre: United States
ISBN:

Religion plays an important role in the lives of many Americans, but there is relatively little study by economists of the implications of religiosity for economic outcomes. This likely reflects the enormous difficulty inherent in separating the causal effects of religiosity from other factors that are correlated with outcomes. In this paper, I propose a potential solution to this long standing problem, by noting that a major determinant of religious participation is religious market density, or the share of the population in an area which is of an individual's religion. I make use of the fact that exogenous predictions of market density can be formed based on area ancestral mix. That is, I relate religious participation and economic outcomes to the correlation of the religious preference of one's own heritage with the religious preference of other heritages that share one's area. I use the General Social Survey (GSS) to model the impact of market density on church attendance, and micro-data from the 1990 Census to model the impact on economic outcomes. I find that a higher market density leads to a significantly increased level of religious participation, and as well to better outcomes according to several key economic indicators: higher levels of education and income, lower levels of welfare receipt and disability, higher levels of marriage, and lower levels of divorce.

An Economic Approach To Religion

An Economic Approach To Religion
Author: Michael Mcbride
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2022-08-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811259569

Why is religion so widespread? Why do individuals donate large amounts of time, money, and effort to religious groups? What forms does the religious competition take? Why are individuals more religious in some countries than others? What is the future of religion?This book provides a non-technical introduction to how the economic approach answers these and other questions about religion. It defines the economic approach to religion and demonstrates how it is used to study a variety of religious decisions. It explains how religious groups confront credibility, free-rider, and coordination problems that challenge the collective production of religious goods and services. It also examines competition and regulation in religious markets around the world, how religious beliefs and preferences are transmitted and sustained, how religion likely emerged in humankind's distant past, and what the future of religion may hold. The book thus demonstrates how the tools and methods of economics provide fresh insight into a variety of religious behaviors.This book is intended for a wide audience in and out of economics. Though not a textbook per se, its discussion questions and suggested readings at the end of each chapter allow for easy incorporation into the classroom. The mathematics and statistics used by researchers are generally avoided. Both theory and evidence are presented, but the focus is on the ideas that provide a coherent conceptual framework that grounds a deeper exploration of the theoretical and empirical research in the economics of religion.

Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies

Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies
Author:
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2003-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 146164321X

Can individual decisions concerning whether or where to attend church, to contribute time or money to religious organizations, or to forgo certain activities be explained as a special case of economic theory? In Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies, Ted G. Jelen brings together the leading scholars in the sociology of religion to debate market theories of religion. As the contributors examine whether or not religious choices can be understood as responding to the same laws of supply and demand as other forms of consumer behavior, they bring out many of the issues, controversies, and concerns surrounding this innovative theory. The result is a concise source for the arguments, evidence, and criticism of the market model of religious economies—a perfect starting point for students and scholars approaching this set of problems.

The Wealth of Religions

The Wealth of Religions
Author: Rachel M. McCleary
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691217106

How religious beliefs and practices can influence the wealth of nations Which countries grow faster economically—those with strong beliefs in heaven and hell or those with weak beliefs in them? Does religious participation matter? Why do some countries experience secularization while others are religiously vibrant? In The Wealth of Religions, Rachel McCleary and Robert Barro draw on their long record of pioneering research to examine these and many other aspects of the economics of religion. Places with firm beliefs in heaven and hell measured relative to the time spent in religious activities tend to be more productive and experience faster growth. Going further, there are two directions of causation: religiosity influences economic performance and economic development affects religiosity. Dimensions of economic development—such as urbanization, education, health, and fertility—matter too, interacting differently with religiosity. State regulation and subsidization of religion also play a role. The Wealth of Religions addresses the effects of religious beliefs on character traits such as work ethic, thrift, and honesty; the Protestant Reformation and its long-term effects on education and religious competition; Communism’s suppression of and competition with religion; the effects of Islamic laws and regulations on the functioning of markets and, hence, on the long-term development of Muslim countries; why some countries have state religions; analogies between religious groups and terrorist organizations; the violent origins of the Dalai Lama’s brand of Tibetan Buddhism; and the use by the Catholic Church of saint-making as a way to compete against the rise of Protestant Evangelicals. Timely and incisive, The Wealth of Religions provides fresh insights into the vital interplay between religion, markets, and economic development.

Religion, Economics and Demography

Religion, Economics and Demography
Author: Evelyn Lehrer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2008-10-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135990662

Using the tools of economics, this book analyses how religion affects decisions and outcomes in a wide range of areas, including education, employment, family size, entry into cohabitation and formal marriage, the choice of spouse and divorce. In each case, the relationships are rigorously quantified based on multivariate statistical analyses of large scale US data. The results show, for example, that when people marry outside their faith, there is an increase in the probability of divorce, the magnitude of the adverse effect depending in part on the ecumenical/exclusivist nature of the two religions. Other analyses show that youth who grow up with some religion in their lives are less likely than their counterparts with little or no religious involvement to drop out of high school or enter cohabiting arrangements at a young age. Overall, both religious affiliation and the extent of participation in religious activities are found to have far-reaching implications for economic and demographic behaviour. The book contains a wealth of data illustrating how the religious and secular realms of people’s lives are intimately intertwined. With its economic perspective, it offers new ways of thinking about these relationships and is a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in the role of religion in education, work and the family.

Review of "Religious Beliefs, Gambling Attitudes and Financial Market Outcomes"

Review of
Author: Maximiliane Brecht
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2015-06-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 365697800X

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.0, University Heidelberg Alfred-Weber-Institut of Economics, course: Religion and Financial Behavior, language: English, abstract: As religious faith plays a crucial role in people’s lives and largely influences their behavior as well as their decision making, the study of religiosity has a long tradition in many social science disciplines. Nevertheless, this relationship became only a topic of interest in modern economic studies since the last quarter of the twentieth century, when Ehrenberg and Azzi (1975) developed a utility-maximizing model taking into account both lifetime and afterlife utility (see, for example, Iannaccone, 1998; Jackson and Fleischer, 2007). In 2012, around 91% of the US American population professed to ”believe in God or a universal spirit” (Lugo, 2012), suggesting that if religion does shape economic behavior, it should also affect aggregate market outcome. Hence, studies investigate both microand macroeconomic effects of religiosity 2 , while some recent papers specifically address the relationship between religion and financial decisions: risk aversion and speculative behavior in particular are believed to depend on religious adherence. Not only have studies linked religiosity with a higher level of pure risk aversion in corporate decision making (Hilary and Hui, 2009), but also suggests current research that religious beliefs spill over in investment decisions due to different notions of gambling. For instance, Kumar (2009) found Catholics to be more willing to take on speculative risk by investing more in risky stocks than Protestants do. This paper aims to critically review Kumar, Page, and Spalt (2011) and structures as follows: firstly the theoretical framework of gambling in economics will be presented with a focus on cumulative prospect theory and its implications for asset pricing. Then follows a comprehensive overview of the theoretical background and empirical findings of the paper with focus on the influence of religion on investors’ portfolio decisions and on overpricing of initial public offerings. The subsequent section discusses the hypotheses of Kumar, Page, and Spalt (2011). Eventually, the last section concludes with a summary of the main findings in a broader context and with an outlook on future research.