Laurence R. Iannaccone

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Chapman University

Texto originalmente publicado sob o título Introduction to the Economics of Religion em setembro de 1998. A tradução foi gentilmente autorizada pelo autor Laurence R. Iannaccone.

Economic rational choice theory offers a new paradigm to replace sociology of religion, which can ultimately replace the different approaches that potential researchers have recently introduced. The theory has two advantages: being conceptually perfect and empirically efficient. It allows for the integration / integration of many of those known for...

Retrospective questions from recent surveys let us estimate rates of church attendance among children and their parents in ten Western democracies throughout most of the 20th century. We combine these time series with standard sources to test competing theories of religious change. Although our attendance estimates affirm the prevalence of religiou...

Sacrifice is widely believed to enhance cooperation in churches, communes, gangs, clans, military units, and many other groups. We find that sacrifice can also work in the lab, apart from special ideologies, identities, or interactions. Our subjects play a modified VCM game—one in which they can voluntarily join groups that provide reduced rates of...

By modeling religious activity as a product of rational choice and market forces, the economics of religion offers new insights concerning religious trends, the consequences of religious freedom, doctrinal innovation, and the enduring appeal of extremism. The work both complements and challenges that of sociologists, historians, and other religious...

We develop a generalized theory of religious markets and apply its insights to archaic Greece, ancient Israel, and modern America. Our starting point is a simple game-theoretic model in which secular leaders enhance their power by influencing the location of sacred places. The model includes standard equilibria - such as pure competition and state-...

Of all the things that sustain formal religious institutions, none is more essential than material support. Without adequate income, congregations fold, denominations fail, and the faithful flock to greener pastures. Nor is any facet of religious commitment more concrete and quantifiable. People may say all sorts of things about their faith, but th...

Adam Smith invented the economics of religion, famously arguing for church-state separation on efficiency grounds since state religions become inefficient monopoly providers of religious services and because competition for monopoly status is often violent. Smith also developed theories of religious sects and sectarian violence. Modern applications...

This essay is designed to familiarize readers with the economics of religion, make its literature more accessible, and encourage further contributions to that literature. The essay begins with work on the religious behavior of individuals and households, proceeds to analysis of religious groups and institutions, and concludes with work on religious...

Catholic countries of Europe pose a demographic puzzle –fertility is unprecedentedly low (total fertility=1.3) despite low female labor force participation. We model three channels of religious effects on demand for children: through changing norms, reduced market wages, and reduced costs of childrearing. We estimate their effects using new panel d...

This article outlines a new approach to the study of religious commitment. Starting with a variant on Schelling's classic model of mobility and segregation, we develop a multi-agent religion simulation (MARS) that incorporates insights from theories of religious choice, social influence, and preference formation. Compared to standard statistical me...

This paper challenges conventional views of violent religious extremism, particularly those that emphasize militant theology. We offer an alternative analysis that helps explain the persistent demand for religion, the different types of religions that naturally arise, and the special attributes of the “sectarian” type. Sects are adept at producing...

Congregational attendance data are abundant, accessible, and relevant for religious research. Weekly attendance histories provide information about worshippers, congregations, and denominations that surveys cannot capture. The histories yield novel measures of commitment, testable implications of rational choice theory, and compelling evidence that...

Economic perspectives enhance our understanding of religious beliefs, activities, and institutions. This essay outlines an economic theory of supernaturalism that accounts for the failure of secularization theories, the contrasting character of religion and magic, and the continued vitality of extremely demanding religious groups. Drawing upon insi...

After a very long hiatus, economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion. This article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion. Although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religi...

The social-scientific study of religion has long presumed that religious thought is 'primitive,' nonrational, incompatible with science, and, thus, doomed to decline. Contemporary evidence, however, suggests that religious involvement correlates with good mental health, responds to perceived costs and benefits, and persists in the face of advanced...

This paper applies a general theory of why religious movements succeed or fail to explain why the Jehovah's Witnesses are the most rapidly growing religious movement in the western world. In addition to qualitative assessments of Witness doctrines, organisational structures, internal networks, and socialisation, we utilise quantitative data from a...

This essay outlines an economic approach to the study of sectarian religion, an approach that explains and integrates many of the empirical findings concerning contemporary "fundamentalism." It also seeks to identify assumptions that have biased previous studies, causing them to overstate fundamentalism's threat and misinterpret the causes of funda...

Traditional religious research fails to recognize religion as a market phenomenon. It especially overlooks supply-side factors that shape the incentives and opportunities of religious firms, emphasizing instead demand-side shifts in the perceptions, tastes, and needs of consumers. This paper reviews the effects of government actions that alter reli...

Studies of church growth have fallen prey to numerous statistical pitfalls. Flawed methods and inadequate data have reduced the predictive power of past research while systematically biasing its results. The biases work to overstate the importance of the demographic context in which a church exists and understate the importance of the church's own...

This article models the growth of religious organizations as a “product” derived from inputs of time and money. Using measures of church attendance and contributions as proxies for time and money resources, we predict membership growth at the levels of both individual congregations and entire denominations. Our data also highlight the tremendous va...

Of 13 published empirical tests of the proposition that religious pluralism results in higher rates of religious participation, only a study based in the 1851 religious census of England and Wales reported contrary results (Bruce 1992). We therefore subjected these fascinating data to a fuller and more adequate analysis, both statistical and histor...

The rational choice approach attracts various criticisms, many of them unfounded. This essay defends rational choice as a powerful paradigm,for the scientific study of religion. The paradigm,unifies a wide range of empirical findings, generates new hypotheses to guide future research, and proves relevant to both contemporary,and historical settings...

choice approach to religion and catalog its principal contributions. The subsequent comments, particularly those of Chaves and Demerath, suggest a need for greater clarity. The following reply addresses some apparent misunderstandings. Inevitably, a reply points back to things already said and done. For a broader, more forward-looking analysis of t...

This paper derives a theory of religious behavior and organization from the assumption that people seek to limit the risk associated with their religious activities. Alternative risk reduction strategies lead to different styles of religion: one centering on collective production, exclusivity, and high levels of commitment; another centering on pri...

We propose a theory of religious mobilization that accounts for variations in religious participation on the basis of variations in the degree of regulation of religious economies and consequent variations in their levels of religious competition. To account for the apparent "secularization" of many European nations, we stress supply-side weaknesse...

Traditional scholarship approaches religious history from the demand side, attributing developments to the shifting de sires, perceptions, and circumstances of religious consumers. This article advocates an alternative, supply-side approach that empha sizes the opportunities and restrictions confronting religious organi zations and their leaders. S...

This paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions. The analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity. Rather, religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to "participatory c...

In a largely ignored chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith laid the foundation for an economic theory of religious institutions. Smith emphasized the importance of market structure, describing in detail the differences between state-sponsored religious monopolies and competitive religious markets. This article builds on Smith's discussion bo...

This study uses the economic concepts of household production and human capital to develop and test a new model of religious participation. The model explains observed patterns in denominational mobility, religious intermarriage, conversion ages, the relationship between church attendance and contributions, and the influence of upbringing and inter...

This article develops a rational-choice model of the effects of social change on religious organizations, which we use to analyze the Mormon Church's response to change in women's roles. Content analysis and time-series techniques are used to estimate the Church's response to social change and the effect that this response has had upon member commi...

This paper extends Granovetter and Soong's work on bandwagons by introducing interpersonal effects at the level of preferences rather than at the level of demand. It is found that markets generally will not follow the first-order difference equations analyzed by G-S, because consumers will form expectations based on the market's entire history rath...

This paper extends Granovetter and Soong's work on bandwagons by introducing interpersonal effects at the level of preferences rather than at the level of demand. It is found that markets generally will not follow the first-order difference equations analyzed by G-S, because consumers will form expectations based on the market's entire history rath...

The sociology of religion is an area rich in generalizations but poor in theory. Against this background, economic models offer the hope of better theory and more precise predictions. Previous work has failed to deliver on this promise because of its narrow focus on time and money. This paper gives center stage to normative conduct, an entirely dif...

This letter develops a general model of rational habit formation. The conditions leading to addiction and satiation are compared, and Stigler and Becker's (1977) discussion of beneficial and harmful addiction is clarified and extended.

Economics Dept. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1984. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-131). Photocopy.

This article analyzes the decline in religiosity in the Western World during the twentieth century by using long-run data on church attendance. It tests the secularization hypothesis, which argues that economic growth decreases religiosity, and the religion-market model, which considers that governmental interventions in religious affairs have an i...

This paper challenges the conventional approach to understandingradical religious terrorists, which focuses primarily on their theology. That approach fails to explain, among other things, why these groups tend to be sects, and how sects gain strength and followers. We offer an alternative analysis in which sects are but one organizational form amo...

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the past thirty to forty years have been a period of surprisingly slow change throughout America – slow relative to the century that came before, slow relative to changes in the less developed or formerly communist countries, and slow, I suspect, relative to the decades to come. Religious change has been especia...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, December 1984. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-131).