What Drives Religiosity in America? Evidence from an Empirical Hotelling Model of Church Competition

Raphael Corbi (rcorbi@usp.br) and Fabio Miessi Sanches (fabioams1@insper.edu.br)

No 2022_08, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: We develop and estimate a Hotelling model of religious competition that allows us to study how churches ideological views are built depending on both societal and their own ideological preferences as well as strategic interactions between churches. Demand for religion is a function of the distance between individuals` ideology and the ideological type of each church. We show that churches ideological types can be identified using the structure of the demand model. We find that individuals choose churches that have ideological types close to their own ideological types. We also document that religious groups are overwhelmingly on the conservative side of the spectrum as they systematically deviate from profit maximization. Their ideological positioning is driven mainly by clergy intrinsic preferences (supply) as opposed to society ideological views (demand). Our counterfactuals indicate that the recent societal shift to the left in terms of political views and attitudes towards sexual norms is able to explain a substantial part of American religiosity trends observed in the last decades.

Keywords: Religion; Ideology; Product Differentiation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C57 D72 H25 L66 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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