Church Tax Exemption and Structure of Religious Markets: a Dynamic Structural Analysis

Raphael Corbi () and Fabio Miessi Sanches ()

No 2024_31, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: We investigate how church tax-exemption policies affect the structure of religion markets. Using the Brazilian experience as a showcase, we build and estimate a dynamic game of Church entry from temple entry/exit data in isolated markets. Counterfactuals show that tax-exemptions encouraged the opening of temples of all religions, but Evangelical churches collectively grew more than the Catholic Church. The share of Evangelical temples increased by approximately 20 p.p. as a result. By combining DiD estimates with our counterfactuals, we find that tax-exemption policies increased the vote share of politicians affiliated with the Evangelical caucus by 8% in the 2018 elections.

Keywords: Religion; Tax; Dynamic Oligopoly; Dynamic Game Estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C57 C73 H25 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.repec.eae.fea.usp.br/documentos/Corbi_Sanches_31WP.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spa:wpaper:2024wpecon31

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pedro Garcia Duarte ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).