Rational praying: The economics of prayer

Timothy Tyler Brown

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2009, vol. 38, issue 1, 37-44

Abstract: Prayer, both public and private, is prescribed by most religious traditions. Patterns of prayer are shown to conform to an economic theory of spiritual health. With regard to the frequency of prayer, wages are predicted to correlate negatively, education is predicted to correlate positively, environmental factors that are supportive of prayer are predicted to correlative positively, and the expected "price" for participation in religious activity (the tithe in Judaism and Christianity and the Zakat in Islam) is predicted to correlate negatively. Empirical tests find the predictions of the model are supported for females, but only partially supported for males.

Keywords: Religion; Prayer; Grossman; model; Social; capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5H ... 2cb285388327feaf8fb4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:soceco:v:38:y:2009:i:1:p:37-44

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().