The Economics of the Counter-Reformation: Incumbent-Firm Reaction to Market Entry

Robert Ekelund, Robert Hebert and Robert Tollison

Economic Inquiry, 2004, vol. 42, issue 4, 690-705

Abstract: The Catholic Church reacted to the Protestant Reformation by taking on the defensive posture of an incumbent-firm monopoly fighting to survive in the face of new competition. Contemporary firms typically respond to rival entry by rewriting their corporate charter. So did the medieval Catholic Church. But the Council of Trent failed as a reorganization plan because to keep economic rents flowing as before, it left intact the distribution of powers and property rights among the governing body of pope and cardinals--thus demonstrating that entrenched economic interests are powerful inducements to behavior, even in spiritual institutions. (JEL N00, D2, D4, D72, P16) Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

JEL-codes: D2 D4 D72 N00 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbh090 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:ecinqu:v:42:y:2004:i:4:p:690-705

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Preston McAfee

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().