Which Countries Have State Religions?

Robert Barro and Rachel M. McCleary

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005, vol. 120, issue 4, 1331-1370

Abstract: Among 188 countries, 72 had no state religion in 2000,1970, and 1900; 58 had a state religion throughout; and 58 had 1 or 2 transitions. We use a Hotelling spatial competition model to analyze the likelihood that the religion market would be monopolized. Similar forces influence a government's decision to establish a state religion. Consistent with the model, the probability of state religion in 1970 and 2000 is increasing with the adherence rate to the main religion, has a nonlinear relation with population, and has little relation with per capita GDP. The probability of state religion decreases sharply under Communism, but lagged Communism has only a weak effect. With costly adjustment for institutions, the probability of state religion in 1970 or 2000 depends substantially on the status in 1900. This persistence is much stronger for countries with no major regime change than for countries with such a change.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (171)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/003355305775097515 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Which Countries Have State Religions? (2005)
Working Paper: Which Countries Have State Religions? (2004)
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:qjecon:v:120:y:2005:i:4:p:1331-1370.

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

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().