The Invisible Hand Plays Dice: Eventualities in Religious Markets

Panu Poutvaara and Andreas Wagener

No 1238, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Religious participation is much more widespread in the United States than in Europe, while Europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than Americans. We propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals. Religious markets may have multiple equilibria, suggesting that observed differences in religious structures may merely be eventualities. Further, equilibria with more sects result in higher welfare and lower membership costs, as secular societies tend to host on average more demanding sects. Our main methodological contribution to the theory of religious markets is endogenizing simultaneously supply and demand of spiritual services.

Keywords: sects; religion; tithes; religious markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 J24 L89 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1238.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Invisible Hand Plays Dice: Eventualities in Religious Markets (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:ces:ceswps:_1238

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().