God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana

Emmanuelle Auriol, Julie Lassébie, Amma Panin, Eva Raiber and Paul Seabright
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Paul Seabright: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations. We randomize enrollment of members of a Pentecostal church in Ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy. Then church members allocate money between themselves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with significant stakes. Members enrolled in insurance give significantly less money to their own church compared to members that only receive information about the insurance. Enrollment also reduces giving towards other spiritual goods. We set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance. The implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist God. Survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel.

Keywords: Charitable giving; Informal insurance; Economics of religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020, 135 (4), pp.1799-1848. ⟨10.1093/qje/qjaa015⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: God Insures those Who Pay? Formal Insurance and Religious Offerings in Ghana* (2020)
Working Paper: God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana (2020)
Working Paper: God insures those who pay?Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02872179

DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjaa015

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