The Economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field

Ned Augenblick, Jesse Cunha, Ernesto Dal Bó and Justin M. Rao

No 18641, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We model religious faith as a "demand for beliefs," following the logic of the Pascalian wager. We then demonstrate how an experimental intervention can exploit standard elicitation techniques to measure religious belief by varying prizes associated with making choices contrary to one's belief in a, crucially, falsifiable religious proposition. We implemented this approach with a group that expected the "End of the World" to happen on May 21, 2011 by offering prizes payable before and after May 21st. The results suggest the existence of a demand for extreme, sincere beliefs that was unresponsive to experimental manipulations in price.

JEL-codes: D8 D91 Z1 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Ned Augenblick & Jesse M. Cunha & Ernesto Dal Bó & Justin M. Rao, 2016. "The economics of faith: using an apocalyptic prophecy to elicit religious beliefs in the field," Journal of Public Economics, vol 141, pages 38-49.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18641.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The economics of faith: using an apocalyptic prophecy to elicit religious beliefs in the field (2016)
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:nbr:nberwo:18641

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18641

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().