Specialization and rent-seeking in moral enforcement: The case of confession

Benito Arruñada

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Moral codes are produced and enforced by more or less specialized means and are subject to standard economic forces. This paper argues that the intermediary role played by the Catholic Church between God and Christians, a key difference from Protestantism, faces the standard trade-off of specialization benefits and agency costs. It applies this trade-off hypothesis to confession of sins to priests, an institution that epitomizes such intermediation, showing that this hypothesis fits cognitive, historical and econometric evidence better than a simpler rent-seeking story. In particular, Catholics who confess more often are observed to comply more with the moral code; however, no relationship is observed between mass attendance and moral compliance. The data also links the current decline in confession to the rise in education, which makes moral self-enforcement less costly, and to the productivity gap suffered by confession services, given its necessarily interpersonal nature.

Keywords: Religion; institutions; confession; morals; law enforcement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 K19 L84 N4 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-01, Revised 2009-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:653

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