An Economic Approach to Religion

Why is religion so widespread? Why do individuals donate large amounts of time, money, and effort to religious groups? What forms does the religious competition take? Why are individuals more religious in some countries than others? What is the future of religion?

This book provides a non-technical introduction to how the economic approach answers these and other questions about religion. It defines the economic approach to religion and demonstrates how it is used to study a variety of religious decisions. It explains how religious groups confront credibility, free-rider, and coordination problems that challenge the collective production of religious goods and services. It also examines competition and regulation in religious markets around the world, how religious beliefs and preferences are transmitted and sustained, how religion likely emerged in humankind's distant past, and what the future of religion may hold. The book thus demonstrates how the tools and methods of economics provide fresh insight into a variety of religious behaviors.

This book is intended for a wide audience in and out of economics. Though not a textbook per se, its discussion questions and suggested readings at the end of each chapter allow for easy incorporation into the classroom. The mathematics and statistics used by researchers are generally avoided. Both theory and evidence are presented, but the focus is on the ideas that provide a coherent conceptual framework that grounds a deeper exploration of the theoretical and empirical research in the economics of religion.

Contents:

• Preface
• About the Author
• An Economic Approach to Religion
• Measuring Religion
• Church Attendance
• Proximate Sources of Religious Preferences
• Religious Beliefs and the Problem of Credibility
• Religious Clubs and the Free-Rider Problem
• Religious Authority and the Coordination Problem
• Patterns of Religious Group Vitality
• The Boundaries of the Religious Club
• Religious Market Competition
• The Dynamic Religious Economy
• The Evolution of Norms and Religion
• Secularization and the Future of Religion
• Concluding Remarks
• Additional Resources
• Index

Readership: Academic audiences (professors, researchers, instructors, graduate, and undergraduate students) from economics, other fields in the social sciences, from the humanities, including religious studies; lay readers who want to learn how economics is used to study human life.
Key Features:

• There is currently no introductory text on the economics of religion that is written for a wide, multi-disciplinary, academic audience. This book draws from the author's years of experience teaching the economics of religion to undergraduate students in order to provide an introduction to the key concepts and methods of this growing academic field of study. It examines individual religious choice, collective religious production, the transmission of religious beliefs and preferences, competition in religious markets, the impact of governmental regulations in religious markets, the evolution of religion, and secularization. No existing book provides an introduction to the literature with this breadth or depth
• There are three books that deserve direct comparison with this book. The first is Stark and Finke's Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (University of California Press, 2000). Although it is now over twenty years old, this book is still the best available academic introduction to the rational-choice approach to religion. However, it is written by sociologists who sometimes miss subtleties of economic analysis, thus leading to inaccurate presentations of some economic concepts. Moreover, several relevant economic theories that should be included in a

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