IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ind/igiwpp/2008-023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Critical review of economic analyses of religion

Author

Listed:
  • Vikas Kumar

    (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing interest in economic analyses of religion. We carry out a critical review of Economics of Religion (EoR) in this review essay. We find that on the one hand EoR has made a significant contribution to enhance our understanding of secular trappings of religion and to break the stranglehold of non-rational approach to religion. On the other it has failed systematically to address the core of religion, namely, belief in its purportedly supernatural basis. Furthermore the methodological foundations of EoR are far from settled. We identify the shortcomings of the literature and suggest remedial measures, wherever possible.

Suggested Citation

  • Vikas Kumar, 2008. "A Critical review of economic analyses of religion," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2008-023, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    • Handle: RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2008-023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/WP-2008-023.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles G. Leathers & J. Patrick Raines, 2008. "Adam Smith on Religion and Market Structure: The Search for Consistency," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 345-363, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vikas Kumar, 2012. "Cartels in the Kautiliya Arthasastra," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 59-79, March.
    2. Alpaslan Akay & Gökhan Karabulut & Peter Martinsson, 2013. "The effect of religiosity and religious festivals on positional concerns -- an experimental investigation of Ramadan," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(27), pages 3914-3921, September.
    3. Anja Klaubert, 2009. "Being religious - A Question of Incentives?," Working Paper Series in Economics 118, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    4. Vikas Kumar, 2014. "A model of state secularism," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2313-2327, July.
    5. Akay, Alpaslan & Karabulut, Gökhan & Martinsson, Peter, 2011. "The Effect of Religion on Cooperation and Altruistic Punishment: Experimental Evidence from Public Goods Experiments," IZA Discussion Papers 6179, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Vikas Kumar, 2013. "A model of secularism in the state of nature," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 1199-1212, February.
    7. Vikas Kumar, 2013. "A Bayesian model of religious conversion," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 1163-1171, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles G. Leathers & J. Patrick Raines, 2011. "Natural religion and “moral capitalism”," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(4), pages 330-340, March.
    2. Menudo, Jose M., 2011. "Market Stability in Adam Smith: Competitive Process and Institutions," MPRA Paper 15361, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Eswaran Mukesh, 2011. "Competition and Performance in the Marketplace for Religion: A Theoretical Perspective," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-36, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Church; Credence Goods; Economic Methodology; Inscrutable Markets; Religion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics
    • B2 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925
    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology
    • B5 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2008-023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Shamprasad M. Pujar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/igidrin.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.