IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/22539.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Economist’s Guide to Heaven

Author

Listed:
  • Muller, Nick
  • Gray, Jo Anna
  • Stone, Joe

Abstract

This paper is the first to offer an economic model of God and humanity as optimizing agents in the context of concrete belief archetypes (religious ‘contracts’) in Judeo-Christian theology. Data support the model’s unique predictions, despite their otherwise counterintuitive, unlikely nature. For example, the model requires that in one belief archetype, ‘good works’ not increase with strength of faith, as one might otherwise expect, and that what appears may be God’s dominant contract precisely balances divine penalties for reneging on promises with incentives to seek divine ‘gifts’—an equivalence supported in the data.

Suggested Citation

  • Muller, Nick & Gray, Jo Anna & Stone, Joe, 2010. "An Economist’s Guide to Heaven," MPRA Paper 22539, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:22539
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22539/1/MPRA_paper_22539.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Iannaccone, Laurence R & Finke, Roger & Stark, Rodney, 1997. "Deregulating Religion: The Economics of Church and State," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 350-364, April.
    2. Long, Stephen H & Settle, Russell F, 1977. "Household Allocation of Time and Church Attendance: Some Additional Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(2), pages 409-413, April.
    3. Lipford, Jody W. & Tollison, Robert D., 2003. "Religious participation and income," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 249-260, June.
    4. Esa Mangeloja, 2003. "Application of Economic Concepts on Religious Behavior," Others 0310003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Evelyn L. Lehrer, 2004. "Religion as a Determinant of Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 30(4), pages 707-726, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. An economic model of God
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2010-06-08 19:17:00

    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. Rietveld, C.A. & van Burg, E., 2013. "Religious beliefs and entrepreneurship among Dutch protestants," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2013-015-STR, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    2. Permani, Risti, 2011. "The presence of religious organisations, religious attendance and earnings: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 247-258, May.
    3. Janine Höhener & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2012. "Religionsökonomie: eine Übersicht," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Jin‐Ray Lu & Chih‐Ming Chan, 2012. "Religious‐based portfolio selection," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(1), pages 31-38, January.
    5. Brown, Timothy Tyler, 2009. "Rational praying: The economics of prayer," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 37-44, January.
    6. Charles M. North & Carl R. Gwin, 2004. "Religious Freedom and the Unintended Consequences of State Religion," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(1), pages 103-117, July.
    7. Anca Cojoc, 2010. "After the fall: the impact of government regulation on church attendance in Eastern Europe, 1990–2004," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 485-496, March.
    8. Imam Alam & Shahina Amin & Ken McCormick, 2018. "Income, Education, and Three Dimensions of Religiosity in the USA," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 44(4), pages 501-518, September.
    9. Shi, Wei & Tang, Yinuo, 2015. "Cultural similarity as in-group favoritism: The impact of religious and ethnic similarities on alliance formation and announcement returns," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 32-46.
    10. Bentzen, Jeanet Sinding, 2021. "In crisis, we pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 541-583.
    11. Rebecca Kippen & Bruce Chapman & Peng Yu, 2010. "What's love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability," CEPR Discussion Papers 631, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    12. Bohyun Jang & John Casterline & Anastasia Snyder, 2014. "Migration and marriage: Modeling the joint process," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 30(47), pages 1339-1366.
    13. Alicia Adsera, 2006. "An Economic Analysis of the Gap Between Desired and Actual Fertility: The Case of Spain," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 75-95, March.
    14. Kumo, Kazuhiro & Perugini, Cristiano, 2023. "Religion, Ideology and Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 16159, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. David de la Croix & Fabio Mariani & Marion Mercier, 2023. "Driven By Institutions, Shaped By Culture: Human Capital And The Secularization Of Marriage In Italy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1777-1818, November.
    16. Laura Cavalli & Alessandro Bucciol & Paolo Pertile & Veronica Polin & Nicola Sartor & Alessandro Sommacal, 2012. "Modelling life-course decisions for the analysis of interpersonal and intrapersonal redistribution," Working Papers 25/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    17. Roland Bénabou & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2022. "Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth [Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 1785-1832.
    18. Cornelissen, Thomas & Jirjahn, Uwe, 2012. "September 11th and the earnings of Muslims in Germany—The moderating role of education and firm size," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 490-504.
    19. Brown, Sarah & Taylor, Karl, 2007. "Religion and education: Evidence from the National Child Development Study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 439-460, July.
    20. S. Brock Blomberg & Thomas DeLeire & Gregory D. Hess, 2006. "The (After) Life-Cycle Theory of Religious Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series 1854, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economics; religion;

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    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:pra:mprapa:22539. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.