The Market for Martyrs [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Abstract: Despite its presence within all religious traditions, extreme self-sacrifice is by no means easy to explain. We rightly view most people who seek pain or death as mentally ill. Yet studies refute the seemingly obvious conclusion that religious self-sacrifice is likewise rooted in depression, obsession, or other forms of irrationality. Economic theory suggests ways in which many forms of sacrifice (such as restrictive diet, dress, and sexual conduct) can help groups produce collective goods and services otherwise lost to free-riding, but self-sacrifice aimed at injuring others has yet to be adequately explained.
Injury-oriented sacrifice can be modeled as a market phenomenon grounded in exchanges between a relatively small supply of people willing to sacrifice themselves and a relatively large number of “demanders” who benefit from the sacrificers’ acts. Contrary to popular perception, it is on account of limited demand rather than limited supply that markets for “martyrs” so rarely flourish. Suicidal attacks almost never profit the groups best equipped to recruit, train, and direct the potential martyrs.
Once established, however, a market for martyrs is hard to shut down. Supply-oriented deterrence has limited impact because: In every time, place, and culture, many people are willing to die for causes they value. Policies that target current supplies of martyrs induce rapid substitution toward new and different types of potential martyrs.
Demand-oriented deterrence has greater long-run impact because: The people who sacrifice their lives do not act spontaneously or in isolation. They must be recruited, and their sacrifices must be solicited, shaped, and rewarded in group settings. Only very special types of groups are able to produce the large social-symbolic rewards required to elicit suicide. Terrorist “firms” must overcome numerous internal and external threats, and even when successful they have trouble “selling” their services. Numerous social, political, and economic pathologies must combine in order to maintain the profitability of (and hence the underlying demand for) suicidal attacks.
File: Iannaccone - Market for Martyrs.pdf [113.91KB]
Published 12/01/2003
Filed under: (2006), *iannaccone, extremism, martyrs, rationality, religious markets, self-sacrifice
Skewness Explained: A Rational Choice Model of Religious Giving [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1997
Abstract: This paper explores the determinants of religious giving through simulations, economic theory, and survey data. Skewness, a distinctive yet poorly understood feature of religious giving, proves to be an inevitable consequence of the weak correlation between absolute levels of income and percentage rates of giving. The weak correlation can be derived, in turn, from a formal, rational choice model of religious participation. Data from the General Social Surveys show that this model also accounts for many other observed patterns in giving and church attendance.
File:
Iannaccone - Skewness Explained.pdf [1.55MB]
File:
Iannaccone - Skewness Explained -D.pdf [77.34KB]
Published 06/01/1997
Filed under: (1997), *iannaccone, attendance, contributions, economics of religion, giving, gss, philanthropy, rational choice, rationality, religion, skewness
Rationality and the “Religious Mind” [Stark, Iannacone, Finke]
Rodney Stark; Laurence R. Iannaccone; Roger Finke
Abstract: Scholars have long viewed religion as the irrational product of primitive minds and pre-scientific times. Economic perspectives were deemed irrelevant to the study of religion, and the secularization thesis, positing religious decline in the face of scientific advancement, dominated religious research. But a growing body of evidence challenges these traditional assumptions. The data suggest that religious involvement is associated with normal mental health, is sensitive to perceived costs and benefits, and is compatible with graduate education and scientific training. Professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population, but these differences are comparable to the religious differences associated with gender, race, and other demographic traits. Within academia, religious faculty are far more common in the “hard” sciences than in the humanities or social sciences.
File: Iannaccone - Rationality and the Religious Mind-D.pdf [103.68KB]
Published 04/11/1997
Filed under: (1997), *finke, *iannaccone, *stark, faculty, rationality, religiosity, scientists, secularization