Religious Beliefs, Religious Participation, and Cooperation
研究了宗教信仰和参与如何影响社会合作，发现要求更严格的宗教团体规模更小、凝聚力更强，成员信念更极端，并分析了社会冲击（如自然灾害或繁荣期）对信仰和宗教成员身份的影响。
We analyze the relation between religious beliefs, religious participation, and social cooperation. We focus on religions that instill beliefs about the connection between rewards and punishments and social behaviour. We show how religious organizations arise endogenously, and identify a “spiritual” as well as a “material” payoff for being religious. We show that religious groups that are more demanding in their rituals are smaller, more cohesive, and are composed of individuals with more “extreme” beliefs. We use our framework to analyze the response of beliefs and religious membership to correlated shocks in society, such as natural disasters or periods of prosperity.