Religious Participation versus Shopping: What Makes People Happier?
利用美国《蓝色法》废除导致周日购物机会成本变化，发现女性宗教参与减少且幸福感下降，而男性无显著影响；工具变量估计表明教堂出席对幸福感有正向因果效应。
In this paper, we first explore how an exogenous increase in the opportunity cost of religious participation affects an individual’s religious participation and reported happiness, using data from the General Social Survey. The exogenous shift in the cost of religious participation is a result of the repeal of so-called blue laws that restrict retail activity on Sundays. We find that repealing blue laws causes a significant decline in the religious participation of women and in their happiness. For men, we do not observe any effect on happiness, while the estimate of the effect on church attendance is similar in magnitude to that for women but is imprecise. We also use repeal as an instrumental variable for church attendance and provide direct evidence that church attendance has a significant positive effect on happiness.