Divine Policy: The Impact of Religion in Government
利用美国各州逐步引入信仰倡议的自然实验，研究发现这些政策增强了宗教虔诚度和保守宗教社会观念（如反对同性恋），其机制是促进了信仰组织的建立。
Can policies shape personal values and beliefs? To examine, we exploit the staggered introduction of faith-based initiatives across US states. Our difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the initiatives strengthened religiosity and conservative-religious social views, such as attitudes against homosexuals. The evidence points to causal effects; we find no systematic differences prior to implementation, the results are robust to restricting comparison to contiguous counties and to conducting triple-differences estimation exploiting treatment heterogeneity. A key explanation, in line with standard models of religion and supported by data on nonprofit organizations, is that the initiatives facilitated the establishment of faith-based organizations.