Welcome to Econ Talk brought to you by the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University.

My guest today is Larry Onakone, my colleague here at George Mason. Larry is one of the world's authorities on the economics of religion.

The economics of religion? What is that? Come on Larry, help me out here.

The economics of religion is a new field that uses the insights and methods of modern economics to analyze the human side of religion.

What does that mean? Well, the human side.

Let me emphasize right off what it's not. Because anytime people hear the word economics, they tend to think of money.

And it's important to understand that the economics of religion is not primarily about the study of money and religion, about the study of contributions or the pay of pastors or the wealth of the Catholic Church.

Those are all things that we pay some attention to, but they are in no sense our primary focus.

It's not about the financing of religion.

And it's not about using economics to assess or evaluate theology, much less the truth of any one religion relative to another or the truth of religion in general.

And so one way of saying this is it's not about anything that really interests people with our religion, but I want to reassure our listeners that Larry's insights into this topic are rather extraordinary and fresh and different.

And I think it's a great way to start by saying the economics of religion is not about what you might think it sounds like the financial part. Although you're right, people are interested in those things.

They're interested in financial scandals in the church. They're interested in pay of directors or board members or pastors or religious leaders.

They are also interested in money just because money is interesting, but there are a lot of things in economics religion have nothing to do with money, as you say, that are quite interesting.

So tell us about tell us about some of those.

Of course I was joking when I said that it isn't about the interesting things. I wouldn't be spending my time on this and I've spent great many years now really 25 or so thinking about and doing research on religion and economics.

I wouldn't be doing that if I didn't think it was very interesting, but it goes back to what I said at the beginning that it's about the study of the human side of religion.

Religion in the real world is about people and the way they interact with each other, the things they believe, the ways they behave, the institutions they form in relation to beliefs in relation to the supernatural or transcendent values.

And the economics of religion, like the sociology of religion, the psychology of religion and the anthropology of religion, ask questions about why different denominations have different approaches to what is required of people, why some religions seem to grow, while others are declining, why religion is or is not durable.

In the face of social changes, why religion captivates so many people in all eras and places and times and leads them to do things that they might otherwise not do.

In some cases, clearly religion brings out some of the very best in people, in some cases some of the worst. These are interesting and important questions.

But you mentioned a bunch of other disciplines, the anthropology, psychology, sociology. Those are the disciplines that people usually think of when they think of religion. What's distinctive about the economics approach?

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