Paul Seabright | Archive

Recent research

This page will direct you to the themes of my current research. Some themes have pages of their own, in particular:

Research on the economics of religion here.

Research on behavioral decision making here.

Research on gender, networks and marriage markets here.

In addition I am working with Guido Friebel on the medical science of ageing and its relationship to the organisational economics of selecting, motivating and retiring leaders.

I am working with Sergey Gavrilets on the evolution of zero-sum worldviews. We have a paper under submission to PNAS.

My Google scholar page is here.

PUBLISHED IN MAY 2024: The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People

Book events:

AALIMS conference in Princeton, 11th April 2025.

The book was published by Princeton University Press on 14th May 2024. It was long listed for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award 2024, and was a finalist in the 2025 PROSE awards of the Association of American Publishers.

Here is a contribution to PUP’s Ideas page to mark the release: “A sermon from a mountebank? Religious messaging in the age of AI“.

Here is an extract in Foreign Policy: “The Divine Marketplace is Pretty Crowded”.

Here is an extract in The Milken Institute Review.

Launch events were held at the University of Glasgow on 28th May and at the London School of Economics on 29th May. The lecture at the LSE was recorded, and is available on YouTube here.

I discussed the book on 11th June during the launch event for the Starling 2024 Compendium, with Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson.

I gave a talk in a panel at the Society for Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, 18th October 2024, with the excellent David Hollinger.

I gave the Score Strand III Lecture at the University of Cambridge on 17th November 2024, and have given book talks at the University of California at Berkeley, Chapman University and the University of Texas at Austin.

I published a piece on 30th August in IAI News entitled “How Religion Wrote the Playbook for Big Tech: Studying Religion from the Outside In“.

Reviews, podcasts and interviews are available here.

The announcement page is here, and you can order it there are well.

You can also order it on Amazon here.

The data files for the Statistical Appendix are available here.

Research on the economics of religion

In the last few years I have been involved in a range of research on the economics of religion with several co-authors, including Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati, Julie Lassébie, Pepita Miquel-Florensa, Amma Panin and Eva Raiber.

In May 2024 Princeton University Press published my book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People. More details here.

I took part in the IAST podcast Crossing Channels on the subject “What Is the Future of Religion?”, released in May 2023.

Here are the publications to date from these projects:

Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miquel-Florensa), World Development 144 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105441

US Churches’ Responses to Covid-19: results from Facebook (with Eva Raiber), pre-print in CovidEconomics, issue 61.

Trust in the image of God: Links between religiosity and reciprocity in Haiti (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miquel-Florensa), Economics of Transition and Institutional Change (2020), https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12263

“God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana” (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Julie Lassébie, Amma Panin and Eva Raiber), Quarterly Journal of Economics 135(4), (2020), pp. 1799-1848, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa015.

“On the Origins of Enchantment: not such a puzzle”, Religion, Brain and Behavior 10(3), (2020), pp. 345-357, https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1678517.

“Religion and Entrepreneurship: A Match Made in Heaven?”, Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions 175 (2016), pp. 201-219.

Here are working papers:

“Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on US College Campuses”, CEPR discussion paper number 17147.

I also have an op-ed piece in Project Syndicate related to these themes: “Is Christianity Losing to Islam?”, 1st June 2019, available here.

New working paper: Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on U.S. College Campuses

This paper, joint with Julia Hoefer, is Discussion Paper number 17147 by the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Abstract:

This paper explores the role of social norms in influencing the incidence of sexual assault, and the contribution of alcohol to such events. We build a decision theoretic model where agents may use alcohol as a “disinhibitor” to undermine social norms discouraging consensual sexual encounters outside marriage. This makes non-consensual encounters more likely. Stronger norms against consensual sex might therefore increase the incidence of non-consensual sex. We test the theory on data from US college campuses, using the presence of Planned Parenthood clinics in the county as an indicator of norms more accepting of consensual sex. Controlling for other factors, colleges in counties with fewer clinics have more incidents of rape and sexual assault in which alcohol is implicated. Colleges affiliated to the National Collegiate Athletic Association also have more such incidents, suggesting that sporting institutions also act as facilitators of a culture of sexual aggression. We provide suggestive evidence from attitudinal surveys and from campus religious affiliation that disapproval of consensual sex may indeed be involved. We explore rival explanations such as reporting and selection biases.

Publication: What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China

This paper, with Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Jeanne Bovet and Charlotte Wang, is published in Economic Development and Cultural Change 71(3), 2023, https://doi.org/10.1086/717903.

Pre-publication version here.

Abstract:

In many societies, parents are involved in selecting a spouse for their child, integrating this with decisions about premarital investment such as education. Do spousal preferences of parents and children conflict? We estimate parents’ spousal preferences based on survey choices between random profiles, elicited from parents or other relatives who actively search for a spouse on behalf of their adult child in Kunming, China. We simulate marriage outcomes based on preferences for age and education and compare them with patterns in the general population, and with preferences of a survey of students. The common concern that there may be aversion to highly-educated or high-earning wives is somewhat corroborated in parents’ preferences but not in students’ preferences, nor in outcomes, where homogamy is common and wives who are more educated than husbands are as common as husbands more educated than wives. Parents prefer wives younger than their husbands, yet most couples are the same age, an outcome consistent with student preferences. Overall, divergences between parental and child preferences exist, but are neither major nor very influential in explaining observed outcomes. Fears that highly educated women face diminished marriage prospects appear less serious than often claimed.

Publication: “The old boy network: are the professional networks of female executives less effective than men’s for advancing their careers?”

This paper, joint with Marie Lalanne, has now been published in The Journal of Institutional Economics, and you can find the link here. It’s worth noting that the paper has been significantly revised since earlier circulated versions, and in particular contains new results on homophily (both men and women derive more benefit from same-gender connections, and men have more of these than women do). Please cite only this version and not the earlier versions.

Abstract

We investigate the impact of professional networks on men’s and women’s earnings, using a dataset of European and North American executives. The size of an individual’s network of influential former colleagues has a large positive association with remuneration, with an elasticity of around 21%. However, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity using various fixed effects as well as a placebo technique, we find that the real causal impact of networks is barely positive for men and significantly lower for women. We provide suggestive evidence indicating that the apparent discrimination against women is due to two factors: first, both men and women are helped more by own-gender than other-gender connections, and men have more of these than women do. Second, a subset of employers we identify as ‘female friendly firms’ recruit more women but reward networks less than other firms.

New working paper: Establishment and Outsiders : Can Political Incorrectness and Social Extremism work as a Signal of Commitment to Populist Policies?

This is my new paper with Jérôme Gonnot which has just been issued as a CEPR Discussion paper (no. 15971), available here.

Research on behavioral decision-making

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects on individual decision-making under various influences – frames, nudges, narratives, channels of attention and group membership.

“Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on US College Campuses”, joint with Julia Hoefer, was issued on March 28th 2022 as a Discussion Paper by the CEPR.

The published papers from this line of work are:

“Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture” (with Sabine Nobel, Antoine Jacquet, Guillaume Isabel, Arnaud Pocheville and Etienne Danchin), Biol. Rev. (2023), 98, pp. 132–149. 132 doi: 10.1111/brv.12899.

“Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti”(with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miquel-Florensa), World Development 144 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105441.

“Favoring your in-group can harm both them and you: ethnicity and public goods provision in China”, with César Mantilla, Ling Zhou, Charlotte Wang, Donghui Yang and Suping Shen, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 185 (2021) 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.016.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“How Does Ranking Affect User Choice in Online Search?” (with Mark Glick, Greg Richards and Margarita Sapozhnikov), Review of Industrial Organization 45 (2014), 99–119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-014-9435-y

I am currently working with Selin Goksel, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, on a project involving the influence of narrative framing on the effectiveness of Bayesian updating.

Research on gender, networks and marriage markets

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects with co-authors Sylvie Borau, Jeanne Bovet, Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Peter Schwardmann and Charlotte Wang.

The published papers that have come out of this line of work are (the most recently published first):

What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1086/717903. Preprint available here.

“The old boy network: are the professional networks of females executives less effective than men’s for advancing their careers?”, joint with Marie Lalanne, Journal of Institutional Economics (2022), pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137421000953.

“Gender Differences in Social Interactions”, joint with Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Bernard Richter and Peter Schwardmann, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 186 (2021), 33-45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.03.016.

“Parent-Offspring Conflict over Mate Choice: an experimental study in China”, joint with Jeanne Bovet, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren and Charlotte Wang, British Journal of Psychology (2018). doi:10.1111/bjop.12319.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“Do women have longer conversations? Telephone evidence of gendered communication strategies”, joint with Guido Friebel, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.12.008.

Working papers and those currently under submission include (not a complete list):

“Dating Choice and Career Choice: do the dating choices of ambitious women reinforce gender stereotypes in the labor market?”, with Jeanne Bovet and Sylvie Borau, under submission.

Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti

This paper, which is joint with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miguel-Florensa, is now published in World Development. You can download the paper here.