Forthcoming from Princeton University Press in May 2024.
The announcement page is here.
You can pre-order it on Amazon here.

This paper, joint with Julia Hoefer, has just been issued as 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.
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.
This paper, which is joint with Eva Raiber, was distributed in pre-print form in CovidEconomics, issue 61 from CEPR:
https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics-vetted-and-real-time-papers-0
You can download it here.
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 the spring of 2024 Princeton University Press will publish my book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People. Announcement here, more details available soon.
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.
I also have an op-ed piece in Project Syndicate related to these themes: “Is Christianity Losing to Islam?”, 1st June 2019, available here.
This paper, which is joint with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miguel-Florensa, is now published in Economics of Transition and Institutional Change. You can download the paper here.
This paper, which is joint with Emmanuelle Auriol, Julie Lassébie, Amma Panin and Eva Raiber, is now published at the Quarterly Journal of Economics. It’s available on open access here:
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/4/1799/5861944
We started this project back in 2015.
Here are some pictures of very colorful Ghanaian coffins: