Would You Buy a Used Car from this Priest? An Economic Theory of Religion and the Church

This paper uses the theory of the firm to explain a variety of characteristics of religious doctrine and behavior. The paper analyzes doctrine about the afterlife, altering events, temporal happiness, and various social goods including property rights enforcement.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61263/1/Hull_B_1985_Working_Paper_33_Economic_Theory_of_Church.pd

Product Variety in Religious Markets

This is an electronic version of an article published in the Review of Social Economy.(c)1998 Copyright Taylor & Francis. Review of Social Economy is available online at http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0034%2d6764&volum e=56&issue=1&spage=1This paper analyzes the relationship between religious market product variety and church membership. We find that denominational variety is negatively associated with the total level of church membership in U.S. counties. This result appears to contradict the standard religious product variety model. Our data are consistent with a more general view of markets that incorporates the cost to consumers of product variety. Where product variety has significant costs, an increase in variety may reduce total market penetration. The paper suggests market characteristics that might give rise to this situation, characteristics present in the religion market.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61246/1/Hull B - 1998 - Religion Product Variety - RSE.pd

Towards an Economic Theory of the Church

This paper employs the theory of the firm to explain behavior of the church. Churches produce a set of products including entertainment, a variety of socially valuable public goods, eternal life, and alteration of otherwise fated events. Most importantly, the church reduces transactions costs by enforcing a system of property rights. Enforcement is enhanced by the promise of heaven and threat of hell, two innovations uniquely available to the church. We test some implications of the model using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of the Human Relations Area Files.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57295/1/Hull B - 1989 - Econ Theory of Church - IJSE.pd

Hell, Religion, and Cultural Change

This paper's key conclusion is that church doctrine about the afterlife is a function of factors predictable with economic theory. Religion, like government, family, and community can enforce property rights and encourage socially valuable behavior. Religious doctrines about hell as punishment for breaking rules that arguably benefit society will occur in religions in cultures where the church is relatively more influential than the family, community, and government. Statistical material from the Human Relations Area Files tends to support the model's implications as does informal analysis of New England colonial Puritan doctrine about hell.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57427/1/Hull B - 1994 - Hell and Culture - JITE.pd

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements