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About Laurence
Laurence R. Iannaccone is a Professor of Economics in Business & Economics at Chapman University, serving since 2009 as faculty in the Argyros School of Business and Economics. He concurrently holds the position of Director of the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Society (IRES) and serves as President of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC). Before joining Chapman, Iannaccone was the Koch Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University, and a National Fellow (1989/1990) and Visiting Scholar (1996/1997) at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. His educational background includes a B.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University (1975), an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago (1977), an M.A. in Economics (1982), and a Ph.D. in Economics (1984) from the University of Chicago. Notably, his Ph.D. thesis on habit formation and religious behavior was supervised by Nobel Laureates Gary S. Becker and George J. Stigler.
Iannaccone specializes in the economics of religion, applying economic models to analyze denominational growth, church attendance, religious giving, conversion processes, extremism, international religious trends, and other dimensions of spirituality. Over his career, he has produced more than fifty publications in top-tier journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, American Journal of Sociology, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Selected key publications include "God Games: An Experimental Study of Uncertainty, Superstition, and Cooperation" with Aidin Hajikhameneh (Games and Economic Behavior, 2023); "From Shocks to Solidarity and Superstition: Exploring the Foundations of Faith" with Aidin Hajikhameneh (Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025); "Endogenous Group Formation via Unproductive Costs" with Jason Aimone, Michael Makowsky, and Jared Rubin (Review of Economic Studies, 2013); "Religious Decline in the 20th Century West: Testing Alternative Explanations" with Raphael Franck (Public Choice, 2014); and "Smart and Spiritual: The Coevolution of Religion and Rationality" in Religion and Human Flourishing (2020). He is presently authoring two books on the economics of religion.
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