Trade, Geography, and Religion: Evidence from South Asia

Abstract

There are several complementary explanations for the spread of religion. Intrinsic differences in the institutional structures promoted by different religions can determine their spread. Alternatively, there might be geography-specific explanations, such as the ability to promote trade, that might determine the spread of religions. In this paper, we propose a model to disentangle the different mechanisms through which religion can spread. We test the predictions of the model through a new dataset of the historical evolution of important world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam in South Asia over a period of two millennia.