28/01/2025 Mohamed Saleh – TCD Department of Economics Seminar Series

Date: 28/01/2025
Category: ,
Speaker: Mohamed Saleh
Institution: London School of Economics and Political Science
Format: In Person

 

Religious Competition and Provision of Public Services

Abstract: We argue that competition created through foreign influence in education, between missionaries and ethno-religious minorities can enhance non-state public service provision by minorities if they face an existentialist threat. Egyptian Coptic Christian elites engaged in rapid development of modern schooling in the 19th and early 20th century as a backlash to missionaries’ efforts to convert their followers through school provision. Employing original dataset of modern Egyptian schools (1825–1913) we show that competition created by missionaries increased the provision of Coptic schools. American Protestant missionaries that held the most active conversion program caused a higher increase in the provision of Coptic schools in comparison with other missionary groups, notably the French Catholic missionaries. We then employ a dynamic difference-in-difference design to further investigate this relationship. Exploiting the timing of introduction of missionary schools in Egyptian villages we highlight the competition initiated through the supply of missionary schools, leads to a significant increase of Coptic modern schools.

 

Mohamed Saleh is an Associate Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),  a Research Affiliate in Economic History at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Faculty Fellow at AALIMS, and a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum (ERF).

 

https://sites.google.com/site/mohamedsalehecon/home