Pope John Paul II was known as 'the travelling Pope' because of the large number of international trips ('pastoral visits') he undertook (more than 100 during his reign from 1979 to 2004). He also had a huge following, as you might expect as the leader of the Catholic Church, but the advent of television meant that the public could follow his travels in a much closer way than ever before. And, through his pastoral visits and his following, he exposed Catholics the world over to new places they would otherwise not have seen or, in some cases, even heard of. What effects did that exposure have?
That is essentially the question addressed in this recent article by Alexander Popov (European Central Bank), published in the Economic Journal (ungated earlier version here). Popov focuses on the impact of the Pope's visits on exports from the visited country, and especially exports to Catholic countries. He employs an event study design - looking at how exports changed between the time before and the time after the Pope's first visit to a country, while controlling for GDP growth, population, the US dollar real exchange rate, and the extent of trade liberalisation and democracy. The key results are summarised in Figure 2(a) from the paper:
The figure shows how exports evolve before and after the Pope's visit. Beforehand, there isn't much evidence of a trend (notice that the red line hovers around zero). However, after the Pope's visit, exports increase (the red line is clearly above zero and trending upwards), and the effect is substantial. Popov notes that:
...the point estimate on Year 3 after the pope’s visit to a country is 0.1152, which implies that exports to the rest of the world are higher by 12.2%, relative to the year of the visit.
And the effects are even larger for exports to countries with larger Catholic populations. Specifically:
...exports to a trading partner with 54.3% (75th percentile), relative to a trading partner with 1.1% (25th percentile) Catholics in the population were higher by between 16.5% and 36.9% during years 1 to 5 after a visit by the pope.
Clearly, Catholics were paying attention to where the Pope was visiting. Popov then asks the obvious question: what explains this effect? He examines three hypotheses:
The first one is that during a foreign visit, the pope explicitly encourages Catholics around the world to engage with the host country on economic terms. I analyse 633 speeches given during the pope’s 130 first visits and I find rare occasions when he mentions words like ‘trade’, ‘economic’ or ‘globalisation’.
So, the Pope wasn't explicitly telling Catholics to buy more goods from the countries he was visiting. Then:
The second hypothesis is that, by simply visiting a country, the pope raises its profile, or ‘puts it on the map’ for the global Catholic family, especially if Catholics around the world are for cultural or economic reasons less connected with the visited country. I find that the effect on exports of a pastoral visit to a country is stronger if this country is relatively poor and if it has relatively fewer Catholics and relatively weaker bilateral trade links with the partner country. The third hypothesis is that Catholics around the world are simply buying souvenirs to commemorate the pope’s visit. I analyse data on bilateral trade at the product level, for ten different sectors, and I find that after a pastoral visit, the increase in exports I detect takes place in half of them.
So, the third hypothesis (souvenirs) doesn't have much support. Popov concludes that the second hypothesis shows the likely driver of the increase in exports. This evidence is consistent with the Pope raising the profile of the countries he visited, and those countries benefiting from their higher profile among Catholics in the form of higher exports, especially to Catholic countries.
What makes this paper interesting in an economic sense is that it suggests trade flows don't just depend on prices, trade policy, and distance. They also depend on visibility, familiarity, and the ways that cultural influence can affect economic outcomes. Pope John Paul II's visits appear to have increased visibility and familiarity, which may in turn have boosted trade. The 'travelling Pope' may have also been the 'trade-promoting Pope'.
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