Christians across the world are observing the season of Lent right now, concluding this week. This important period of religious observance involves personal sacrifice of some sort, and for Western Christians a common form of sacrifice is abstaining from consuming meat on Fridays during Lent. But there is one exception: most Christians allow consumption of fish on Fridays, in lieu of other kinds of meat.

But abstaining from meat on Fridays was not always a practice reserved for Lent. Catholics used to abstain from meat for the entire year prior to a 1966 decree by Pope Paul VI. This decree relaxed the rules on fasting and decentralized them. In the US, Catholic Bishops chose to eliminate meatless Fridays, except during Lent.

No doubt this was an important religious change, but it was also an important economic change. And the first question an economist would ask is: how did this impact the price of fish? In our simple supply and demand framework, this should result in a decrease in demand, which would lower the price of fish. Did that happen?

In 1968, economist Frederick Bell asked just that question in an article published in the American Economic Review titled “The Pope and the Price of Fish.” The short answer is that yes, the price of fish did indeed decline!

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