
Abstract
Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory, where Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. County-level data from late 19th-century Prussia reveal that Protestantism was indeed associated not only with higher economic prosperity, but also with better education. We find that Protestants’ higher literacy can account for the whole gap in economic prosperity. Results hold when we exploit the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism.
Item Type: | Paper |
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Keywords: | Human capital, Protestantism, economic history |
Faculties: | Economics Economics > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics Economics > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics > Economic History |
Subjects: | 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics |
JEL Classification: | N33, Z12, I20 |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-1366-8 |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 1366 |
Date Deposited: | 23. Jan 2007 |
Last Modified: | 04. Nov 2020 22:34 |