Logo Logo
Hilfe
Hilfe
Switch Language to English

Becker, Sascha O. und Wößmann, Ludger (2007): Was Weber wrong?: A human capital theory of protestant economic history. CESifo Working Paper,

Warnung
Es gibt eine neuere Version des Dokumentes.
Volltext auf 'Open Access LMU' nicht verfügbar.

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 19thcentury 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.

Alle Versionen dieses Dokumentes

Dokument bearbeiten Dokument bearbeiten