The Library
Was Weber wrong? A human capital theory of protestant economic history*
Tools
Tools
Tools
Becker, Sascha O. and Woessmann, Ludger (2009) Was Weber wrong? A human capital theory of protestant economic history*. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.124 (No.2). pp. 531-596. doi:10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.531 ISSN 0033-5533.
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.531
Abstract
Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory: Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. We test the theory using county-level data from late-nineteenth-century Prussia, exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism. We find that Protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity, but also to better education. Our results are consistent with Protestants' higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Quarterly Journal of Economics | ||||
| Publisher: | MIT Press | ||||
| ISSN: | 0033-5533 | ||||
| Official Date: | 2009 | ||||
| Dates: |
|
||||
| Volume: | Vol.124 | ||||
| Number: | No.2 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 531-596 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.531 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
