Arbeitspapier
Was Weber wrong? A human capital theory of protestant economic history
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.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 2886
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
- Subject
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Protestantismus
Bildungsinvestition
Analphabetismus
Entwicklung
Wirtschaftsgeschichte
Wirtschaftssoziologie
Preußen
Deutschland (bis 1945)
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Becker, Sascha O.
Woessmann, Ludger
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
- (where)
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Bonn
- (when)
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2007
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Becker, Sascha O.
- Woessmann, Ludger
- Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2007
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