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Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic HistorySascha O. BeckerUniversity of Warwick; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Ifo Institute for Economic Research Ludger WoessmannIfo Institute for Economic Research; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); University of Munich - Ifo Institute for Economic Research May 2007 CESifo Working Paper Series No. 1987 IZA Discussion Paper No. 2886 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.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 63 Keywords: human capital, protestantism, economic history JEL Classification: N33, Z12, I20 working papers seriesDate posted: May 22, 2007Suggested CitationContact Information
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