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Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History

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Listed author(s):
  • Sascha O. Becker
  • Ludger Woessmann

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.

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File URL: http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/DocBase_Content/WP/WP-CESifo_Working_Papers/wp-cesifo-2007/wp-cesifo-2007-05/cesifo1_wp1987.pdf
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 1987.

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Date of creation: 2007
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1987
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Keywords: human capital; protestantism; economic history;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
  • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
  • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

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  1. McCleary, Rachel & Barro, Robert, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth across Countries," Scholarly Articles 3708464, Harvard University Department of Economics.
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  4. Edward L. Glaeser & Bruce I. Sacerdote, 2008. "Education and Religion," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 188-215.
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  17. Tomes, Nigel, 1985. "Religion and the Earnings Function," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 245-250, May.
  18. Tiago Cavalcanti & Stephen Parente & Rui Zhao, 2007. "Religion in macroeconomics: a quantitative analysis of Weber’s thesis," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 105-123, July.
  19. Goldin, Claudia, 2001. "The Human-Capital Century And American Leadership: Virtues Of The Past," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(02), pages 263-292, June.
  20. Ronald Lee & Patrick Galloway & Eugene Hammel, 1994. "Fertility Decline in Prussia: Estimating Influences on Supply, Demand, and Degree of Control," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 31(2), pages 347-373, May.
  21. Sander, William, 2002. "Religion and human capital," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 303-307, May.
  22. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth,in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472 Elsevier.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Le rôle du capital humain dans la révolution industrielle
    by ? in D'un champ l'autre on 2014-06-21 18:43:00
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