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

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ID: 297308
2009
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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.
Reference Key
openalex_W2168966825 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Sascha O. Becker, Ludger Woessmann
Journal the quarterly journal of economics
Year 2009
DOI
10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.531
URL
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-pdf/124/2/531/5377644/124-2-531.pdf
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