Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England

Thomas Andersen, Jeanet Bentzen, Carl-Johan Dalgaard and Paul Sharp

No 11-07, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: We advance the hypothesis that cultural values such as high work ethic and thrift, “the Protestant ethic” according to Max Weber, may have been diffused long before the Reformation, thereby importantly affecting the pre-industrial growth record. The source of pre-Reformation Protestant ethic, according to the proposed theory, was the Catholic Order of Cistercians. Using county-level data for England we find empirically that the frequency of Cistercian monasteries influenced county-level comparative development until 1801; that is, long after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The pre-industrial development of England may thus have been propelled by a process of growth through cultural change.

Keywords: Protestant ethic; Malthusian population dynamics; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 O11 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2011-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/dp_2011/1107.pdf/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Religious orders and growth through cultural change in pre-industrial England (2012)
Working Paper: Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1107

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().