Did Protestantism promote economic prosperity via higher human capital?

Jeremy Edwards

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper investigates the Becker-Woessmann (2009) argument that Protestants were more prosperous in nineteenth-century Prussia because they were more literate, a version of the Weber thesis, and shows that it cannot be sustained. The econometric analysis on which Becker and Woessman based their argument is fundamentally flawed, because their instrumental variable does not satisfy the exclusion restriction. When an appropriate instrumental-variable specification is used, the evidence from nineteenth-century Prussia rejects the human-capital version of the Weber thesis put forward by Becker and Woessmann.

Keywords: Human capital; Protestantism; economic history; instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I20 N33 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Did Protestantism Promote Economic Prosperity via Higher Human Capital? (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:82346

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