Religion and economy: a comment

Benno Torgler () and Christoph Schaltegger
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Benno Torgler: Queensland University of Technology, CESifo, CREMA, NCER

Economics Bulletin, 2009, vol. 29, issue 3, 2227-2230

Abstract: McCleary and Barro (2006) analyse whether Max Weber was right in emphasizing the religious impact on work ethic. They find a positive correlation between belief in hell and work ethic (p=0.098). They conclude that “Weber may have been right in emphasizing the religion link with work ethic” (p. 71). However, they fail to explore link to Max Weber's work on Protestant ethic as they don't explore for denomination differences. Weber's hypothesis would suggest that we would mainly observe an effect for Protestantism. Using a similar data set we provide empirical evidence that indicates that the impact of religion on work ethic is affected by the level of Protestantism within a society. Thus, compared to McCleary and Barro's finding such a result is very much in line with Max Weber's link between religion and work ethic.

Keywords: RELIGION; WORK ETHIC; PROTESTANTISM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J0 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-09-07
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