Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/171110 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6646
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
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.
Subjects: 
Protestantism
Weber thesis
human capital
instrumental variables
JEL: 
Z12
C26
I20
N33
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.