Did Protestantism promote prosperity via higher human capital? Replicating the Becker–Woessmann (2009) results
新教是否通过提高人力资本促进繁荣？复现Becker–Woessmann结果
Summary This paper shows that the Becker–Woessmann reformulation of the Weber thesis—Protestants were more prosperous in 19th‐century Prussia because they had higher human capital—is untenable. Regional variations in the Prussian institutional framework influenced economic outcomes, but Becker and Woessmann's econometric analysis takes no account of these variables, which suggests that their instrumental variable—distance to Wittenberg, a spatial variable—is invalid. When…