Many theories, most famously Max Webers essay on the Protestant ethic, have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With their considerable religious heterogeneity and stability of denominational affiliations until the 19th century, the German Lands of the Holy...

Using a rich dataset of territories and cities of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century, this paper investigates the determinants of adoption and diffusion of Protestantism as a state religion. A territorys distance to Wittenberg, the city where Martin Luther taught, is a major determinant...