Following Max Weber, many theories have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With its religious heterogeneity, the Holy Roman Empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis. Using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300–1900, I find...

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...

The empirical literature on economic growth and development has moved from the study of proximate determinants to the analysis of ever deeper, more fundamental factors, rooted in long-term history. A growing body of new empirical work focuses on the measurement and estimation of the effects of...

This book is about the flourishing scrap recycling industry, reconstruction, and state-making in Iraqi Kurdistan within the wider conditions of the war economy, ruination, and state disintegration in Iraq. Through a dialectical relationship between the afterlife and continuity of war over...

Many theories, most famously Max Weber’s 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...

This volume investigates the emergence and spread of maritime commerce and interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean World-the world’s first “global economy”-from a longue durée perspective. Spanning from antiquity to the nineteenth century, these essays move beyond the usual focus on...