This paper uses recently discovered data on nearly 300 Prussian counties in 1816 to show that Protestantism led to more schools and higher school enrolment already before the industrialization. This evidence supports the human capital theory of Protestant economic history of Becker and Woessmann...

We model the effect of Protestant vs. Catholic denomination in an economic theory of suicide, accounting for differences in religious-community integration, views about man's impact on God's grace, and the possibility of confessing sins. We test the theory using a unique micro-regional dataset...

Different from traditional gift exchange experiments, we study a field experiment where a random subsample of participants in the Swiss Labor Force Survey was sent vouchers to be used in adult training courses. Importantly for our purposes, actual voucher redemption can be traced. This gives the...

Viele Teile Europas wurden über Jahrhunderte hinweg von Großreichen beherrscht. Haben diese Imperien nach ihrer formellen Auflösung ein Vermächtnis im Verhältnis der Bürger zu ihren staatlichen Institutionen hinterlassen? Sascha O. Becker, University of Warwick, Katrin Boeckh,...