EUR.GROWTH: Religion and Economic Growth: Was Weber Right?

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                ABSTRACTS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
                    (c) 2000 EH.Net
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Name: Leonard Dudley
Email: leonard.dudley@umontreal.ca
Institution: Economics Dept., Universiti de Montreal

Co-author: Ulrich Blum
Economics Faculty
Dresden University of Technology

Title: Religion and Economic Growth: Was Weber Right?

Internet Address of abstracted work:
http://www.fas.umontreal.ca/sceco/dept/profs/dudl.html

By mail:
Economics Department
Universite de Montreal
Montreal, QC, Canada
H3C 3J7

Language: English

Abstract:
Evidence of falling wages in Catholic cities and rising wages in Protestant
cities during the spread of literacy in the vernacular between 1500 and
1750 is inconsistent with most theoretical models of economic growth. In
The Protestant Ethic, Weber suggested an alternative explanation based on
culture. Here, a theoretical model confirms that a small change in the
subjective cost of cooperating with strangers can generate a profound
transformation in trading networks. In explaining urban growth in
early-modern Europe, specifications compatible with human-capital versions
of the neoclassical model and endogenous-growth theory are rejected in
favor of a "small-world" formulation based on the Weber thesis.

Bibliography: Dudley, Leonard and Ulrich Blum. "Religion and Economic
Growth: Was Weber Right?" Working Paper, March 2000.

Subject: D
Geographical Area: 4
Country/Region:
Time Period: 4

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