History and Philosophy of Economics

• *NEW* Becker, Sascha O. and Ludger Woessmann (2007), "Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History", IZA Discussion Paper No. 2886. Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. This paper provides an alternative theory, where Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. Protestants' higher literacy can account for the whole gap in economic prosperity.
• Levine, David (2009), "The Relationship of Economic Theory to Experiments", working paper. Click here. The link between economic theory and experimental data is much tighter than is commonly supposed. Many presumed paradoxes arise because the theory is incorrectly applied.