History and Philosophy of Economics
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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.
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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.