The Protestant Ethic Reexamined: Calvinism and Industrialization

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 1963-1994
Author(s):  
Jeremy Spater ◽  
Isak Tranvik
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Spatial Regression ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Can cultural differences affect economic change? Max Weber famously argued that ascetic Protestants’ religious commitments—specifically their work ethic—inspired them to develop capitalist economic systems conducive to rapid economic change. Yet today, scholars continue to debate the empirical validity of Weber’s claims, which address a vibrant literature in political economy on the relationship between culture and economic change. We revisit the link between religion and economic change in Reformed Europe. To do so, we leverage a quasi-experiment in Western Switzerland, where certain regions had Reformed Protestant beliefs imposed on them by local authorities during the Swiss Reformation, while other regions remained Catholic. Using 19th-century Swiss census data, we perform a fuzzy spatial regression discontinuity design to test Weber’s hypothesis and find that the Swiss Protestants in the Canton of Vaud industrialized faster than their Catholic neighbors in Fribourg.

scholarly journals Winners and Losers of the Ballot: Electronic vs. Traditional Paper Voting Systems in Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Schneider ◽  
Kelly N. Senters
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Electronic Voting ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Ballot Design ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gradual Transformation

AbstractScholars concur that free and fair elections are essential for proper democratic functioning, but our understanding of the political effects of democratic voting systems is incomplete. This article mitigates the gap by exploiting the gradual transformation of voting systems and ballot structures in Brazil’s 1998 executive elections to study the relationship between voting systems and viable and nonviable candidates’ vote shares, using regression discontinuity design. It finds that the introduction of electronic voting concentrated vote shares among viable candidates and thus exhibited electoral bias. We posit that this result occurred because viable candidates were better able to communicate the information that electronic voters needed to cast valid ballots than were their nonviable counterparts. The article uses survey data to demonstrate that electronic voters responded to changes in ballot design and internalized the information viable candidates made available to them.

scholarly journals Class-Size Caps, Sorting, and the Regression-Discontinuity Design

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Urquiola ◽  
Eric Verhoogen
Keyword(s):  
Class Size ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Household Characteristics ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Education Market ◽  
The Relationship

This paper examines how schools' choices of class size and households' choices of schools affect regression-discontinuity-based estimates of the effect of class size on student outcomes. We build a model in which schools are subject to a class-size cap and an integer constraint on the number of classrooms, and higher-income households sort into higher-quality schools. The key prediction, borne out in data from Chile's liberalized education market, is that schools at the class-size cap adjust prices (or enrollments) to avoid adding an additional classroom, which generates discontinuities in the relationship between enrollment and household characteristics, violating the assumptions underlying regression-discontinuity research designs. (JEL D12, I21, I28, O15)

Political Devolution and Resistance to Foreign Rule: A Natural Experiment

2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 642-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEREMY FERWERDA ◽  
NICHOLAS L. MILLER
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Central Question ◽  
World War ◽  
Foreign Occupation ◽  
The Relationship

Do foreign occupiers face less resistance when they increase the level of native governing authority? Although this is a central question within the literature on foreign occupation and insurgency, it is difficult to answer because the relationship between resistance and political devolution is typically endogenous. To address this issue, we identify a natural experiment based on the locally arbitrary assignment of French municipalities into German or Vichy-governed zones during World War II. Using a regression discontinuity design, we conclude that devolving governing authority significantly lowered levels of resistance. We argue that this effect is driven by a process of political cooptation: domestic groups that were granted governing authority were less likely to engage in resistance activity, while violent resistance was heightened in regions dominated by groups excluded from the governing regime. This finding stands in contrast to work that primarily emphasizes structural factors or nationalist motivations for resistance.

scholarly journals Long-Term Contextual Effects in Education: Schools and Neighborhoods

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-377
Author(s):  
Jean-William Laliberté
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Spatial Regression ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Long Term Impact

This paper estimates the long-term impact of growing up in better neighborhoods and attending better schools on educational attainment. First, I use a spatial regression-discontinuity design to estimate school effects. Second, I study students who move across neighborhoods in Montreal during childhood to estimate the causal effect of growing up in a better area (total exposure effects). I find large effects for both dimensions. Combining both research designs in a decomposition framework, and under key assumptions, I estimate that 50–70 percent of the benefits of moving to a better area on educational attainment are due to access to better schools. (JEL H75, I21, R23)

scholarly journals Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, Individual, and Political Preferences

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Basten ◽  
Frank Betz
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Capita Income ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Spatial Regression ◽  
Homogeneous Region ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Per Capita

We investigate the effect of Reformed Protestantism, relative to Catholicism, on preferences for leisure, and for redistribution and intervention in the economy. We use a Fuzzy Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design to exploit a historical quasi-experiment in Western Switzerland, where in the sixteenth century a hitherto homogeneous region was split and one part assigned to adopt Protestantism. We find that Reformed Protestantism reduces referenda voting for more leisure by 14, redistribution by 5, and government intervention by 7 percentage points. These preferences translate into higher per capita income as well as greater income inequality. (JEL D12, D31, D72, H23, N33, Z12)

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