When I gave away many of my old books a year ago, I kept my college copy of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Now Tyler Cowen cites a paper by Davide Cantoni demonstrating that Protestantism had nothing to do with economic development. (Cantoni also co-authored a paper with Simon and others on the impact of the French Revolution — via the Napoleonic conquests — on economic development.) He uses the “natural experiment” created by the division of the Holy Roman Empire (very roughly, modern-day Germany and Austria) into Protestant and Catholic states.
Tag: economic development
The Jones Doctrine: Economic Development For Afghanistan
The administration is signaling a new strategy for Afghanistan: “economic development and governance”. On the front page of the Washington Post last week, President Obama’s national security adviser, James L. Jones, told Bob Woodward:
“The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.”
This is an appealing statement. But does it make any sense?
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The Baseline Scenario 