This paper investigates the Becker-Woessmann (2009) argument that Protestants were more prosperous in nineteenth-century Prussia because they were more literate, a version of the Weber thesis, and shows that it cannot be sustained. The econometric analysis on which Becker and Woessman based their argument is fundamentally flawed, because their instrumental variable does not satisfy the exclusio...

This article examines connections between the Protestant Reformation and American literature and argues that Protestantism’s best expression exists in contemporary iterations of self-reliance. The first part focuses on William Ellery Channing’s and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s literary criticism of John Milton, a poet who represents the Protestant ideals these writers combine with American principles ...