Skip to main content

Economics and the Reformation

31st October is Reformation Day.  This day is a civic holiday in several countries and is celebrated in certain parts of the church in the US.  On 31st October 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, an event which started the Reformation.  Luther is regarded as one of the most influential men to have lived in the past 500 years - click here to learn more about Luther.


Beginning with Max Weber, economists and economic historians have debated the effect of the Reformation on economic development.  Recently, Sasha Becker (Warwick) has been doing lots of interesting work looking at the economic impact of Luther and the Reformation.  For example, in one of his papers, he shows the positive impact of Luther’s ideas on the female education gap – click here. 

Popular posts from this blog

How Valuable Are Connections?

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...
Read more

The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry

Michael Aldous and I had our book The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry published a few weeks ago. You can find out more about it and buy it at Cambridge University Press's website . It is also available at Amazon , Waterstones , and Barnes & Noble .  The CEO has already been reviewed in The Sunday Times , The Observer and Financial Times .
Read more

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles, co-authored with my colleague Will Quinn , is forthcoming in August. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon , Barnes and Noble , Waterstones and Cambridge University Press . 
Read more