Editing Protestant work ethic (section)

==Criticism==
{{See also|The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism#Criticism}}

===Historicity===
Austrian political economist [[Joseph Schumpeter]] argued that [[capitalism]] began in [[Italy in the Middle Ages|Italy in the 14th century]], not in the Protestant areas of Europe.<ref>{{Citation |title=History of Economic Analysis |first=Joseph A. |last=Schumpeter |oclc=269819 |isbn=978-0-415-10888-1 |pages=74–75 |chapter=Part II From the Beginning to the First Classical Situation (to about 1790), chapter 2 The scholastic Doctors and the Philosophers of Natural Law|year=1994 |publisher=Routledge }}. In the footnote, Schumpeter refers to {{cite book |first=Abbott Payson |last=Usher |title=The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe |year=1943 |url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002870348|publisher=Harvard university press |series=Harvard economic studies; v. 75 }} and {{cite journal |last=de Roover |first=Raymond |date=December 1942 |title=Money, Banking, and Credit in Medieval Bruges |journal=Journal of Economic History |volume=2, supplement S1 |pages=52–65 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700083431|s2cid=154125596 }}</ref>

Danish macroeconomist Thomas Barnebeck Andersen ''et al.'' found that the location of monasteries of the Catholic Order of [[Cistercian]]s, and specifically their density, highly correlated to this work ethic in later centuries;<ref name="anderson">{{cite journal | title = Pre-Reformation Roots of the Protestant Ethic | first1 = Thomas Barnebeck | last1 = Andersen | first2 =  Jeanet | last2 = Bentzen | first3 = Carl-Johan | last3 = Dalgaard | first4 = Paul | last4 = Sharp | journal = The Economic Journal |  volume = 127 | issue = 604 | date = September 2017 | pages = 1756–1793 | doi = 10.1111/ecoj.12367 | s2cid = 153784078 | url = https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/2e2e6ba7-3cfa-4570-8e59-b7aefcf9fa40 }}</ref> ninety percent of these monasteries were founded before the year 1300 AD. Economist [[Joseph Henrich]] found that this correlation extends right up to the twenty-first century.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Henrich | first1 = Joseph | title = [[The WEIRDest People in the World|The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous]] | publisher = [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]] | year = 2020 | isbn = 9780374173227 }}</ref>

Other factors that further developed the European market economy included the strengthening of [[property right]]s and lowering of [[transaction cost]]s with the decline and monetization of [[feudalism]], and the increase in real [[wage]]s following the epidemics of [[bubonic plague]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Voigtlander|first1=Nico|last2=Voth|first2=Hans-Joachim|title=The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe|url=http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/nico.v/Research/Horsemen.pdf|journal=The Review of Economic Studies|date=October 9, 2012|volume=80|issue=2|pages=774–811|doi=10.1093/restud/rds034|hdl=10230/778|citeseerx=10.1.1.303.2638}}</ref>

Social scientist [[Rodney Stark]] commented that "during their critical period of economic development, these northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant", with the [[Reformation]] still far off in the future. Furthermore, he also highlighted the conclusions of other historians, noting that, compared to Catholics, Protestants were "not more likely to hold the high-status capitalist positions", that Catholic Europe did not lag in its industrial development compared to Protestant areas, and that even Weber wrote that "fully developed capitalism had appeared in Europe" long before the Reformation.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/protestant-objections/protestant-modernity.html | title=Protestant Modernity| date=31 January 2017}}</ref> As British historian [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] stated, the concept that "large-scale industrial capitalism was ideologically impossible before the Reformation is exploded by the simple fact that it existed".<ref>Trevor-Roper. 2001. ''The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century''. Liberty Fund</ref>

French historian [[Fernand Braudel]] wrote that "all historians" opposed the "tenuous theory" of Protestant ethic, despite not being able to entirely quash the theory "once and for all". Braudel continues to remark that the "northern countries took over the place that earlier had been so long and brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or business management".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Braudel |first=Fernand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IRukAQAACAAJ |title=Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism Material Civilization and Capitalism |date=1977 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |language=en}}</ref>

Historian [[Laurence R. Iannaccone]] has written that "Ironically, the most noteworthy feature of the Protestant Ethic thesis is its absence of empirical support", citing the work of Swedish economic historian Kurt Samuelsson<ref>{{cite book |last1=Samuelsson |first1=Kurt |last2=French |first2=E. Geoffrey |title=Religion and Economic Action: The Protestant Ethic, the Rise of Capitalism and the Abuses of Scholarship |date=1993 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |jstor=10.3138/j.ctvfrxmzt |isbn=978-0-8020-7733-2 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctvfrxmzt}}</ref> that "economic progress was uncorrelated with religion, or was temporally incompatible with Weber's thesis, or actually reversed the pattern claimed by Weber."<ref name=iannaccone/>

German economists Sascha Becker and [[Ludger Wößmann]] have posited an alternate theory, claiming that the literacy gap between Protestants (as a result of the [[Reformation]]) and Catholics was sufficient explanation for the economic gaps, and that the "results hold when we exploit the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to [[Wittenberg]] as an instrument for Protestantism".<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Becker|first1=Sascha O.|last2=Woessmann|first2=Ludger|date=May 2009|title=Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History *|journal=Quarterly Journal of Economics|language=en|volume=124|issue=2|pages=531–596|doi=10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.531|hdl=1893/1653|s2cid=3113486|issn=0033-5533|hdl-access=free}}</ref> However, they also note that, between Luther (1500) and [[Prussia]] [[Franco-Prussian War|during the Franco-Prussian War]] (1870–71), the limited data available has meant that the period in question is regarded as a "black box" and that only "some cursory discussion and analysis" is possible.<ref>Becker, Wossmann (2007), p. A5, Appendix B</ref>

=== Modern effect===
A 2021 study argues that the values represented by the Protestant ethic as developed by Max Weber are not exclusively related to Protestantism but to the modernization phase of economic development. Weber observed this phase of development in areas dominated by Protestants at the time of his observations. From these observations, he concludes that a worldly asceticism consisting of a preference for work and a sober life are associated with Protestantism. However Dutch management economists Annemiek Schilpzand and Eelke de Jong argue that this value pattern is associated with the modernization phase of a region's economic development and thus, in principle, can be found for any religion or for non-religious persons.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schilpzand |first1=Annemiek |last2=de Jong |first2=Eelke |title=Work ethic and economic development: An investigation into Weber's thesis |journal=[[European Journal of Political Economy]] |date=2021 |volume=66 |pages=101958 |doi=10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101958 |doi-access=free}}{{Creative Commons text attribution notice|cc=by4|from this source=yes}}
</ref>

A 2013 study of 44 European countries found that religious heritage of countries explains half of the between-country variation in Europe in Work Ethic, more than modernity, while factors such as income, education, religion and (in another study) secularization explain relatively little. However, the study showed that Protestant heritage was actually the least correlated with a strong work ethic, with Muslim, then Orthodox, then Catholic heritages being the strongest.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stam |first1=Kirsten |last2=Verbakel |first2=Ellen |last3=De Graaf |first3=Paul M. |title=EXPLAINING VARIATION IN WORK ETHIC IN EUROPE: Religious heritage rather than modernisation, the welfare state and communism |journal=European Societies |date=May 2013 |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=268–289 |doi=10.1080/14616696.2012.726734|s2cid=145191240 |hdl=2066/121612 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

A 2009 study of 32 mainly developed countries found no difference in ''work ethic'' between Catholics and Protestants, after correcting for demographic and country effects; however, it found substantial support for a ''social ethic'' effect due to e.g. the Catholic attention to production within the family and to personal contacts: "Protestant values are shown to shape a type of individual who exerts greater effort in mutual social control, supports institutions more and more critically, is less bound to close circles of family and friends, and also holds more homogenous values.… (which ultimately works) in favour of anonymous markets, as they facilitate legal enforcement and impersonal exchange."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Arruñada |first1=Benito |title=Protestants and Catholics: Similar Work Ethic, Different Social Ethic |journal=The Economic Journal |date=2010 |volume=120 |issue=547 |pages=890–918 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0297.2009.02325.x |jstor=40929701 |hdl=10230/624 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40929701 |issn=0013-0133|hdl-access=free }}</ref>{{rp|890,908–910}} A similar result is in the 2003 analysis of Western Europe by Riis.<ref>"In modern Europe, the two main religious groups do not differ much in their work ethics, economic individualism, or emphasis on wealth, though there is some indication of differences with respect to cultural individualism." {{cite journal |last1=Riis |first1=Ole |title=Religion and the Spirit of Capitalism in Modern Europe |journal=Religion in Secularizing Society |date=1 January 2003 |pages=22–47 |doi=10.1163/9789004496354_006|isbn=9789004126220 |s2cid=154567819 }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|A re-examination of Weber's ''Protestant Ethic'' indicates that what was important for long-term economic growth was not a greater propensity to save and work of individual Protestants but rather the manner in which a group of Protestants interacted compared with a group of Catholics.<ref>{{Citation |url=http://www.sceco.umontreal.ca/publications/etext/2001-05.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030807123042/http://www.sceco.umontreal.ca/publications/etext/2001-05.pdf |archive-date=2003-08-07  |title=Religion and Economic Growth: Was Weber Right? |first1=Ulrich |last1=Blum |first2=Leonard |last2=Dudley |date=February 2001 |journal=Journal of Evolutionary Economics |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=207–230|doi=10.1007/PL00003862 |s2cid=13889938 }}</ref>|author=Ulrich Blum, Leonard Dudley|title=Religion and Economic Growth: Was Weber Right? – Journal of Evolutionary Economics|source=Vol 11, issue 2, pp. 217}}