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Full-Text Articles in Christianity
Coping With Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, And The Modern State. Jonathan Laurence (Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 2021). Pp. 606. $35.00 Paper. Isbn: 9780691172125, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A book review of Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State by Jonathan Lawrence.
Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin
Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at the city level. An econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city's distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be Protestant by 1600.
Social Insurance, Commitment, And The Origin Of Law: Interest Bans In Early Christianity, Jared Rubin
Social Insurance, Commitment, And The Origin Of Law: Interest Bans In Early Christianity, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Despite the historical importance of ideology-based, economically inhibitive laws, we know little about the economic factors underlying their origin. This paper accounts for the historical emergence of one such law: the Christian ban on taking interest--a doctrine that shaped the evolution of numerous financial contracts and related organizational forms. A game-theoretic analysis and historical evidence suggest that the Church's commitment to providing social insurance for its poorest constituents encouraged risky borrowing, which the Church attempted to limit by banning interest. The analysis highlights the applicability of the rational choice framework to seemingly irrational actions and laws, the role of nonmonetary …