Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, individual and political preference

Abstract

We investigate the effect of Reformed Protestantism, relative to Catholicism, on preferences for leisure, and for redistribution and intervention in the economy. We use a Fuzzy Spatial Regression Dis- continuity Design to exploit a historical quasi-experiment inWestern Switzerland, where in the 16th century a hitherto homogeneous re- gion was split and one part assigned to adopt Protestantism. We nd that Reformed Protestantism reduces referenda voting for more leisure by 12, for redistribution by 7, and for government interven- tion by 6 percentage points. These preferences translate into higher per capita income as well as greater income inequality.