Qualifying Religion The Role of Plural Identities for….pdfVIP

Qualifying Religion: The Role of Plural Identities for Educational Production y z x Timo Boppart, Josef Falkinger, Volker Grossmann, { k Ulrich Woitek, and Gabriela W¸thrich February 28, 2008 Abstract This paper examines the role of religious denomination for human capital forma- tion. We employ a unique data set which covers, inter alia, information on numerous measures of school inputs in 169 Swiss districts for the years 1871/72, 1881/82 and 1894/95, marks from pedagogical examinations of conscripts (1875-1903), and re- sults from political referenda to capture various customary values in addition to religion. Catholic districts show on average signiÖcantly lower educational perfor- mance than Protestant districts. However, accounting for other sociocultural char- acteristics qualiÖes the role of religion for educational production. The evidence suggests that Catholicism is harmful only in a conservative milieu. We also exploit information on absenteeism of pupils from school to separate provision of schooling from use of schooling. Key words: Culture; Educational production; Plural identity; Religious de- nomination; School inputs. JEL classiÖcation: I20; H52; O10; N33. Acknowledgements: We are indebted to Abhijit Banerjee, Sascha Becker, Matthias Doepke, Mathias Ho§mann, Ann Markussen, Rainer Winkelmann, Fabrizio Zilibotti, Oliver Zimmer and seminar partici- pants at the 7th conference of the European Historical Economics Soc