%0 Report
        %A Becker, Sascha O.
%A Woessmann, Ludger
        %T Knocking on Heaven's Door? Protestantism and Suicide
        %D 2011
        %8 2011 Jun
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 5773
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp5773
        %X We model the effect of Protestant vs. Catholic denomination in an economic theory of suicide, accounting for differences in religious-community integration, views about man's impact on God's grace, and the possibility of confessing sins. We test the theory using a unique micro-regional dataset of 452 counties in 19th-century Prussia, when religiousness was still pervasive. Our instrumental-variable model exploits the concentric dispersion of Protestantism around Wittenberg to circumvent selectivity bias. Protestantism had a substantial positive effect on suicide in 1816-21 and 1869-71. We address issues of bias from mental illness, misreporting, weather conditions, within-county heterogeneity, religious concentration, and gender composition.
        %K Prussian economic history
%K suicide
%K religion