Reinaldo Guedes dos Santos

This paper aims to investigate the influence of religion in socioeconomic development of certain nations, especially according to the theories formulated by Max Weber and Émile de Laveleye about the impact that the Protestant Reformation had on human nature of the individual as an economical agent. Thus, it is intended to test the hypothesis that peoples and nations whom adopted the Protestant religion are currently the most economically developed of the world, largely due for its religious affiliation in the past. To fulfill this goal was made, in addition to a historical review about the Protestant Reformation, an analysis on the major works of the authors mentioned above about the proposed theme. Furthermore, in order to corroborate the theories of these authors, it‟s showed some empirical evidence of the contemporary world and developed a case study based on an econometric model. The empirical evidence found in literature shows that, in fact, the nations of the Protestant branch are today the most economically developed of the world. The econometric model developed by the authors points in the same direction, as the coefficient of socioeconomic development for the Protestant group of nations was proved to be higher than the Catholic and Muslim groups of nations, as for the coefficients of the Eastern and Orthodox religious groups of nations, they were not statistically significant. A second model developed taking into account the Animistic religions and other types of religions also proved to be statistically not significant. Finally, evidence also suggest that the nations affected by the Protestant Reformation had, since the early twentieth century, an important advantage in the educational field in relation to other nations of other religious groups, most likely due to the efforts of the Protestant Reformation to literate the ordinary people, so they at least have the ability of read the Bible, as pointed out by Laveleye. Thus, it was concluded that the tested hypothesis is truthful and that the most economically developed countries today are precisely those who had in their religious bases some Protestant influences, either by the professional asceticism awakened by the Protestant ethic described by Weber or by the variables suggested by Laveleye, especially the education.