Printing and Protestants: An Empirical Test of the Role of Printing in the Reformation
利用城市层面数据，以距离美因茨（印刷术发源地）作为工具变量，发现1500年前拥有印刷机的城市到1600年成为新教城市的概率至少高出29个百分点。
Abstract 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.