DIFFUSING KNOWLEDGE WHILE SPREADING GOD'S MESSAGE: PROTESTANTISM AND ECONOMIC PROSPERITY IN CHINA, 1840-1920
利用义和团运动导致传教士撤退的空间差异，识别出新教传播对中国城市化的影响，发现每万人增加一名信徒使城市化率提高18.8%，其中90%的效果来自传教士建立的学校和医院带来的知识扩散。
We provide an account of how Protestantism promoted economic prosperity in China—a country in which Protestant missionaries penetrated far and wide during 1840–1920, but only a tiny fraction of the population had converted to Christianity. By exploiting the spatial variation in the missionaries’ retreat due to the Boxer Uprising to identify the diffusion of Protestantism, we find that the conversion of an additional communicant per 10, 000 people increases the overall urbanization rate by 18.8% when evaluated at the mean. Moreover, 90% of this effect comes from knowledge diffusion activities associated with schools and hospitals erected by the missionaries.