Religious Competition and Reallocation: the Political Economy of Secularization in the Protestant Reformation*
利用新微观数据，研究了新教改革如何导致资源从宗教用途转向世俗用途，发现宗教竞争改变了世俗与宗教精英的权力平衡，推动了人力资本和固定投资的世俗化，对西方世俗化有重要因果作用。
Using novel microdata, we document an important, unintended consequence of the Protestant Reformation: a reallocation of resources from religious to secular purposes. To understand this process, we propose a conceptual framework in which the introduction of religious competition shifts political markets where religious authorities provide legitimacy to rulers in exchange for control over resources. Consistent with our framework, religious competition changed the balance of power between secular and religious elites: secular authorities acquired enormous amounts of wealth from monasteries closed during the Reformation, particularly in Protestant regions. This transfer of resources had significant consequences. First, it shifted the allocation of upper-tail human capital. Graduates of Protestant universities increasingly took secular, \nespecially administrative, occupations. Protestant university students increasingly studied secular subjects, especially degrees that prepared students for public sector jobs, rather than church sector-specific theology. Second, it affected the sectoral composition of fixed investment. Particularly in Protestant regions, new construction shifted from religious toward secular \npurposes, especially the building of palaces and administrative buildings, which reflected the increased wealth and power of secular lords. Reallocation was not driven by pre-existing economic or cultural differences. Our findings indicate that the Reformation played an important causal role in the secularization of the West.