Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities

David de la Croix and Pauline Morault ()

No 2020029, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: Using a new database of European academics, we provide a global view of the effect of the Protestant Reformation on the network of universities and on their individual importance within the network. A connection (edge) between two universities (nodes) is defined by the presence of the same scholar in both universities. We first show that the emergence of Protestantism is strongly associated with rising fragmentation. Dyadic regressions confirm that geography is important as well, but does not substitute for the effect of religion. Considering eigenvector centrality as a measure of the importance of nodes in the network, we find that becoming Protestant or being a newly founded Protestant university is associated with higher centrality. Finally, the number of publications from universities is strongly correlated with centrality, lending credence to the view that the loss of connectedness of the Southern European universities after the (Counter-)Reformation was key in triggering their scientific demise.

Keywords: Upper-Tail Human Capital; Universities; Network; Centrality; Publications; Fragmentation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 N33 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-his and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities (2023)
Working Paper: Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2020029

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