This collection consists of a mixture of historical and survey-based datasets which enabled the testing of the Protestant work ethic having a pre-reformation origin in the Catholic Order of Cistercians. The first group of datasets (in “england.zip”) relate to the first empirical exercise of the paper which shows that the presence of Cistercian monasteries in England (founded between 1128 and 1437) are correlated with productivity growth between 1377 and 1600/1801 after taking into account various controls and potential endogeneity in the location of the monasteries. The county-level data (obtained from various sources mentioned in the paper) includes: historical information on the presence of Cistercian monasteries; estimates of population density (as a Malthusian proxy for productivity); access to water, coal, land quality, literacy rates, roman roads, suitability of the land for pasture (as controls); the location of Royal forests (as an instrument to account for endogeneity). The second group of datasets (in “europe.zip”) relate to the second empirical exercise of the paper which demonstrates that the productivity effects of Cistercian monasteries has persisted to the present day across European regions (NUTS-2), particularly Catholic regions (where the effect of Cistercian monasteries is less likely to be confounded with the effect of the Reformation). Productivity is measured by two relevant items from the European Values survey (2008-10 wave): (1) do you think valuing ‘hard work’ is an important trait for children to learn at home; (2) do you think ‘thrift, saving money and things’ is an important trait for children to learn at home.

The first group of datasets (in “england.zip”) of the historical empirical exercise linking the presence of Cistercian monasteries in England to higher productivity growth between 1377 and 1600/1801 features county-level data on the presence of Cistercian monasteries; population density (as a Malthusian proxy for productivity); access to water, coal, land quality, literacy rates, roman roads, suitability of the land for pasture (as controls); the location of Royal forests (as an instrument to account for endogeneity). These are produced using historical records or measurements – all sources and descriptions are given in the ReadMe file. The second group of datasets (in “europe.zip”) of the second empirical exercise linking the presence of Cistercian monasteries in Europe to cultural values today that reflect higher productivity features data relating to European regions (NUTS-2). The data on the presence of Cistercian monasteries is constructed from historical records, and the data on present-day cultural values is taken from the European Values Survey (2008-10 wave; 56,227 individuals). The dataset also includes measured data on employment, population and GDP per employed persons for the NUTS-2 regions in the present day (used to construct alternative productivity outcomes). All sources and descriptions are given in the ReadMe file.