Online ISSN 2286-0266
Print ISSN 1223-0685
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Dragoş Constantin SANDA
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti
The financial crisis that hit Europe in 2008 created the premises for a financial diagnosis, resulted in a direct revaluation of countries’ loan capacity. This late diagnosis revealed enormous sovereign debt in most of the European countries. The economic measures, subsequently applied, were ones of palliative consequences treatment such as reducing the national deficit and loan capacity. The European Economic Area’s sovereign debt matter generated a complex literature, generally based on economic reasoning, regardless of cultural features, of explaining the underlying factors for the appearance of such financial shortfalls in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. On the other hand, the Scandinavian countries have not borrowed as much. This paper aims to supply the previous efforts made, by analysing cultural differences between Catholic and Protestant countries. The analysis begins with the presentation of Max Weber’s classical vision about the impact of Protestant Reformation on traditional belief systems, by changing individual’s attitudes towards saving, capital accumulation and honesty in lending operations. Further on, the article proposes a diagnostic cross-country analysis of major Catholic and Protestant economies from European Economic Area, from the sovereign debt crisis perspective.

ŒCONOMICA no. 2/2015
Keywords: culture, reformation, Protestantism, Catholicism, sovereign debts, economic behaviour
JEL: A13
The Economic Effects of Protestant and Catholic Moralities in Sovereign Debt Crisis. A Cross-Country Analysis [Efectele economice ale moralităţilor protestantă şi catolică în criza datoriilor suverane. O analiză între ţări]