We test Le Play's (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France's early fertility decline by imposing equal partition of inheritance among all children, including women. We combine new data on local inheritance rules before the …
Early modern European powers were beset by episodic unrest as they sought to consolidate authority and build empires. We examine how growing state communication networks and increased state activity impacted rural unrest by combining original and …
This study argues that urbanization altered the relationship between candidates' occupation and their electoral success. To identify the causal effect of local variation in urbanization, we exploit exogenous changes in the boundaries of electoral …
Customary law governed most European societies during the Middle Ages and early modern period. To better understand the roots of legal customs and their implications for long-run development, we introduce an atlas of customary regions of Ancien …