Development and History
Development and Economic History
Members of the Development and Economic History Research Group combine archival data, lab-in-the-field experiments, randomized controlled trials, text analysis, survey and secondary data along with theoretical tools to study issues in development and economic history. Faculty and students work in the field in South Asia, China and Africa as well as doing archival work in libraries across Europe and Asia.
Almost all faculty are members of CAGE in the economics department and some are also members of Warwick Interdisciplinary Centre for International Development (WICID). There is a regular weekly external seminar, two weekly internal workshops, and high quality research students. We also organise international conferences on campus, or in Venice.
Our activities
Development and Economic History Research Group Workshop/Seminar
Monday: 1.00-2.00pm
For faculty and PhD students at Warwick and other top-level academic institutions across the world. For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below.
Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta and Claudia Rei
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Development and Economic History Research Group are:
Research Students
Events
Economic History Seminar - Marc Goni (Bergen)
Title: Inheritance Customs and the European Marriage Pattern
Abstract: Centuries before the demographic transition, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) limited fertility in Western Europe through high celibacy, late marriage, and nuclear households. Whether the EMP reflected female empowerment or instead financial hardship remains debated. This paper shows that local inheritance institutions determined where economic opportunity strengthened the EMP and where it did not. We construct a new atlas of 2,441 rural and urban inheritance customs in France and Belgium and combine it with genealogical data on 75,000 women born between 1500 and 1750. We show that the EMP emerged alongside economic opportunities where inheritance included women and younger siblings, but that the EMP reflected economic distress where inheritance was inegalitarian; that effects differed between urban and rural areas; and that they persisted over centuries. We develop and estimate a structural model in which inheritance rules affect marriage decisions through female empowerment and financial constraints. The estimates imply that 70 percent of celibacy reflected choice rather than constraint, suggesting that the EMP was primarily a positive force for Europe's development.