This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic
development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the …

This research shows that secularization accounts for the early decline in fertility in
eighteenth-century France. The demographic transition, a turning point in history and an …

This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Catholic Church property that
occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in …

This article explores the long-run effect of agricultural policies on industrialisation and
economic development. I analyse the differential effect of the Battle for Grain, implemented …

How do radical reforms shape economic development over time? In 1790, the French
Constituent Assembly overhauled the kingdom's organization to establish new local capitals …

First, in Table A. 1, I regress the share of refractory clergy on all baseline and additional
controls (one by one) to check if these are correlated with religiosity. Among the baseline …

Can religiosity affect the emergence and migration patterns of scientists? We focus on 19th-
century France, a period in which the Catholic Church had embraced a particularly …

This paper examines the role of knowledge elites in modernization. At the eve of the French
Revolution, in the spring of 1789, King Louis XVI solicited lists of grievances (Cahiers de …

This research shows that secularization accounts for the remarkably early fertility decline in
France. The demographic transition, a turning point in history and an essential condition for …

The paper studies whether a drought in 1788 affected the outbreak of peasant revolts during
the French Revolution. I construct a community-level data set with information on local …