This paper surveys the results of four recent, separate attempts at estimating agricultural output and food availability in England and Wales at points between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution. It highlights their contrasting implications for trends in economic growth and...

Squicciarini (AER, 2020) finds that the parts of France with the most refractory clergy during the Revolution had the lowest industrial employment in 1901, and concludes that Catholicism retarded development. However, because the richest regions were the ones that industrialized, whereas the...