This paper studies the impact of the Protestant Reformation on wealth distribution and inequality in confessionally … insiders only. This gave Protestantism an ambiguous character in terms of redistribution and its impact on inequality. I … framework, I document that the Reformation exacerbated inequality overall, by making marginal poor people relatively poorer. The …

What was the impact of urban political structure on economic inequality in preindustrial times? I document that more … closed political institutions were associated with higher economic inequality in a panel of early modern German cities. To … inequality. To mitigate concerns about reverse causality, I exploit the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) as a plausibly exogenous …

probability of being literate according to their parents' socio-economic status. Although inequality in education declined during … results show that high inequality levels, together with an inadequate schooling system, prevented a significant fraction of …

multidimensional well-being from a capabilities perspective during the last one-and-a-half centuries. Relative inequality (population … development. These results are at odds with per capita income inequality that rose over time and only shrank from 1990 onwards … evolution of augmented human development inequality, although longevity made a substantial contribution until the 1920s. …

We measure pre- and post-tax income inequality in Moscow Province in 1811. We collect new data on incomes for 7 … serfdom resulted in high inequality and extraction levels as well as low social mobility in spite of low levels of enforcement … by the state. We compare our results with those for 1904 and find that, in spite despite emancipation, inequality …