Much of the existing literature investigating the relationship between legal regimes and economic growth focuses on the agency problem of aligning judicial incentives with social welfare and is relatively free of institutional detail beyond abstractions about common law and civil code regimes....

The Rule of One-Third guaranteed wives one-third of their husband's estate upon marital dissolution through death or divorce. We document the historical ubiquity of this legal construct and show that without a wife's residual claim on her husband's estate, children's outcomes are imperiled....