Voigtländer and Voth argue that the Black Death shifted England towards pastoral agriculture, increasing wages for unmarried women, thereby delaying female marriage, lowering fertility, and unleashing economic growth. We show that this argument does not hold. Its crucial assumption is...

Over the past 25 years social scientists attempting to explain the dramatic changes in the relative distribution of urban and rural population growth have gravitated toward two competing explanations. The regional restructuring hypothesis holds that changes in the spatial distribution of...

The absolute and relative decline of the rural population numbers is one of the most evident features of demographic development in Slovakia. The most intensive decline was observed during the period of extensive urbanization (1970-1985). The general political and socio-economic changes after...

The movement of labor out of agriculture is a universal concomitant of economic modernization and growth. Traditional migration models overlook many potential interactions between migration and development. Given imperfect markets characterizing most migrant-sending areas, migration and...