Victor Gay

| Prix de thèse de la chancellerie des universités de Paris |

Félicitations à Agnès Hirsch qui a obtenu ce prix pour sa thèse de doctorat, "Statistiques professionnelles et lois sociales : l’invention de la mesure du travail en France (1880-1914)".

En savoir plus : www.ined.fr/fr/actualite...

I am on the econ job market AY 2025-26!

My JMP on tax enforcement and conflict speaks to political economy, public finance, and economic history. Thread below.

You can also visit my website: www.enguehard.tf

📣 One week left to apply to our Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences!

We have an exciting program for this year: www.tse-fr.eu/sites/defaul...

🗓️ May 26 to June 19, 2026
📍 Toulouse

Application deadline: December 15

Apply here: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum...

@tse-fr.eu @iast.fr

We show that the revolutionary overhaul in inheritance laws in 1793 was a key driver of France's early fertility decline.

In dismantling the Ancien Régime, the revolutionaries inadvertently triggered the world's first fertility transition, at least half a century ahead of any other country.

(9/9)

We further support this finding by qualitative historical evidence and plot-level cadaster data.

E.g., député Cazales in 1791, opposing the inheritance reform: "[t]his equal share that one would be obliged to give to their younger siblings might even prevent them from being born"

(8/9)

These reforms reduced parents' economic incentives for having children to avoid land fragmentation among many heirs and production falling below the subsistence threshold.

Indeed, we find that the effect is driven by locations where soil conditions made small farms more prevalent.

(7/9)

Across both designs, inheritance reforms reduced women's completed fertility by about 0.5 children and closed the fertility gap between areas with different historical inheritance rules.

Overall, these reforms account for about a third of France’s fertility transition.

(6/9)

We measure fertility at the individual level before and after the Revolution using the Henry survey and large-scale online genealogies from www.geni.com.

Our empirical strategy combines a DiD with a spatial RD around inheritance regime borders.

(5/9)

Bonus: we wrote two companion papers documenting sources, GIS construction methodology, and proposing ideas for future research.

Data are publicly available for other researchers to use.

- Bailliages 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...
- Customary regions 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.ee...

(4/9)

But Le Play’s hypothesis was never systematically tested due to data limitations.

Our solution: construct an atlas of inheritance rules before the Revolution by combining two historical GIS of judicial districts (bailliages) and customary regions in Ancien Régime France.

(3/9)

Why a puzzle?

1. Timing: it started half a century before industrialization.

2. Speed: the sharp decline around 1789 cannot be explained by slowly evolving cultural norms.

Solution?

👉 A long-standing hypothesis by Le Play (1875): revolutionary inheritance reforms enacted in 1793.

(2/9)

One of the big puzzles in history is why the first demographic transition began in France, as early as 1789.

With Paula Gobbi and Marc Goñi, we show that a key driver was the French Revolution and its inheritance reforms.

Now forthcoming at JPE 👉 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

🧵 (1/9)

Apply now to our next Summer School! 🤝

We are glad to host the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences from 26 May to 19 June 2026 — a great opportunity for PhD students in economics, political science, and other social sciences.

Application: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum...

Reminder: the deadline to apply to the conference on "Popular Support for Autocratic Regimes in Historical Perspective" is tomorrow!

VoxEU column now up for my paper on "Wars, Taxation and Representation" with @essobecker.bsky.social, @andyferrara.bsky.social and @luigipascali.bsky.social.

Full paper available here:
doi.org/10.1093/jeea...

Billions of regressions ≠ robustness.

My new PNAS Letter shows how unjustified models can drown out justified ones — and why thoughtful model selection matters👇
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A Strange Phrase Keeps Turning Up in Scientific Papers, But Why? Earlier this year, scientists discovered a peculiar term appearing in published papers: "vegetative electron microscopy".

A really good example of the kinds of things that can go wrong is the vegetative electron microscope...
www.sciencealert.com/a-strange-ph...

Call for abstracts for interdisciplinary conference on "Popular Support for Autocratic Regimes in Historical Perspective," May 26-27 in Toulouse @tse-fr.eu

Deadline: Nov 15. Travel/accommodation will be covered.

Please apply!

Co-organized with Jan Stuckatz, Selina Hofstetter, and Mikkel Dack.

| Parution | Être parisien ou parisienne il y a 100 ans et à présent : une étude à partir de données inédites individuelles issues de recensements à lire dans le numéro de #PopulationEtSociétés de septembre

www.ined.fr/fr/publicati...

#RevueIned

@sandrabree.bsky.social

Paris, il y a 100 ans : une population plus nombreuse qu’aujourd’hui et déjà originaire d’ailleurs Des idées pour vous

Paris, il y a 100 ans : une population plus nombreuse qu’aujourd’hui et déjà originaire d’ailleurs shs.cairn.info/revue-popula...

It's hiring season at @iast.fr!

- 2y research postdoc contract
- Full autonomy, you are your own PI
- Awesome multidisciplinary environment
- All social and behavioral sciences welcome
- Seed funding for projects and workshops
- Gorgeous city in the south of France

www.iast.fr/research-fel...

Research Fellowships Each year, IAST invites applications for post-doctoral Research Fellowships, which offer candidates an opportunity to devote themselves full-time to their research at the start of their careers. Fello...

It is the time of the year when I tell you about my favorite post-doc ever 👇 Unless you are allergic to the French, this one sits up there with the Nuffield postdoc (life style, productivity, interdisciplinary stimulation). Share widely! Apply! #poliscky

www.iast.fr/research-fel...

#ESHD2025 Awards!

The Louis Henry Award

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Brée S., et al.
POPP. An OCR-Generated Database of the Population Censuses of Paris (1926-36)

Curtis M. et al.
Inheritance Customs, the European Marriage Pattern and Female Empowerment

📢 New initiative: we are launching a monthly virtual seminar in French Economic History to share and discuss the latest research in the field!

🌍 Open to all interested in #econhist.

👉 Info & updates: sites.google.com/view/vwfhe/h...

Cavaillé promoted to associate professor On May 15, the Regents of the University of Michigan approved the promotion for Charlotte Cavaillé to associate professor of public policy, with tenure, and associate professor of political science.

Soooo... I am tenured :-) Celebrated with @cescamat.bsky.social and the other amazing folks at IPERG in Barcelona. Thank you friends, family, tenure committee, colleagues, reviewers and letter writers. You made a Cavaillé happy.

fordschool.umich.edu/news/2025/ca...

New working paper, just five short years in the making! The idea for it emerged from reading about the French Revolution during COVID lockdowns, which warped my sense of time, and got me interested into measures thereof. Abstract and title below, and full ms here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Please repost this widely. This is fantastic material. Organize reading groups (ideally bipartisan ones + a good dose of independent)!

Merci @fheimburger.bsky.social ! J'ai fait une version pour 1852 en partant de celui de 1870 pour une analyse (pas 100% précise donc mais devrait faire l'affaire).

@cljmarion.bsky.social Email moi et je peux te partager le shp.

Let's brainstorm over strategy

Imagine you were part of the strategy team of a major US university:

1) what would be your short-to-mid term strategy to respond to current attacks on higher ed?
2) Who / how would you organize?
3) For what objectives?
4) With what means?

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....