Testing legal origins theory within France: Customary laws versus Roman code

David le Bris

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2019, vol. 47, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: Before 1804, France was strictly divided in terms of legal regimes: a part was under Roman civil law while the majority of the territory was under customary laws which, as with common law, gave more flexibility to judges and fewer rights to the state. This dichotomy offers the unique opportunity to test legal origins theory free from cross-country heterogeneity. Fiscal and census data from 1801–1821 show the absence of any negative impact of the civil law either on the whole of France or when focusing on counties bordering the legal frontier. Cities were no more populous in customary areas. The same is true for the population density observed in 1793 at the parish level in Auvergne, a province in which the two regimes were entangled. Civil law even appears to have a positive effect in some specifications.

Keywords: Legal origins theory; Law and finance; Financial development; Economic development; France; Old Regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N43 O1 O43 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596718304414
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:47:y:2019:i:1:p:1-30

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2018.10.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().