IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05105035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The toll of tariffs: The impact of protectionism on education and fertility in late 19th century France

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Bignon

    (DGSEI DPEM - Banque de France, Direction générale des Statistiques, des Études et de l'International, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research, AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Cecilia García-Peñalosa

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research)

Abstract

This paper asks whether macroeconomic policy can affect fertility and education by documenting a slow-down of long-term improvements in these two outcomes in the wake of a major protectionist shock that shielded low-skilled individuals from the adverse consequences of the first wave of globalisation. We build a novel dataset for 19th-century France where, following decades of rising grain imports at low prices, high tariffs on cereal were introduced in 1892, shifting relative prices in favour of agriculture and away from industry. We exploit regional data that allow us to measure differences in the intensity of the protectionist shock and find that the tariff halted the long-term increase in schooling and slowed-down the decline in fertility that were already well underway.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Bignon & Cecilia García-Peñalosa, 2025. "The toll of tariffs: The impact of protectionism on education and fertility in late 19th century France," Post-Print hal-05105035, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05105035
    DOI: 10.1007/s10887-025-09256-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05105035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.