IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/i4rdps/269.html

A comment on "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land"

Author

Listed:
  • Abajian, Alexander C.
  • Xu, Cong
  • Yu, Shuo

Abstract

Bartels, Jäger and Obergruber (2024) examine how division rules for the inheritance of agricultural land affected distributional outcomes in 19th century and contemporary Germany. The authors use a regression discontinuity design to show that equal-division counties-those in which inheritance of property and land were split equally among heirs-had significantly lower concentration of land holdings in historical Germany and that these areas have higher incomes and wealth today relative to neighboring counterparts that operated under rules where no division of inheritance took place. We computationally reproduce all results present in their manuscript using the replication package the authors provide. While we uncover one minor coding error that affects their calculations of HAC standard errors, it has no effect on the study's results. We also provide two additional tests of the authors identifying assumption: a standard test of continuity of the density of the running variable as well as falsification tests which alter which units are assigned treatment. Both tests support the authors' identifying assumptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Abajian, Alexander C. & Xu, Cong & Yu, Shuo, 2025. "A comment on "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land"," I4R Discussion Paper Series 269, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/328049/1/I4R-DP269.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    2. Charlotte Bartels & Simon Jäger & Natalie Obergruber, 2024. "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(664), pages 3137-3172.
    3. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Max H. Farrell & Roc ́ıo Titiunik, 2017. "rdrobust: Software for regression-discontinuity designs," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 17(2), pages 372-404, June.
    4. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    5. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    6. Matias D. Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Xinwei Ma, 2018. "Manipulation testing based on density discontinuity," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 18(1), pages 234-261, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Crespo Cristian, 2020. "Beyond Manipulation: Administrative Sorting in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Causal Inference, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 164-181, January.
    2. Francesco Foglia, 2025. "The impact of EU Cohesion policy funds for Smart Specialisation in a lagging region: evidence from RDD approach," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1-23, September.
    3. Blaise Melly & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Estimation, Inference, and Interpretation in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Diskussionsschriften dp2016, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    4. Fusejima, Koki & Ishihara, Takuya & Sawada, Masayuki, 2025. "A unified test for regression discontinuity designs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 251(C).
    5. Schmutz, Benoît & Verdugo, Gregory, 2023. "Do elections affect immigration? Evidence from French municipalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    6. Sacha Kapoor & Matthijs Oosterveen & Dinand Webbink, 2021. "The price of forced attendance," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 209-227, March.
    7. Crespo Cristian, 2020. "Beyond Manipulation: Administrative Sorting in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Causal Inference, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 164-181, January.
    8. Benoît SCHMUTZ & Grégory VERDUGO, 2020. "Do Politicians Shape the Electorate ? Evidence from French Municipalities," Working Papers 2020-18, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics, revised 01 Apr 2021.
    9. Christopher Erwin, 2019. "Low-performing student responses to state merit scholarships," Working Papers 2019-02, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics.
    10. Burgherr, David, 2022. "Behavioral Responses to a Pension Savings Mandate : Quasi-experimental Evidence from Swiss Tax Data," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 645, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    11. KAREKURVE-RAMACHANDRA, VARUN & Singh, Sudhir & Stommes, Drew, 2024. "Political Exit: The Unintended Effects of Electoral Rules," OSF Preprints d7xsk_v1, Center for Open Science.
    12. Mellace, Giovanni & Ventura, Marco, 2019. "Intended and unintended effects of public incentives for innovation. Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy," Discussion Papers on Economics 9/2019, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    13. Bergantino, Angela S. & Intini, Mario & Percoco, Marco, 2021. "New car taxation and its unintended environmental consequences," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 36-48.
    14. Chu, Yu-Wei Luke & Cuffe, Harold E, 2020. "Do Struggling Students Benefit From Continued Student Loan Access? Evidence From University and Beyond," Working Paper Series 21067, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    15. Shenglong Liu & Yuanyuan Wan & Xiaoming Zhang, 2024. "Retirement Spillover Effects on Spousal Health in Urban China," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 756-783, September.
    16. Margherita Gerolimetto & Stefano Magrini, 2025. "From Metropolitan Planning Organization to Transport Management Areas: a change of air?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 45(1), pages 577-585.
    17. Andrea De Meo & Lorenzo Ferrari, 2018. "Political Turnover and the Performance of Local Public Enterprises," CEIS Research Paper 438, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 08 Aug 2018.
    18. Chen, Yu & Shi, Shaobin & Tang, Yugang, 2019. "Valuing the urban hukou in China: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design for housing prices," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    19. Nicholas A. Bowman & Nayoung Jang, 2022. "What is the Purpose of Academic Probation? Its Substantial Negative Effects on Four-Year Graduation," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 63(8), pages 1285-1311, December.
    20. Adrien Montalbo, 2019. "Education and economic development. The influence of primary schooling on municipalities in nineteenth-century France," Working Papers halshs-02286126, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:zbw:i4rdps:269. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.i4replication.org/ .

    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.