Did European regions industrialize first because their institutions fostered urbanization? We argue that culture, precisely an agricultural inheritance tradition that would immobilize the rural population, was no obstacle to economic growth (as commonly thought). Instead, equal partition tied excess labor to the land and fostered the establishment of a low-wage low-skill industry there. Using data for the German state of Baden-Württemberg, as well as for the whole of West Germany, we document that these equal partition areas are richer than primogeniture areas today. With a focus on identification, we conduct fuzzy spatial RDD regressions for 1895, the 1950s, and today. We find that inheritance rules caused—in line with our theoretical predictions—higher incomes, population densities, and industrialization levels in equal partition areas. We document that equal partition reduced emigration. Results suggest that more than a third of the overall inter-regional difference in average per capita income in present-day Baden Württemberg—or 598 Euro—can be attributed to equal partition. The reasons for Europe’s uniqueness do not lie in the supremacy of primogeniture, and have to be searched elsewhere.

欧洲地区首先工业化是因为它们的制度促进了城市化吗？我们认为，文化，恰恰是一种可以固定农村人口的农业继承传统，不会阻碍经济增长（正如人们普遍认为的那样）。相反，平等分配将过剩劳动力与土地捆绑在一起，并促进了低工资低技能产业的建立。使用德国巴登-符腾堡州以及整个西德的数据，我们记录了这些平等划分的地区比今天的长子继承地区更丰富。以识别为重点，我们对 1895、1950 和今天进行了模糊空间 RDD 回归。我们发现继承规则导致——与我们的理论预测一致——在相等的分区区域内更高的收入、人口密度和工业化水平。我们记录了平等划分减少了移民。结果表明，当今巴登符腾堡州人均收入的整体区域间差异（即 598 欧元）的三分之一以上可归因于平均分配。欧洲独特的原因不在于长子继承权的至高无上，而必须在别处寻找。