Dear colleagues, We hereby invite you to join our next Economics of Inequality Research Seminar<https://www.wu.ac.at/en/ineq/outreach/ineq-research-seminar> at WU Vienna. Joanne Haddad <https://sites.google.com/view/joannehaddad/home?authuser=0> (Université Libre de Bruxelles) will present the paper Inheritance Customs, the European Marriage Pattern and Female Empowerment. Date and Time: Monday, March 24; 3.00 p.m. Location: WU Vienna, D3 - D3.0.222<https://campus.wu.ac.at/?q=D3.0.222>. Abstract Centuries before the demographic transition, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) limited fertility in Western Europe through high celibacy, late age at first marriage, and nuclear household structures. This paper uncovers an institutional factor that shaped the EMP: inheritance customs. We construct a novel atlas of 200 local inheritance customs in pre-industrial France and Belgium and examine individual-level marriage decisions from genealogical records of 53,672 women born in 1670-1750. We document two facts about the EMP: a substantial amount of local variation in its prevalence, and a U-shaped relationship between access to inheritance, women's economic opportunities, and celibacy. This is consistent with inheritance customs affecting marriage decisions through women's empowerment and eased financial constraints to form a household. These two channels allow to reconcile conflicting findings on the relationship between the EMP and economic development. Please register your participation here<https://www.wu.ac.at/ineq/outreach/ineq-research-seminar/registration-haddad>. Best regards, Jan Gromadzki Jan Gromadzki he/him Assistant Professor Vienna University of Economics and Business Department of Economics Research Institute Economics of Inequality INEQ Building D4 | 2.175 jan.gromadzki@wu.ac.at<mailto:jan.gromadzki@wu.ac.at> https://www.jgromadzki.com/