The long-run effects of religious persecution: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition

Abstract

Religious persecution is common in many countries around the globe. There is little evidence on its long-term effects. We collect data from all across Spain, using information from more than 67,000 trials held by the Spanish Inquisition between 1480 and 1820. This comprehensive database allows us to demonstrate that municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today. The effects persist after controlling for historical indicators of religiosity and wealth, ruling out potential selection bias.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 57 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.