Reply to Edwards and Ogilvie: 'Did the Black Death Cause Economic Development by "Inventing" Fertility Restriction'

This reply shows that Edwards' and Ogilvie's critique of our paper (Voigtlander and Voth, American Economic Review 2013) is based on a failure to understand the logic of our argument, a flawed reading of the historical evidence, and basic econometric mistakes. The validity of our assumptions, the mechanism of the model, and the strength of our empirical evidence stand as in our original publication.