Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe

Country and city-level sumptuary laws from preindustrial Europe. It was created by Desiree Desierto to test a model on the political economy of status competition. The model predicts a non-monotonic relationship between income and sumptuary legislation.

Use Cases

• Test the model's prediction of a non-monotonic effect of income on sumptuary legislation using country-level data.
• Analyze the relationship between state institutional extractiveness and the frequency of sumptuary laws.
• Compare the enactment of sumptuary laws across different city-level jurisdictions in preindustrial Europe.

Strengths

• Data is collected at both country and city levels, providing multi-scale analysis.
• Dataset is associated with a formal economic model for hypothesis testing.
• Last updated in February 2026, indicating recent maintenance.

Limitations

• The number of rows, columns, and sample data are unknown, limiting assessment of scope and structure.
• Specific temporal and geographic coverage are not detailed in the input.
• The dataset's size and available file formats are unspecified.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

New dataset of country and city-level sumptuary laws, collection method unspecified.

Time Range

Preindustrial Europe, specific years unknown.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-02-23.

Geography

Preindustrial Europe, specific countries/cities unknown.