Ulrich Pfister
Biographic Data
| ID | 289726 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ulrich Pfister |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ulrich |
| FAMILY NAME | Pfister |
| SIGNATURE | PFISTER U |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Münster |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7489-7509 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Anka Steffen, Am leinenen Faden. Schlesiens Wirtschaft im globalen Kontext der frühen Neuzeit. (Beiträge zur Globalgeschichte, Bd. 5.) Stuttgart, Steiner 2025
Food Crises in Germany, 1500–1871
This study is the first to establish a chronology of food crises in Germany from the sixteenth century to their disappearance in the late 1860s based on a standard methodology to detect cycles in commodity prices. To this end, we develop an aggregate rye price series, deflate it by a consumer price index and decompose this real price in trend and cyclical components using the Butterworth filter. Years are classified as food price crisis when the …
The slow emergence of the rational investor
We develop new datasets of monthly grain prices in 14 urban markets and of the storage and marketing of grain by 5 rural estates located in western Germany between the late seventeenth century and c . 1860. We explore whether observed patterns of monthly prices, sales, and storage of grain are consistent with the rational competitive storage model (RCSM). Results establish, first, that the crop year was divided into two seasons characterized by p…
Richard Tilly (1932–2023)
Grain Prices in Pre-industrial Germany, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
We present the largest homogenous dataset of grain prices for four major types of grain for pre-industrial Germany covering 70 cities with a total of 259 time series. This article describes the sources and the methodology followed to create calendar-year-based price series in grams of silver per litre. The dataset is organised and documented decentrally by means of one excel file for each city. To aggregate information for all cities in one file,…
Economic Growth in Germany, 1500-1850
New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500-1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated. The results shed new light on the reversal of f…
Deutschland 1871
Kurz nach der Gründung des ersten deutschen Nationalstaats 1871 trat die deutsche Wirtschaft in die Ära des modernen Wirtschaftswachstums ein. Dennoch ist bisher kaum erforscht, ob und auf welche Weise die Nationalstaatsbildung die wirtschaftliche Dynamik beeinflusst hat. In diesem Band gehen zwanzig Autorinnen und Autoren diesen Zusammenhängen aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nach und ordnen sie in den europäischen Kontext ein. Somit wird ein …
Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law
Gewalt, institutionelle Schocks und Entwicklung
The wars of 1792-1815 constituted the last and biggest military conflict in pre-modern Europe. This essay reviews the available evidence concerning their economic impact on the German lands. Given the low level of fiscal development there, taxes and capital markets were of limited relevance for the mobilization of resources for war-related purposes relative to requisitions and exactions on the spot. Adverse effects of the wars on the aggregate ec…
From Malthusian Disequilibrium to the Post-Malthusian Era
This study draws on a new data set of vital rates and real wages to explore short-term and long-term behavior of the preventive and positive checks in a major economy of premodern mainland Europe. Four results stand out. First, the preventive check was fairly stable throughout the period 1730–1870; its magnitude of 0.2 to 0.35 was comparable with that of England, northern and central Italy, and Sweden. Second, the eighteenth century was character…
The Inequality of Pay in Pre-modern Germany, Late 15 th Century to 1889
The study explores relative labour scarcity in a broad range of activities and relates it to the long-run dynamics of structural change, supply and demand of human capital, and the inequality between men and women. It builds on two recent compilations of wage data and complements these with additional information, particularly on wages in agriculture. From the second quarter of the seventeenth century the skill premium was stable; the first phase…
Real Wages in Germany during the First Phase of Industrialization, 1850-1889
The study constructs new wage series at the branch level and aggregates them to an index of nominal wages in industry and urban trades in 18481889. Moreover, the study develops new food price and rent indices. These are then combined with price indices for other categories of household expenditure from Hoffmann (1965) into a consumer price index for 1850-1889. The new real wage index shows little growth for the third quarter of the nineteenth cen…
Das postmalthusianische Zeitalter
The study constructs new data series for population and vital rates in the German states between 1815 and 1871 and aggregates these to the national level. Major improvements in the data at state level include a broadening of the source material, the determination of population size in years between censuses on the basis of recorded natural increase, and a correction for improvement of population coverage across the censuses taken between the late…
Agricultural Output Growth in a Proto- and Early Industrial Setting
An evidence-based time series on agricultural growth prior to 1850 only exists for very few German territories. Except for Saxony, there is no series available for the pre-1815 period. Based on sharecropping contracts from the estate of Anholt, we reconstruct the development of crop production for western Westphalia and the lower Rhineland c. 1740–1860. Our results show that parallel to Saxony, agricultural growth in this north-west German region…
The timing and pattern of real wage divergence in pre‐industrial Europe
This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three‐and‐a‐half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the se…
Rural land and credit markets, the permanent income hypothesis and proto-industry
The study documents fluctuations of proto-industrial income, of occupation, debt and presence on land markets across the life course for rural households in a major proto-industrial region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These fluctuations are interpreted on the basis that a major objective of households is to equalize their income across different stages of their development. The permanent income hypothesis is then extended to t…
Croyance et espace dans le contexte alpin
L'article étudie la montagne comme «lieu pratiqué» à travers les coutumes religieuses dans une région située en Suisse orientale aux XVIIe et XVIIIE SIÈCLES. L'usage mental de la montagne par la société locale opère sur un fond marqué par deux tendances générales. D'un côté, la Réforme borroméenne conduit à une intensification du culte dans l'église paroissiale, qui a tendance à être intégrée dans l'espace du village. De l'autre, les pèlerinages …
Exit, voice, and loyalty
This article formulates a simple model of parent–child interest conflicts. Based on a simple model of a household economy with a production or wage income function, a labor maintenance cost function, and an externally given wage rate, it discusses potential conflicts over the appropriation of the product of family members' labor in terms of the trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty. The model is then explored by using household lists that provide d…
Die Entstehung der europäischen Weltwirtschaft (ca. 1450-1850)
Women's bread — men's capital
The family enterprises of small rural entrepreneurs in proto-industrial textile production have been little studied so far. This article focuses on the ways in which family labor assists in entrepreneurial activities and nonindustrial activities within the domestic unit contribute to the creation of proto-industrial capital. The empirical material on early modern Zurich (Switzerland) documents large household economies among entrepreneurs engagin…
Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons
During the era of church reforms the clergy tended to become a profession—at least such has been argued with respect to English ministers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 1 The present study endeavors to show that an analysis of the shifting position of the clergy in the continuum between a nonagricultural side activity, an estate in traditional society, and a profession can contribute to our understanding of the role that clergyme…
Proto-industrielles Wachstum
Reformierte Sittenzucht zwischen kommunaler und territorialer Organisation
Article Reformierte Sittenzucht zwischen kommunaler und territorialer Organisation: Graubünden, 16.-18. Jahrhundert was published on December 1, 1996 in the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History (volume 87, issue jg).
Le petit crédit rural en Suisse aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles
Alors qu'institutions et pratiques bancaires sont demeurées largement absentes avant le milieu du XIXe siècle, le petit crédit rural, agraire ou protoindustriel, a joué un rôle important en Suisse pendant l'époque moderne en n'utilisant que des instruments relativement simples. Nous examinerons ici deux aspects de ses fonctions économiques et sociales en analysant d'une part les liens verticaux, en partie clientélaires, que les réseaux du crédit …
The Protoindustrial Household Economy
Several recent studies on the household structure and the demographic evolution of protoindustrial communities in early modern Europe contradict important tenets of protoindustry theory as it has emerged from the writings of Braun, Mendels, Medick, and Levine. The present study develops a conceptual framework of the protoindustrial household economy based on a simple model of the decision-making process by which rural households allocate their la…
International Financial Relations As Part of the World-System
The article develops a structural perspective on international financial relations since about 1800 by placing them into the larger framework of cycles and trends of the world-system. Starting with the observation that global debt crises have always occurred during troughs of Kondratieff cycles and have always originated in the periphery, a body of hypotheses linking long cycles and international financial relations is formulated. These hypothese…
Economic Growth in Germany, 1500-1850
New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500-1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated. The results shed new light on the reversal of f…
The timing and pattern of real wage divergence in pre‐industrial Europe
This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three‐and‐a‐half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the se…
Le petit crédit rural en Suisse aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles
Alors qu'institutions et pratiques bancaires sont demeurées largement absentes avant le milieu du XIXe siècle, le petit crédit rural, agraire ou protoindustriel, a joué un rôle important en Suisse pendant l'époque moderne en n'utilisant que des instruments relativement simples. Nous examinerons ici deux aspects de ses fonctions économiques et sociales en analysant d'une part les liens verticaux, en partie clientélaires, que les réseaux du crédit …
From Malthusian Disequilibrium to the Post-Malthusian Era
This study draws on a new data set of vital rates and real wages to explore short-term and long-term behavior of the preventive and positive checks in a major economy of premodern mainland Europe. Four results stand out. First, the preventive check was fairly stable throughout the period 1730–1870; its magnitude of 0.2 to 0.35 was comparable with that of England, northern and central Italy, and Sweden. Second, the eighteenth century was character…
Work Roles and Family Structure in Proto-Industrial Zurich
though earlier studies have centered on explanations of family size and structure, more recent research has shifted to an analysis of the internal organization of and work roles within households. The work roles of women in particular have been the focus of numerous investigations. The respective positions of men and women have been found to differ more by status than by their productive contributions to household economies. Male authority derive…
Das postmalthusianische Zeitalter
The study constructs new data series for population and vital rates in the German states between 1815 and 1871 and aggregates these to the national level. Major improvements in the data at state level include a broadening of the source material, the determination of population size in years between censuses on the basis of recorded natural increase, and a correction for improvement of population coverage across the censuses taken between the late…
Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons
During the era of church reforms the clergy tended to become a profession—at least such has been argued with respect to English ministers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 1 The present study endeavors to show that an analysis of the shifting position of the clergy in the continuum between a nonagricultural side activity, an estate in traditional society, and a profession can contribute to our understanding of the role that clergyme…
Agricultural Output Growth in a Proto- and Early Industrial Setting
An evidence-based time series on agricultural growth prior to 1850 only exists for very few German territories. Except for Saxony, there is no series available for the pre-1815 period. Based on sharecropping contracts from the estate of Anholt, we reconstruct the development of crop production for western Westphalia and the lower Rhineland c. 1740–1860. Our results show that parallel to Saxony, agricultural growth in this north-west German region…
Exit, voice, and loyalty
This article formulates a simple model of parent–child interest conflicts. Based on a simple model of a household economy with a production or wage income function, a labor maintenance cost function, and an externally given wage rate, it discusses potential conflicts over the appropriation of the product of family members' labor in terms of the trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty. The model is then explored by using household lists that provide d…
The Protoindustrial Household Economy
Several recent studies on the household structure and the demographic evolution of protoindustrial communities in early modern Europe contradict important tenets of protoindustry theory as it has emerged from the writings of Braun, Mendels, Medick, and Levine. The present study develops a conceptual framework of the protoindustrial household economy based on a simple model of the decision-making process by which rural households allocate their la…
International Financial Relations As Part of the World-System
The article develops a structural perspective on international financial relations since about 1800 by placing them into the larger framework of cycles and trends of the world-system. Starting with the observation that global debt crises have always occurred during troughs of Kondratieff cycles and have always originated in the periphery, a body of hypotheses linking long cycles and international financial relations is formulated. These hypothese…
Mobilité sociale et transition de la fécondité
The fertility decline started early in Zurich, in the mid-XVIIth century. The same trend is observed for other Protestant areas, suggesting the importance of religious doctrine. The present study, based on detailed information concerning the fertile life and social status of each family and an index for distinguishing between planners and non-planners, attempts to take into account on the one hand, this general factor, and on the other hand, the …
Work Roles and Family Structure in Proto-Industrial Zurich
though earlier studies have centered on explanations of family size and structure, more recent research has shifted to an analysis of the internal organization of and work roles within households. The work roles of women in particular have been the focus of numerous investigations. The respective positions of men and women have been found to differ more by status than by their productive contributions to household economies. Male authority derive…
The Protoindustrial Household Economy
Several recent studies on the household structure and the demographic evolution of protoindustrial communities in early modern Europe contradict important tenets of protoindustry theory as it has emerged from the writings of Braun, Mendels, Medick, and Levine. The present study develops a conceptual framework of the protoindustrial household economy based on a simple model of the decision-making process by which rural households allocate their la…
Le petit crédit rural en Suisse aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles
Alors qu'institutions et pratiques bancaires sont demeurées largement absentes avant le milieu du XIXe siècle, le petit crédit rural, agraire ou protoindustriel, a joué un rôle important en Suisse pendant l'époque moderne en n'utilisant que des instruments relativement simples. Nous examinerons ici deux aspects de ses fonctions économiques et sociales en analysant d'une part les liens verticaux, en partie clientélaires, que les réseaux du crédit …
Reformierte Sittenzucht zwischen kommunaler und territorialer Organisation
Article Reformierte Sittenzucht zwischen kommunaler und territorialer Organisation: Graubünden, 16.-18. Jahrhundert was published on December 1, 1996 in the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History (volume 87, issue jg).
Proto-industrielles Wachstum
Pastors and Priests in the Early Modern Grisons
During the era of church reforms the clergy tended to become a profession—at least such has been argued with respect to English ministers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 1 The present study endeavors to show that an analysis of the shifting position of the clergy in the continuum between a nonagricultural side activity, an estate in traditional society, and a profession can contribute to our understanding of the role that clergyme…
Women's bread — men's capital
The family enterprises of small rural entrepreneurs in proto-industrial textile production have been little studied so far. This article focuses on the ways in which family labor assists in entrepreneurial activities and nonindustrial activities within the domestic unit contribute to the creation of proto-industrial capital. The empirical material on early modern Zurich (Switzerland) documents large household economies among entrepreneurs engagin…
Die Entstehung der europäischen Weltwirtschaft (ca. 1450-1850)
Exit, voice, and loyalty
This article formulates a simple model of parent–child interest conflicts. Based on a simple model of a household economy with a production or wage income function, a labor maintenance cost function, and an externally given wage rate, it discusses potential conflicts over the appropriation of the product of family members' labor in terms of the trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty. The model is then explored by using household lists that provide d…
Croyance et espace dans le contexte alpin
L'article étudie la montagne comme «lieu pratiqué» à travers les coutumes religieuses dans une région située en Suisse orientale aux XVIIe et XVIIIE SIÈCLES. L'usage mental de la montagne par la société locale opère sur un fond marqué par deux tendances générales. D'un côté, la Réforme borroméenne conduit à une intensification du culte dans l'église paroissiale, qui a tendance à être intégrée dans l'espace du village. De l'autre, les pèlerinages …
Rural land and credit markets, the permanent income hypothesis and proto-industry
The study documents fluctuations of proto-industrial income, of occupation, debt and presence on land markets across the life course for rural households in a major proto-industrial region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These fluctuations are interpreted on the basis that a major objective of households is to equalize their income across different stages of their development. The permanent income hypothesis is then extended to t…
Agricultural Output Growth in a Proto- and Early Industrial Setting
An evidence-based time series on agricultural growth prior to 1850 only exists for very few German territories. Except for Saxony, there is no series available for the pre-1815 period. Based on sharecropping contracts from the estate of Anholt, we reconstruct the development of crop production for western Westphalia and the lower Rhineland c. 1740–1860. Our results show that parallel to Saxony, agricultural growth in this north-west German region…
The timing and pattern of real wage divergence in pre‐industrial Europe
This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three‐and‐a‐half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the se…
Real Wages in Germany during the First Phase of Industrialization, 1850-1889
The study constructs new wage series at the branch level and aggregates them to an index of nominal wages in industry and urban trades in 18481889. Moreover, the study develops new food price and rent indices. These are then combined with price indices for other categories of household expenditure from Hoffmann (1965) into a consumer price index for 1850-1889. The new real wage index shows little growth for the third quarter of the nineteenth cen…
Das postmalthusianische Zeitalter
The study constructs new data series for population and vital rates in the German states between 1815 and 1871 and aggregates these to the national level. Major improvements in the data at state level include a broadening of the source material, the determination of population size in years between censuses on the basis of recorded natural increase, and a correction for improvement of population coverage across the censuses taken between the late…
The Inequality of Pay in Pre-modern Germany, Late 15 th Century to 1889
The study explores relative labour scarcity in a broad range of activities and relates it to the long-run dynamics of structural change, supply and demand of human capital, and the inequality between men and women. It builds on two recent compilations of wage data and complements these with additional information, particularly on wages in agriculture. From the second quarter of the seventeenth century the skill premium was stable; the first phase…
Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law
Gewalt, institutionelle Schocks und Entwicklung
The wars of 1792-1815 constituted the last and biggest military conflict in pre-modern Europe. This essay reviews the available evidence concerning their economic impact on the German lands. Given the low level of fiscal development there, taxes and capital markets were of limited relevance for the mobilization of resources for war-related purposes relative to requisitions and exactions on the spot. Adverse effects of the wars on the aggregate ec…
From Malthusian Disequilibrium to the Post-Malthusian Era
This study draws on a new data set of vital rates and real wages to explore short-term and long-term behavior of the preventive and positive checks in a major economy of premodern mainland Europe. Four results stand out. First, the preventive check was fairly stable throughout the period 1730–1870; its magnitude of 0.2 to 0.35 was comparable with that of England, northern and central Italy, and Sweden. Second, the eighteenth century was character…
Deutschland 1871
Kurz nach der Gründung des ersten deutschen Nationalstaats 1871 trat die deutsche Wirtschaft in die Ära des modernen Wirtschaftswachstums ein. Dennoch ist bisher kaum erforscht, ob und auf welche Weise die Nationalstaatsbildung die wirtschaftliche Dynamik beeinflusst hat. In diesem Band gehen zwanzig Autorinnen und Autoren diesen Zusammenhängen aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nach und ordnen sie in den europäischen Kontext ein. Somit wird ein …
Economic Growth in Germany, 1500-1850
New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500-1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated. The results shed new light on the reversal of f…
Richard Tilly (1932–2023)
Grain Prices in Pre-industrial Germany, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
We present the largest homogenous dataset of grain prices for four major types of grain for pre-industrial Germany covering 70 cities with a total of 259 time series. This article describes the sources and the methodology followed to create calendar-year-based price series in grams of silver per litre. The dataset is organised and documented decentrally by means of one excel file for each city. To aggregate information for all cities in one file,…
Historical Economic and Social Studies (19 works) · Economics (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Geography (8 works) · Labour economics (7 works) · Market economy (7 works) · Macroeconomics (5 works) · Wage (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Demographic economics (4 works)