Italy and the little divergence in wages and prices
Evidence From Stable Employment in Rural Areas
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5156582 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mauro Rota (0000-0002-5000-884X, Sapienza University of Rome), Jacob Weisdorf (0000-0003-4434-115X, Sapienza University of Rome and Centre for Economic Policy Research, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 74 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 449-470 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.13023 |
| OpenAlex | W3087745098 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 26 |
This article presents an early modern wage index for stable rural male workers in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. These wages highlight the importance of distinguishing between locations and contract types when considering historical workers' living standards, and they speak to a longstanding debate about whether Italy's early modern downturn was purely an urban phenomenon, or an all-embracing one. Our data lend support to the former view, since we do not detect any downturn in our early modern rural wages. This observation informs the little divergence debate. By comparing rural rather than urban wages and stable rather than casual ones, we find that annual English earnings rose from being only 10 per cent higher than those in Italy in 1650 to being a staggering 150 per cent higher in 1800. If wages reflected labour productivity, then unskilled English workers-unlike their Italian counterparts-grew increasingly productive in the run-up to the industrial revolution
Casual · Demographic economics · Divergence (linguistics) · Earnings · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Great Divergence · Index (typography) · Labour economics · Macroeconomics · Political science · Productivity · Real wages · Recession · Wage · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law
Household consumption patterns and the consumer price index, England, 1260–1869
How not to measure the standard of living
Fiscal capacity and executive constraints in early modern Europe
Smithian growth in the little divergence
Italy's long-term economic performance
The evolution of wages in early modern Normandy (1600-1850)
Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices
From the little divergence to the little divide
Respectable standards of living
Skills and human capital in eighteenth-century Spain
The Industrious Revolution
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
The Agrarian History of England and Wales
The race between the snail and the tortoise
Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution
Unemployment, employment contracts, and compensating wage differentials
The Distinct Seasonality of Early Modern Casual Labor and the Short Durations of Individual Working Years
Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260–1850
The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War
Was there an ‘industrious revolution’ before the industrial revolution? An empirical exercise for England, c. 1300-1830
Bringing Capital Back In, or Social Democracy Reconsidered
The Wages of Women in England, 1260-1850
The Origins of the Italian Regional Divide
Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III
Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices
Labour Productivity and Work Psychology in the English Mining Industry, 1400-1600
Long-term trends in economic inequality
Plague and long-term development
The Decline of Italy
The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective
Progress, decline, growth
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,67 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |