economic dynamics in the malthusian era evidence from the 1609 spanish expulsion of the moriscos we investigate economic dynamics in the malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of moriscos from spain sharp population declines in former morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output while these short run results are consistent with standard malthusian predictions malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former morisco districts archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita this historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine malthusian dynamics highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the malthusian era

economic origins of cultural norms the case of animal husbandry and bastardy abstract this paper explores the historical origins of the cultural norm regarding illegitimacy formerly known as bastardy in the context of the habsburg empire we test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural production structures influenced the historical illegitimacy ratio and have a lasting effect until today we show that regions that focused in pre industrial periods on animal husbandry as compared to crop farming had significantly higher illegitimacy ratios in the past and female descendants of these societies are still more likely to approve illegitimacy and give birth outside of marriage today to establish causality we exploit for austria within an iv approach variation in the local agricultural suitability which determined the historical dominance of animal husbandry since differences in the agricultural production structure are completely obsolete in today s economy we suggest interpreting the persistence in revealed and stated preferences as a cultural norm complementary evidence shows that this norm is passed down through generations and the family is the most important transmission channel our findings are one example for the more general phenomenon that cultural norms can be shaped by economic conditions and may persist even if economic conditions become irrelevant

differential fertility human capital and development using micro data from 48 developing countries this paper studies changes in crosssectional patterns of fertility and child investment over the course of the demographic transition before 1960 children from larger families obtained more education in large part because they had richer and more educated parents by century s end these patterns had reversed consequently fertility differentials by income and education historically raised the average education of the next generation but they now reduce it while the reversal is unrelated to changes in gdp per capita women s work sectoral composition or health roughly half is attributable to rising aggregate education in the parents generation the results support a model in which rising skill returns lowered the minimum income at which parents invest in education

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

malthus s missing women and children demography and wages in historical perspective england 1280 1850 abstract malthus believed that rising real wages encouraged earlier marriage higher fertility and a growing population but diminishing returns in agriculture meant that an organic economy could not keep pace excess labour and rising food prices drove wages down and brought population growth to a halt studies testing this hypothesis have focussed on the relationship between population growth and men s wages typically overlooking women and children s economic activities and influence on demographic outcomes new daily and annual wage series including women and children enable these missing actors to be incorporated into a more complete account of malthus s hypothesis new findings emerge the demographic reaction to wage changes was gendered early modern bachelors responded to rising male wages by marrying earlier whereas spinsters responded to rising female wages by delaying marriage our evidence suggests that women played a key role in england s low fertility demographic regime and escape from the malthusian trap more tentatively we consider the demographic regime in medieval england although marriage was related to earnings the size of the population was a forceful determinant of economic outcomes while superficially similar in terms of the prevalence of late marriage and low nuptiality this regime was consolidated by poverty and social control absent the female agency of the later era

from malthusian stagnation to modern growth this paper investigates the historical evolution of the relationship among population growth technological change and standard of living the analysis focuses on two most important differences among the malthusian regime post malthusian regime and modern growth regime these were the behavior of income per capita and the relationship between the level of income per capita and the population growth rate the modern growth regime is characterized by steady growth in both income per capita and the level of technology in the malthusian regime technological progress and population growth was glacial by modern standards and income per capita was fairly constant in contrast to the modern growth regime the relationship between per capita income and population growth in the malthusian regime was positive post malthusian regime shared one characteristic with each of the two regimes in addition this paper developed and described an endogenous growth model consistent with the above mentioned transition process

the rise of europe atlantic trade institutional change and economic growth the rise of western europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the atlantic ocean and with substantial trade with the new world africa and asia via the atlantic this trade and the associatedcolonialism affected europe not only directly but also indirectly by inducing institutional change where initial political institutions those established before 1500 placed significant checks on the monarchy the growth of atlantic trade strengthened merchant groups by constraining the power of the monarchy and helped merchants obtain changes in institutions to protect property rights these changes were central to subsequent economic growth

the baby boom and baby bust what caused the baby boom and can it be explained within the context of the secular decline in fertility that has occurred over the last 200 years the hypothesis is that a the secular decline in fertility is due to the relentless rise in real wages that increased the opportunity cost of having children b the baby boom is explained by an atypical burst of technological progress in the household sector that occurred in the middle of the last century this lowered the cost of having children a model is developed in an attempt to account quantitatively for both the baby boom and bust

occupational choice and the spirit of capitalism the british industrial revolution triggered a socioeconomic transformation whereby the landowning aristocracy was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group we propose a theory of preference formation under financial market imperfections that can account for this pattern parents shape their children s preferences in response to economic incentives middle class families in occupations requiring effort skill and experience develop patience and a work ethic whereas upper class families relying on rental income cultivate a refined taste for leisure these class specific attitudes which are rooted in the nature of preindustrial professions become key determinants of success once industrialization transforms the economic landscape i introduction the industrial revolution was more than capital accumulation and growth it also set off a social and political transformation that redefined hierarchies in society and reshaped the distribution of income and wealth before the onset of industrialization in eighteenth century britain wealth and political power were associated with the possession of land over the course of the nineteenth century a new class of entrepreneurs and businessmen emerged as the economic elite for the most part the members of this class rose from humble beginnings and had their social origins in the urban middle classes the landed elite was left behind and eventually lost its political and economic predominance many observers of the time linked this reversal in economic fortunes to differences in values attitudes and ultimately preferences across social classes there are countless examples both in scholarly and in fictional writing of portrayals of members of the landowning class as averse to work unwilling to save ill disposed tocommercialactivity andunabletoconsidermoneyassomething

malthusian dynamism and the rise of europe make war not love this paper argues that malthusian regimes are capable of sustained changes in per capita incomes shifting mortality and fertility schedules can lead to different steady state income levels with long periods of growth during the transition europe checked the downward pressure on wages through late marriage which reduced fertility and a mortality regime that combined high death rates with high incomes we argue that both emerged as a result of the black death

unreal wages real income and economic growth in england 1260 1850 estimates of historical workers annual incomes suffer from the fundamental problem that they are inferred from day wage rates without knowing how many days of work day labourers undertook per year we circumvent the problem by building an income series based on the payments made to workers employed by the year rather than by the day our data suggest that earlier annual income estimates based on day wages overestimate medieval labour incomes but underestimate labour incomes during the industrial revolution our revised estimates indicate that modern economic growth began more than two centuries earlier than commonly thought and was driven by an industrious revolution they also suggest that the current global downturn in labour s share is not exceptional but fits within the range of historical fluctuations

inequality sustainability and piketty s capital abstract in this article i address the implications of thomas piketty s book capital in the twenty first century for our understanding of inequality and sustainability drawing upon amartya sen s capability approach and the revival of classical political economy it brings i argue that piketty s contribution is a significant one which has the potential to lead economic analysis in a more fruitful direction but its potential becomes much greater if its empirical analysis is combined with the revival of classical political economy undertaken by sen and other authors rather than with marginalist theory

public goods institutions human capital and growth evidence from german history what are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods we study public goods provision established through new laws in german cities during the 1500s cities that adopted the laws subsequently began to differentially produce and attract human capital and to grow faster legal change occurred where ideological competition introduced by the protestant reformation interacted with local politics we study plagues that shifted local politics in a narrow period as sources of exogenous variation in public goods institutions and find support for a causal interpretation of the relationship between legal change human capital and growth

poverty and economic development evidence for the brazilian states abstract in the present study our primary concern is to examine the effects of poverty on economic development across the brazilian states from 1980 to 2015 many studies assess the effects of economic growth and economic development on poverty incidence but there is almost no one trying to measure the impact of poverty prevalence on economic development the results of this paper indicate that poverty incidence is essential in the economic development of the brazilian states poorer brazilian states have lower income per worker even when controlling for investment in physical capital human capital stock and the effective depreciation of capital the results point to the variables measuring extreme poverty as having more influence on the economic development of the brazilian states in relation to the variables quantifying poverty

the economic effects of the protestant reformation testing the weber hypothesis in the german lands following max weber many theories have hypothesized that protestantism should have favored economic development with its religious heterogeneity the holy roman empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300 1900 i find no effects of protestantism on economic growth the finding is precisely estimated robust to the inclusion of various controls and does not depend on data selection or small sample size denominational differences in fertility behavior and literacy are unlikely to be major confounding factors protestantism has no effect when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development instrumental variables estimates considering the potential endogeneity of religious choice are similar to the ols results

the cambridge history of capitalism this review essay of the two volume cambridge history of capitalism 2014 edited by larry neal and jeffrey g williamson is divided into three parts first i describe three chapters from the second volume that i recommend for all economists to add depth to their understanding of the world economy today robert c allen analyzes the world distribution of income randall morck and bernard yeung discuss the history of business groups and peter lindert surveys private and public programs to help the poor in each case they analyze historical backgrounds that illuminate current issues second i criticize the definition of capitalism used in these volumes as too expansive to be useful i argue that this definition mars the essays in first volume by stimulating a fruitless search for capitalism in the millennium before the industrial revolution third i describe the essays in this reference work starting from the most recent and ending with those about antiquity

entertaining malthus bread circuses and economic growth we augment a simple malthusian model by allowing agents to consume something besides food whereas food in our case bread is both enjoyable and necessary for survival the other good circuses is pure entertainment it has absolutely no impact on survival but does enhance the quality of life with this very simple modification we show that whereas food supply may remain at subsistence technological change will have a great impact on the consumption of everything else most strikingly though the population remains bound by a malthusian constraint sustained improvements to living standards can no longer be ruled out we also argue that our model better fits the known historical facts the widely held belief that growth prior to the industrial revolution was flat is based largely on historical measures of food production although food supply throughout history may have been and for most individuals still is at or near subsistence levels technological advancements have brought greater convenience and comfort to wealthy and poor alike a possibility that malthus himself conceded in his later and often ignored work therefore our model not only describes historical growth patterns and demographic transitions better than traditional malthusian models but is also more in line with malthus later thinking jel classification numbers b10 i31 j1 n1 o30

peasants procreation and pensions producers and consumers durable goods yielding a stream of benefits which are compared with a stream of costs births occur if the present value of the benefits exceeds the present value of the costs the theory has been used by malthusians to rationalize the casual observation that population growth rates increase during the early stages of economic development and then perhaps fall later on as

how the west invented fertility restriction europeans restricted their fertility long before other parts of the world did so by raising the marriage age of women and ensuring that a substantial proportion remained celibate the european marriage pattern emp reduced childbirths by up to 40 we analyze the rise of this first socio economic institution in history that limited fertility through delayed marriage our model emphasizes changes in agricultural production following the black death the production of meat wool and dairy pastoral products increased while grain production declined women had a comparative advantage producing pastoral goods they often worked as servants in husbandry where they remained unmarried long after they had left the parental household in a malthusian world this translated into lower population pressure raising average wages by up to a quarter the black death thus set into motion a virtuous circle of higher wages and fertility decline that underpinned europe s high per capita incomes we demonstrate the importance of this effect in a calibration of our model

dynamics and stagnation in the malthusian epoch this paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential malthusian theory according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita eventually leading to a larger but not significantly richer population exploiting exogenous sources of cross country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement the analysis demonstrates that in accordance with the theory technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living during the time period 1 1500 ce

the baby boom and world war ii a macroeconomic analysis we argue that one major cause of the u s postwar baby boom was the rise in female labor supply during world war ii we develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor force participation decisions we use the model to assess the impact of the war on female labor supply and fertility in the decades following the war for the war generation of women the high demand for female labor brought about by mobilization leads to an increase in labor supply that persists after the war as a result younger women who reach adulthood in the 1950s face increased labor market competition which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier the effect is amplified by the rise in taxes necessary to pay down wartime government debt in our calibrated model the war generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust

contraception and the demographic transition inspired by the historical english experience we modify the beckerian paradigm of fertility by incorporating costly societal influence on contraception heterogeneous generationally linked households choose between traditional and modern contraception the modern has a higher fixed but lower variable cost of averting childbirths initially the rich adopt the modern which unleashes society wide diffusion eventually everyone switches lowering fertility further and across households hastening the switch is falling child mortality quantitative experiments suggest contraception was a vital link between the historical mortality and fertility transitions though not the latter s proximate cause implications for more recent transitions are discussed

the three horsemen of riches plague war and urbanization in early modern europe how did europe escape the iron law of wages we construct a simple malthusian model with two sectors and multiple steady states and use it to explain why european per capita incomes and urbanization rates increased during the period 1350 1700 productivity growth can only explain a small fraction of the rise in output per capita population dynamics changes of the birth and death schedules were far more important determinants of steady states we show how a major shock to population can trigger a transition to a new steady state with higher per capita income the black death was such a shock raising wages substantially because of engel s law demand for urban products increased and urban centers grew in size european cities were unhealthy and rising urbanization pushed up aggregate death rates this effect was reinforced by diseases spread through war financed by higher tax revenues in addition rising trade also spread diseases in this way higher wages themselves reduced population pressure we show in a calibration exercise that our model can account for the sustained rise in european urbanization as well as permanently higher per capita incomes in 1700 without technological change wars contributed importantly to the rise of europe even if they had negative short run effects we thus trace europe s precocious rise to economic riches to interactions of the plague shock with the belligerent political environment and the nature of cities

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

historical evidence on a modern theory of out of wedlock childbearing abstract according to willis 1999 when women outnumber men in a marriage market out of wedlock births increase as women s incomes rise in real terms and relative to men s these predictions are born out in 19th century swedish data exogenous shocks that raised women s real and relative earnings increased the share of births to single mothers the results are consistent with theory and quantitatively significant increases in women s real and relative wages in the unskilled agricultural sector explain sixty four percent of the increase in births outside of wedlock in sweden from 1865 1910

the condition of the working class in england 1209 2004 i use building workers wages for 1209 2004 and the skill premium to consider the causes and consequences of the industrial revolution real wages were trendless before 1800 as would be predicted for the malthusian era comparing wages with population however suggests that the break from the technological stagnation of the malthusian era came around 1640 long before the classic industrial revolution and even before the arrival of modern democracy in 1689 building wages also conflict with human capital interpretations of the industrial revolution as modeled by gary becker kevin murphy and robert tamura oded galor and david weil and robert lucas human capital accumulation began when the rewards for skills were unchanged and when fertility was increasing

the micro evidence for the malthusian system france 1670 1840 abstract i test the assumptions of the malthusian model at the individual cross sectional level for france 1650 1820 using husband s occupation from the parish records of 41 french rural villages i assign three different measures of status there is no evidence for the existence of the positive check infant deaths are unrelated to status however the preventive check operates strongly acting through female age at first marriage the wives of rich men are younger brides than those of poorer men this drives a positive net fertility gradient in living standards however the strength of this gradient is substantially weaker than it is in pre industrial england

malthus to solow a unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies our theory also explains the industrial revolution which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth the authors use a standard growth model with several technologies the first denoted the malthus technology requires land labor and reproducible capital as inputs the second denoted the solow technology does not require land the authors show that in the early stages of development only the malthus technology is used and due to population growth living standards are stagnant despite technological progress eventually technological progress causes the solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed at this point living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth in the limit the economy behaves like a standard solow growth model excerpt