The French economy in the longue duree. A study on real wages, working days and economic performance from Louis IX to the Revolution (1250-1789)
Creators: name: Ridolfi, Leonardo
Publisher: name: IMT Alti Studi Lucca
Year: 2017
Subjects: HB Economic Theory

description: This study addresses a gap in the existing literature concerning
 pre-industrial economic growth in France.
 While traditionally research focused on measuring the output
 of specific regions (Baehrel, 1961; Le Roy Ladurie, 1966)
 or the estimation of national indices of production by the end
 of the pre-industrial era (Toutain, 1961, 1987), this study is
 an attempt to provide a comprehensive reconstruction of the
 main contours of economic growth in France from the phase
 of early state formation to the Revolution.
 In Chapter 1 we trace the history of real wages for male construction
 workers and farmers in France from 1250 to 1789.
 Using a new extensive body of empirical evidence it is shown
 that real wages were trendless between the second half of
 1300 and the end of the eighteenth century. We detect a single
 episode of sustained growth between the 1280s and the
 1350s and document the existence of a large realwage gap between
 France and the Continent (a French Little divergence)
 in the post-plague era during the Hundred Years' War.
 In addition, comparing wages with population we found that
 the inverse relationship predicted by the Malthusian theory
 was an exception rather than the rule.
 In Chapter 2 we provide a broad characterization of working
 time in pre-industrial Europe concentrating on three different
 dimensions of time: calendar, actual and implied working
 year. Looking at the experience of construction workers,
 we provide the first direct estimates of trends in calendar, actual
 and implied working year in France and England from
 the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. By comparing the patterns of change of time-use, and their response to variations
 in the institutional and market conditions, we identify
 two distinct regimes of industriousness featuring France
 and England in the pre-industrial era. In France, expansions
 in the offer of labour were associated with raising inflation
 and economic hardship. By contrast, in England, we found
 evidence of the existence of two phases where workers supplied
 more days of work to the market than required by basic
 household subsistence. The first episode, never documented
 yet, occurred between 1400 and 1500, while the second corresponded
 to the industrious revolution originally described by
 De Vries (2008). Different hypotheses are discussed to shed
 light on the origin of surplus labour input and its implications
 on the structure of consumption and production.
 Chapter 3 presents new estimates of agricultural and total
 output per capita in France between 1280 and 1789 using the
 demand side approach. Overall, we find that in the course of
 almost six centuries, the most significant gains in living standards
 were reached between the 1280s, when royal power in
 France reached its medieval apogee, and the 1340s when the
 Black Death of 1348 and to a larger extent the Hundred Years'
 War interrupted it. Following literary evidence, we suggest
 that in this phase, output gains were associated with the particular
 form of evolution of the French monarchical state, and
 its ramifications on real wages through changes in class structure
 and property relationship.
 Subsequently, our estimates do not exhibit any sustained
 trend improvement in the levels of output per capita. This
 evolution is consistent with the characterization of French
 economic growth put forward by Le Roy Ladurie (1966, 1977)
 arguing that the pre-industrial French economy was virtually
 a stagnating, growthless system.