Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, New Results

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sapienza University Rome
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050720000467
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 931-960
• 关键词: real wages; louis ix; ECONOMY; decline; differentials; unemployment; revolution; england; plague; London

摘要

We present new wage indices for skilled and unskilled construction workers in Italy. Our data avoid multiple issues pestering earlier wages, making our new indices the first consistent ones for early-modern Italy. Our improved wages, obtained from the St. Peter's Church in Rome, consolidate the view that urban Italy began a prolonged downturn during the seventeenth century. They also offer sustenance to the idea that epidemics instigated the decline. Comparison with new construction wages for London shows that Roman workers outearned their early-modern English counterparts. This suggests that high wages alone were not enough to trigger industrialization.