Economic inequality and growth before the industrial revolution: A case study of the Low Countries (14th-19th centuries)
Wouter Ryckbosch
No 67, Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
Abstract:
This paper studies a collection of data on economic inequality in fifteen towns in the Southern and Northern Low Countries from the late Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century. By using a single and consistent source type and adopting a uniform methodology, it is possible to study levels of urban economic inequality across time and place comparatively. The results indicate a clear growth in economic inequality in the two centuries prior to the industrial revolution and the onset of sustained economic growth per capita. The general occurrence of this rise throughout regions with dissimilar economic trajectories contradicts the existence of a straightforward trade-off between growth and inequality as conjectured by Simon Kuznets (1955). Instead, the results presented lend support to the ‘classical’ economists’ explanation of inequality as the consequence of a changing functional distribution of income favouring capital over labour in the long run.
Keywords: Income Inequality; Pre-Industrial; Economic Growth; super Kuznets curve. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)
Downloads: (external link)
ftp://ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it/WorkingPapers/Dondena_WP067.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Failed to connect to FTP server ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it: No such host is known.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:don:donwpa:067
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.dondena.unibocconi.it/wp/
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi via Rontgen, 1 - 20136 Milano.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Johnson ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).