The Expansion of the Commercial Sector and the Child Quantity-Quality Transition in a Malthusian World

Ken Tabata

No 105, Discussion Paper Series from School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University

Abstract: This paper constructs a simple Malthusian model to explain per capita income differences in the Malthusian era by focusing on regional variations in the expansion of the commercial sector. This paper shows that a larger productivity improvement in the skilled intensive commercial sector relative to the improvement in the unskilled intensive agricultural sector causes a higher per capita income in the Malthusian steady-state equilibrium by enhancing the child quantity-quality transition. From the late Middle Ages, Northwestern Europe (Britain and the Netherlands) was characterized by dramatic growth of both the commercial sector and urbanization, high literacy rates, and a low-pressure demographic regime, and thus, these regions developed very differently from the rest of Europe. Our results are somewhat consistent with the relevant experiences of Northwestern Europe in the preindustrial era.

Keywords: Commercial Sector; Sectoral Productivity Improvement; Child Quantity-Quality Transition; Malthusian Era (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J10 N10 O11 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2013-05, Revised 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dem and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://192.218.163.163/RePEc/pdf/kgdp105.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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:kgu:wpaper:105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Toshihiro Okada ().