Entrepreneurship in Wiltshire, England, almost 1,000 years ago

John McDonald ()
Additional contact information
John McDonald: Flinders Business School, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, 2015, vol. 9, issue 2, 193-207

Abstract: In the eleventh-century England, the principal economic activity was agricultural production on manorial estates. The paper exploits the Domesday Survey data, collected in 1086, to investigate the entrepreneurial ability of managers of the main classes of estate, king’s, ecclesiastical and lay estates. Wiltshire data are used to assess whether similar production functions describe production on the three classes of estate. Then, data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods are used to assess whether, after controlling for factors that could have affected efficiency, one class of estate was worked more efficiently. Finally, the Wiltshire results are compared with those from an earlier study of Essex. The Wiltshire analysis confirms the conclusions of the Essex study. In both counties, despite differences in institutional structures, there was little difference between production processes and management performance on the three classes of estate.

Keywords: Domesday Book; DEA; Production functions; Manorial efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D24 N53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11698-014-0113-y (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to journal subscribers

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:afc:cliome:v:9:y:2015:i:2:p:193-207

Access Statistics for this article

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History is currently edited by Claude Diebolt, Dora Costa and Jean-Luc Demeulemeester

More articles in Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History from Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().