Decline and Stagnation in the Arab World: Preliminary Real Wage Evidence Comparing Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia, 1847–1913

Paul Caruana-Galizia

A chapter in Research in Economic History, 2015, vol. 31, pp 1-40 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This paper constructs real wage series for nineteenth-century Algeria and Tunisia, and compares them with existing Egyptian and Syrian series. Archival sources are used for price and nominal wage data. Following Allen (2001), nominal wages are deflated with a consumer price index. The series are tested for robustness. Real wages were initially dispersed, but converged to similar levels by the end of the period. There is no evidence of a broad-based improvement in living standards over the period, with real wage series declining in Algeria, and stagnating in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. The findings paint a less optimistic picture of living standards compared to other measures like GDP per capita and compared to some of the historical literature. Data for the Maghreb are scarce, and more work will need to be done on finding more wage and price observations.

Keywords: Real wages; Arab world; Maghreb; colonial; living standards; N3; J3; N35; N15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 3-326820150000031001
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (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:eme:rehizz:s0363-326820150000031001

DOI: 10.1108/S0363-326820150000031001

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Economic History from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().