GDP per capita or Real Wages? Making sense of coflicting views on pre-industrial Europe

Luis Angeles ()

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: This paper studies the apparent inconsistency between the evolution of GDP per capita and real wages in pre-industrial Europe. We show that these two measures will diverge when any of the three following factors are present: changes in income distribution, changes in labour supply per capita and changes in relative prices. We propose a methodology for measuring the e¤ects of these three factors and apply it to the case of 18th century England. For this particular episode the gap between the growth of GDP per capita and real wages can be successfully explained and the main explanatory factor is changes in labour supply per capita. Some further conclusions are drawn from the experience of England during the 19th century and Europe during the early modern period.

Date: 2007-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mac
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Journal Article: GDP per capita or real wages? Making sense of conflicting views on pre-industrial Europe (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_11

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