Progress, decline, growth: product and productivity in Italian agriculture, 1000–2000

Abstract

This article estimates agricultural production and output per worker in Italy, from about the year 1000 to the present. The millennium may be divided neatly into three periods. Output per worker increased until the fourteenth century, declined, with some fluctuations, until the end of the nineteenth century, and then recovered, booming in the past 50 years.

The decline of Spain (1500-1850): conjectural estimates

“…When our results are compared with those of other European countries (Allen 2000, Federico andMalanima 2004) we observe that the Spanish productivity decline over the sixteenth century was milder than in most countries (the Netherlands, in which it remained unaltered, was the exception), while its sharp contraction during the eighteenth century was at odds with the productivity gains achieved in England, France and the Netherlands, and even with the mild fall suffered in (central-north) Italy. In the seventeenth century Spain sided with France and Italy in achieving minor productivity improvements while the Low Countries and England forged ahead.…”

“…46 If alternatively the productivity gap for the 1850s were used (Prados de la Escosura 2003), the productivity index would rise slightly over the period 1750-1850. 47 Such a method was already used (sometimes adjusting for the food trade balance) for eighteenth-century Britain (Deane andCole 1967, Overton 1996), nineteenth-century Spain (Simpson 1989(Simpson , 1995 and, more recently, late medieval Italy (Federico and Malanima 2004). 48 However, recent research on present-day poor countries reveals that consumption per head of food staples remains constant in aggregate terms as per capita income rises (Bouis The most recent estimate using the demand function approach has been that of Allen (2000) who derived agricultural output per head and per worker for a sample of pre-industrial European countries.…”

“…We adopted Federico and Malanima's (2004) guesses for own price (ε = −0.5), income (µ = 0.4) and cross-price (γ = 0.1) elasticities of demand.…”

Malthusian Dynamics in a Diverging Europe: Northern Italy, 1650–1881

“…The difference between urban and rural environments in pre-industrial Italy has been noted above, and hence it is worth considering a series which acknowledges the difference between the two. Federico & Malanima (2004) cautioned against the use of urban wages as unrepresentative, and provided an alternative real wage index which combines both urban and rural wage data, but adjusting for the relative population proportions. 8 To understand the trends in the available series, I equate the urban, rural and compromise series to 100 in 1650 and study their trajectories over the sample period.…”

On the use of palynological data in economic history: New methods and an application to agricultural output in Central Europe, 0–2000AD

“…Notable contributions to this field include Clark (1991), O'Brien and Prados de la Escosura (1992), Allen (2000), Olmstead and Rhode (2002), Federico and Malanima (2004), Allen (2009), Campbell and Ó Gráda (2011), Kelly and Ó Gráda (2013), and many others.…”