Spanish subsistence wages and the Little Divergence in Europe, 1500–1800

Abstract

This paper suggests an alternative view of Europe’s Little Divergence in real wages. It presents a new dataset of prices and wages for Spain and proposes a new way of measuring the cost of bare-bones subsistence. The substitution of brown-bread prices for grain prices in the baskets transforms the scale and chronology of the divergence between North-western Europe and Spain. The results show that it began later and that unskilled subsistence wages in London and Amsterdam were significantly lower than those calculated by the canonical model, which would nuance the “high-wage” hypothesis.

Reconstruction of the Spanish Money Supply, 1492-1810

“…The range of these two uniform distributions is set according to the min-max range spanned by the three GDP estimates that Álvarez-Nogal and Prados de la Escosura ( 2013) provide for the years 1492 and 1810. Finally, to account for uncertainty about Spain's early modern price level, we use the alternative price indices that have been compiled by Allen (2001) , Munro (2008) and Losa and Zarauz (2020) . 30 Unfortunately, these different price series lack overlap for the years 1492 and 1810.…”

Inequality in Pre‐Industrial Europe (1260–1850): New Evidence From the Labor Share

“…This latter reaction may signal a change in the relation between population and economic growth (Fochesato, 2018). However, Allen’s real wage series are still controversial (Geloso, 2018; Stephenson, 2018; Lopez Losa and Piquero Zarauz, 2021). At all events, after the 16th century, any inference from the dynamic of real wages to the labor share is much less straightforward than in the post‐Black Death period.…”

“…Allen himself (2017; 2020) and Zegarra (2021) have experimented with a more sophisticated approach for determining the basket, using linear programming given the prevailing prices. Scholars have also criticized Allen’s definition of cheapest source of calories for urban population (Lopez Losa and Piquero Zarauz, 2021), his assumptions about the composition of the household (Humphries, 2013; Mijatovic and Milanovic 2021; Horrell, Humphries and Weisdorf, 2021) and the individual caloric needs (Humphries, 2013; Allen, 2015) and the representativeness of wage series (Hatcher and Stephenson, 2018). However, an alternative standard has not yet emerged, and thus we will stick to the Allen’s original approach.…”

NURSING BABIES TO FIGHT POVERTY: WAGES OF WET NURSES OF SPANISH FOUNDLING HOSPITALS IN THE 18THAND 19THCENTURIES

“…To learn the income of peasants in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, we already have numerous studies on agricultural day wages. With respect to non-agricultural day wages, most of the available series are for construction workers (Hamilton 1988; Reher and Ballesteros 1993; Lanza García 1998; Andrés Ucendo and Lanza García 2014, 2020; García-Zúñiga and López Losa 2021; López-Losa and Piquero Zarauz 2021). There are also studies of the service sector, including workers in municipal services (Reher and Ballesteros 1993), and charitable institutions (Llopis Agelán and García Montero 2011).…”