Suchergebnisse

New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500–1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated. The results shed new light on the reversal of fortunes in early modern Europe and the transition from a Malthusian regime to modern economic growth.

AbstractNovel information on land rent is used to estimate the income side of German net national product (NNP) in 1851–1913 without recourse to output side aggregates. The new series shows higher values during the initial part of the period of observation, which narrows the wedge that opens up between existing estimates of NNP before the 1880s. The results support a modified Crafts–Harley view of the first phase of German industrialization: despite rapid catch-up growth of industrial leading sectors from the 1840s to the 1870s, the pace of aggregate growth accelerated only gradually. The initially small size of the modern sector and the simultaneity of the first phase of industrialization and the first wave of globalization account for this paradox. The labor share remained largely constant; the decline of the land share in NNP was compensated by a rise of the capital share.

Abstract
The study explores relative labour scarcity in a broad range of activities and relates it to the long-run dynamics of structural change, supply and demand of human capital, and the inequality between men and women. It builds on two recent compilations of wage data and complements these with additional information, particularly on wages in agriculture. From the second quarter of the seventeenth century the skill premium was stable; the first phase of industrialization did not lead to a differentiation of the individual return to human capital. Labour demand from the modern sector stabilized real wages of males from the second quarter of the eighteenth century at least and increased them from the mid-1850s onwards. This opened a wedge between the agricultural and the non-agricultural sectors already for considerable time before the beginnings of industrialization. Finally, the modern era saw two phases of labour market segmentation along gender lines, one in the later sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the other from the 1840s to the 1870s.

Abstract
The study constructs new wage series at the branch level and aggregates them to an index of nominal wages in industry and urban trades in 18481889. Moreover, the study develops new food price and rent indices. These are then combined with price indices for other categories of household expenditure from Hoffmann (1965) into a consumer price index for 1850-1889. The new real wage index shows little growth for the third quarter of the nineteenth century; the first phase of rapid industrialization from the 1840s to the early 1870s had only a small positive impact on the living standard of the industrial and urban lower classes. Only from the 1880s, when Germany moved into a second phase of industrialization, did the real wage experience a sustained and rapid increase. Nevertheless, the diversification of employment opportunities taking place in the wake of industrialization and the European grain invasion were accompanied by a marked reduction of income volatility among lower-class households already from the 1870s.

This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three‐and‐a‐half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the seventeenth century when real wages in centres of trade and finance located on the rim of the North Sea rose far above the level prevailing in their hinterland. The second stage unfolded from the second quarter of the eighteenth century when the real wage in south England, northern and central Italy, and Germany began to diverge; Germany followed a middle path between the other two countries. The second commercial revolution, which improved business techniques and promoted Smithian growth, goes a long way towards accounting for this development.

ABSTRACTThe study documents fluctuations of proto-industrial income, of occupation, debt and presence on land markets across the life course for rural households in a major proto-industrial region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These fluctuations are interpreted on the basis that a major objective of households is to equalize their income across different stages of their development. The permanent income hypothesis is then extended to take into account land purchases and debt-contracting that result from the need to adjust land and capital to fluctuations in the size of the family labour force across the family cycle and from endeavours to improve the family's welfare by increasing the labour to land ratio. The empirical material presented shows marked fluctuations of income from proto-industrial work across the life course and suggests the existence of permanent income-cum-accumulation strategies to cope with these fluctuations.

L'article étudie la montagne comme «lieu pratiqué» à travers les coutumes religieuses dans une région située en Suisse orientale aux XVIIe et XVIIIE SIÈCLES. L'usage mental de la montagne par la société locale opère sur un fond marqué par deux tendances générales. D'un côté, la Réforme borroméenne conduit à une intensification du culte dans l'église paroissiale, qui a tendance à être intégrée dans l'espace du village. De l'autre, les pèlerinages à longue distance s'épanouissent et ont tendance à se borner sur un espace plutôt régional ou même local. Dans les pratiques religieuses de la population grisonne, ces deux tendances trouvent leur reflet dans le fait que les processions, qui témoignent des liens entre les paroisses à l'intérieur d'une même vallée et qui transforment le territoire montagnard en dehors de l'église paroissiale en terre bénie, se multiplient. En même temps, on observe le développement d'un grand nombre de sanctuaires dotés de pèlerinages locaux. Ceci témoigne à la fois de l'isolement des populations alpines et de la disponibilité de mécanismes produisant une distance mentale entre le croyant individuel et son milieu social quotidien.

Duringthe era of church reforms the clergy tended to become a profession—at least such has been argued with respect to English ministers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1The present study endeavors to show that an analysis of the shifting position of the clergy in the continuum between a nonagricultural side activity, an estate in traditional society, and a profession can contribute to our understanding of the role that clergymen played in early modern church reforms, confessionalization, social discipline, and acculturation.