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Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2019

Leonardo Ridolfi
Leonardo Ridolfi*
Affiliation:
Leonardo Ridolfi is Post Doctoral fellow at the Institute of Economics Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33, I-56127 Pisa Italy. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Evidence of an early modern “Little divergence” in real wages between northwestern Europe and the rest of the continent is mostly based on the comparative study of a sample of leading European cities. Focusing on France and England this study reassesses the debate from a country-level perspective. The findings challenge the notion of an early modern divergence pointing to the coexistence of both divergence and convergence phases until the eighteenth century. Results also suggest that the real wages of a significant share of the French male labor force were broadly on par with the levels prevailing in England before c.1750.

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Article
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 589 - 627
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© The Economic History Association 2019 

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Footnotes

I am particularly grateful to Alessandro Nuvolari for very helpful comments and encouragement. I also wish to thank Dan Bogart, Ann Carlos, and two anonymous referees of this journal for detailed comments and suggestions that have significantly improved this paper. I would also like to thank Guido Alfani, Jan De Vries, Giovanni Federico, Vincent Geloso, Nuno Palma, Mauro Rota, Michelangelo Vasta, Andrea Vindigni, Jacob Weisdorf, and audiences at 2017 Economic History Society Conference, 2017 European Historical Economics Society Conference, and seminar participants at IMT Lucca, University of Groningen, University of Regensburg, EH-tune (7th and 8th editions) at Siena, for valuable comments. I also acknowledge the help kindly offered by Blandine Silvestre and the staff of the departmental archive of Vaucluse, the library staff of the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the library of Philosophy and History of the University of Pisa, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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