Prices, wages and fertility in pre-industrial England

Marc Patrick Brag Klemp

doi:10.1007/s11698-011-0072-5

Prices, wages and fertility in pre-industrial England

Marc Patrick Brag Klemp

Department of Economics

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

To shed light on the economic-demographic mechanisms operating in the epoch of pre-industrial economic stagnation, a two-sector Malthusian model is formulated in terms of a cointegrated vector autoregressive model on error correction form. The model allows for both agricultural product wages and relative prices to affect fertility. The model is estimated using new data for the pre-industrial period in England, and the analysis reveals a strong, positive effect of agricultural wages as well as a nonnegative effect of real agricultural prices on fertility. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that there is strongly decreasing returns to scale with respect to labour in the agricultural sector and approximately constant returns to scale in the manufacturing sector. The analysis provides evidence in favour of the usual Malthusian model, as invoked by unified growth theories such as e.g. Galor and Weil (Am Econ Rev 90:806–828, 2000).

Original language	Danish
Journal	Cliometrica
Issue number	6
Pages (from-to)	63-77
ISSN	1863-2505
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-011-0072-5
Publication status	Published - Jan 2012

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10.1007/s11698-011-0072-5

Cite this

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title = "Prices, wages and fertility in pre-industrial England",

abstract = "To shed light on the economic-demographic mechanisms operating in the epoch of pre-industrial economic stagnation, a two-sector Malthusian model is formulated in terms of a cointegrated vector autoregressive model on error correction form. The model allows for both agricultural product wages and relative prices to affect fertility. The model is estimated using new data for the pre-industrial period in England, and the analysis reveals a strong, positive effect of agricultural wages as well as a nonnegative effect of real agricultural prices on fertility. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that there is strongly decreasing returns to scale with respect to labour in the agricultural sector and approximately constant returns to scale in the manufacturing sector. The analysis provides evidence in favour of the usual Malthusian model, as invoked by unified growth theories such as e.g. Galor and Weil (Am Econ Rev 90:806–828, 2000).",

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AB - To shed light on the economic-demographic mechanisms operating in the epoch of pre-industrial economic stagnation, a two-sector Malthusian model is formulated in terms of a cointegrated vector autoregressive model on error correction form. The model allows for both agricultural product wages and relative prices to affect fertility. The model is estimated using new data for the pre-industrial period in England, and the analysis reveals a strong, positive effect of agricultural wages as well as a nonnegative effect of real agricultural prices on fertility. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that there is strongly decreasing returns to scale with respect to labour in the agricultural sector and approximately constant returns to scale in the manufacturing sector. The analysis provides evidence in favour of the usual Malthusian model, as invoked by unified growth theories such as e.g. Galor and Weil (Am Econ Rev 90:806–828, 2000).

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