This paper provides standardized estimates of labor productivity in arable farming in selected regions of the early Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem and neighboring districts in eastern Mediterranean; Bursa and Malatya in Anatolia; and Thessaly, Herzegovina, and Budapest in eastern Europe. I use data from the tax registers of the Ottoman Empire to estimate grain output per worker, standardized (in bushels of wheat equivalent) to allow productivity comparisons within these regions and with other times and places. The results suggest that Ottoman agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had achieved levels of labor productivity that compared favorably even with most European countries circa 1850.
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Paper provided by University of Connecticut, Department of Economics in its series Working papers with number
2004-35.
Length: 39 pages Date of creation: Nov 2004 Date of revision:
Oct 2005 Publication status: Forthcoming in Research in Economic History. Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2004-35
Note: This paper previously circulated under the title "Agricultural Productivity in Eastern Europe and Western Asia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" Contact details of provider: Postal: University of Connecticut 341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063 Phone: (860) 486-4889 Fax: (860) 486-4463 Web page: http://www.econ.uconn.edu/ More information through EDIRC
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Find related papers by JEL classification: N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth N5 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries
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