IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hes/wpaper/0166.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The impact of border changes and protectionism on real wages in early modern Scania

Author

Listed:
  • Kathryn E. Gary

    (Lund University)

  • Cristina Victoria Radu

    (University of Southern Denmark)

Abstract

In the aftermath of Brexit there has been increased speculation into what national borders mean for economic and individual wellbeing. Investigating similar events in history can help us understand some of these potential effects. Malmö, a city in modern-day southern Sweden, was a part of Denmark until the middle of the seventeenth century, located just across the Sound from the capital of Copenhagen. Malmö and its surrounding regions were ceded to Sweden at the end of the Second Northern War in 1658 and Sweden immediately established barriers to trade and to human capital flow between its new territories and Denmark, going so far as to prohibit Swedish attendance to Copenhagen University and instead establishing its own university in Lund in 1666. Malmö and its surrounding region, Scania, quickly shifted from an important trade city located within sight of the capital to a distant periphery with limited trade capacity. This change in possession of Scania provides a historical experiment that can highlight the effect of the second nature geography changes as well as protectionism on well-being. We use a novel database of Danish and Swedish real wages to investigate the impact of these changes on Scanian living standards by employing a difference in difference approach to show that wages fell more in Scania than those in surrounding regions in relation to the border change and associated protectionism.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathryn E. Gary & Cristina Victoria Radu, 2019. "The impact of border changes and protectionism on real wages in early modern Scania," Working Papers 0166, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    • Handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0166
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_166.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marius Brülhart, 1995. "Industrial Specialisation In The European Union: A Test Of The "New Trade Theory"," Economics Technical Papers 955, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    2. Wolf, Nikolaus & Schulze, Max-Stephan & Heinemeyer, Hans Christian, 2008. "Endogenous Borders? Exploring a Natural Experiment on Border Effects," CEPR Discussion Papers 6909, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Williamson, Jeffrey G., 2008. "Globalization and the Great Divergence: terms of trade booms, volatility and the poor periphery, 1782–1913," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(3), pages 355-391, December.
    4. Redding, Stephen & Venables, Anthony J., 2004. "Economic geography and international inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January.
    5. Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2008. "Globalization and the Great Divergence: Terms of Trade Booms and Volatility in the Poor Periphery 1782-1913," NBER Working Papers 13841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Mats Olsson, 2006. "Manorial economy and corvée labour in southern Sweden 1650–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 59(3), pages 481-497, August.
    7. Allen, Robert C. & Bengtsson, Tommy & Dribe, Martin (ed.), 2005. "Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199280681.
    8. Edvinsson, Rodney, 2009. "The multiple currencies of Sweden-Finland 1534-1803," Stockholm Papers in Economic History 7, Stockholm University, Department of Economic History.
    9. H. Hanson, Gordon, 2005. "Market potential, increasing returns and geographic concentration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 1-24, September.
    10. Rodney Edvinsson & Johan Söderberg, 2011. "A Consumer Price Index For Sweden, 1290–2008," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(2), pages 270-292, June.
    11. De Bruyne, Karolien, 2009. "Explaining the Location of Economic Activity. Is there a Spatial Employment Structure in Belgium?," Working Papers 2009/28, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    12. Armando Pires, 2006. "Estimating Krugman’s Economic Geography Model for the Spanish Regions," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 83-112, June.
    13. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    14. Kerstin Enflo & Anna Missiaia, 2020. "Between Malthus and the industrial take‐off: regional inequality in Sweden, 1571–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(2), pages 431-454, May.
    15. Lampe, Markus & Sharp, Paul, 2019. "A Land of Milk and Butter," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226549507, October.
    16. Radu, Cristina Victoria, 2019. "Real wages, labour conditions and the standard of living in Denmark: 1500-1900," Discussion Papers on Economics 2/2019, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    17. Allen, Robert C., 2001. "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 411-447, October.
    18. Lennart Schon & Olle Krantz, 2012. "The Swedish economy in the early modern period: constructing historical national accounts," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(4), pages 529-549, November.
    19. Robert Allen, 2013. "Poverty Lines in History, Theory, and Current International Practice," Economics Series Working Papers 685, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. Kerstin Enflo & Anna Missiaia, 2018. "Regional GDP estimates for Sweden, 1571–1850," Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(2), pages 115-137, April.
    21. Erik Bengtsson & Anna Missiaia & Mats Olsson & Patrick Svensson, 2018. "Wealth inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(3), pages 772-794, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kerstin Enflo & Anna Missiaia, 2020. "Between Malthus and the industrial take‐off: regional inequality in Sweden, 1571–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(2), pages 431-454, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gary, Kathryn, 2019. "The distinct seasonality of early modern casual labor and the short durations of individual working years: Sweden 1500-1800," Lund Papers in Economic History 189, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    2. Reinhold Kosfeld & Hans-Friedrich Eckey, 2010. "Market access, regional price level and wage disparities: the German case," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 30(2), pages 105-128, September.
    3. Jesús López-Rodríguez & J. Andrés Faíña, 2000. "Regional Income Disparities in Europe: What Role for Location?," Regional and Urban Modeling 283600059, EcoMod.
    4. Mehmet Burak Turgut, 2014. "Regional Economic Activity in Turkey: A New Economic Geography Approach," Working Papers 2014/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    5. Zierahn, Ulrich, 2012. "The effect of market access on the labor market: Evidence from German reunification," HWWI Research Papers 131, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    6. López, Jesús. & Acevedo-Villalobos, María Cecilia., 2013. "El acceso a los mercados y la disparidad del ingreso en los departamentos colombianos," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(320), pages 869-901, octubre-d.
    7. Farmanesh, Amir, 2009. "Regional dimensions of economic development in Iran: A new economic geography approach," MPRA Paper 13580, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Jesús López-Rodríguez & Daisuke Nakamura, 2011. "Mind the Remoteness! Income disparities across Japanese Prefectures," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 38(2 Year 20), pages 393-417, December.
    9. Jesús López-Rodríguez & María Cecilia Acevedo, 2008. "Second Nature Geography and Regional Income Disparities in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 4983, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    10. Redding, Stephen & Venables, Anthony J., 2004. "Economic geography and international inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January.
    11. Hering, Laura & Poncet, Sandra, 2009. "The impact of economic geography on wages: Disentangling the channels of influence," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-14, March.
    12. Peter Sandholt Jensen & Cristina Victoria Radu & Paul Sharp, 2019. "Days Worked and Seasonality Patterns of Work in Eighteenth Century Denmark," Working Papers 0162, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    13. Andrés Calderón-Fernández & Héctor García-Montero & Enrique Llopis-Agelán, 2017. "New research guidelines for living standards, consumer baskets, and prices in Madrid and Mexico," Working Papers 097, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    14. Maarten Bosker & Harry Garretsen, 2010. "Trade costs in empirical New Economic Geography," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(3), pages 485-511, August.
    15. Henry Overman & Stephen Redding & Anthony J. Venables, 2001. "The Economic Geography of Trade, Production, and Income: A Survey of Empirics," CEP Discussion Papers dp0508, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    16. Redding, Stephen & Schott, Peter K., 2003. "Distance, skill deepening and development: will peripheral countries ever get rich?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 515-541, December.
    17. Rodney Benjamin Edvinsson, 2017. "The response of vital rates to harvest fluctuations in pre-industrial Sweden," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 11(2), pages 245-268, May.
    18. Alexandra M. de Pleijt & Jan Luiten van Zanden, 2016. "Accounting for the “Little Divergence”: What drove economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, 1300–1800?," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 20(4), pages 387-409.
    19. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Overman, Henry G., 2004. "The spatial distribution of economic activities in the European Union," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 64, pages 2845-2909, Elsevier.
    20. Peter Huber & Michael Pfaffermayr & Yvonne Wolfmayr, 2011. "Are There Border Effects in the EU Wage Function?," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 2, pages 23-41, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Border Changes; Real Wages; Second Nature Geography; Welfare Ratios; Standard of Living; Denmark; Sweden; Malmo; Scania; Scandinavia; Early Modern Period;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N93 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0166. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Sharp (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehessea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.