IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/32812.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Testable implications of economic revolutions: An application to historic data on European wages

Author

Listed:
  • Fry, J. M.
  • Masood, Omar

Abstract

Motivated by an on-going debate in economic history we develop a simple method to quantify the impact of economic revolutions upon a novel historical data set listing the wages of building craftsmen and labourers in Southeast Europe. Structural breaks are found in the data and signify the effects of economic revolutions. With a small number of localised exceptions economic revolutions, caused by technological and administrative progress, lead to a decrease in the long-term level of wage volatility and overall results suggest close analogies between biological and economic evolution. The Commercial Revolution (mid 16th-early 18th centuries) acts as an important pre-requisite for the later Industrial Revolution (mid 18th-19th centuries). The Price Revolution (15th-16th centuries) results in some short-term increases in wage volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Fry, J. M. & Masood, Omar, 2011. "Testable implications of economic revolutions: An application to historic data on European wages," MPRA Paper 32812, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:32812
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32812/1/MPRA_paper_32812.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. H. Bingham & Rudiger Kiesel & Rafael Schmidt, 2003. "A semi-parametric approach to risk management," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(6), pages 426-441.
    2. John Foster, 2000. "Competitive selection, self-organisation and Joseph A. Schumpeter," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 311-328.
    3. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    4. Zeileis, Achim & Kleiber, Christian & Kramer, Walter & Hornik, Kurt, 2003. "Testing and dating of structural changes in practice," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 109-123, October.
    5. Stefan Thurner & Peter Klimek & Rudolf Hanel, 2009. "Schumpeterian economic dynamics as a quantifiable minimum model of evolution," Papers 0909.3482, arXiv.org.
    6. 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.
    7. O’Brien, Patrick, 2010. "A conjuncture in global history or an Anglo-American construct: the British Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850," Journal of Global History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(3), pages 503-509, November.
    8. Harley, C. Knick & Crafts, N.F.R., 2000. "Simulating the Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 819-841, September.
    9. John H. Munro, 1999. "The Monetary Origins of the Price Revolution' Before the Influx of Spanish-American Treasure: the South German Silver-Copper Trades, Merchant-Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470-1540," Working Papers munro-99-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Casson, Catherine & Fry, J. M. & Casson, Mark, 2011. "Evolution or revolution? a study of price and wage volatility in England, 1200-1900," MPRA Paper 31518, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Casson, Catherine & Fry, J. M., 2011. "Revolutionary change and structural breaks: A time series analysis of wages and commodity prices in Britain 1264-1913," MPRA Paper 27866, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Chang, Bi-Juan & Hung, Mao-Wei, 2021. "Corporate debt and cash decisions: A nonlinear panel data analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 15-37.
    4. Yonglin Shen & Xiuguo Liu, 2015. "Phenological Changes of Corn and Soybeans over U.S. by Bayesian Change-Point Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-23, May.
    5. Guo, Zhichao & Feng, Yuanhua & Tan, Xiangyong, 2011. "Short- and long-term impact of remarkable economic events on the growth causes of China–Germany trade in agri-food products," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2359-2368.
    6. Fan, Ying & Xu, Jin-Hua, 2011. "What has driven oil prices since 2000? A structural change perspective," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1082-1094.
    7. Patrik Nosil & Zachariah Gompert & Daniel J. Funk, 2024. "Divergent dynamics of sexual and habitat isolation at the transition between stick insect populations and species," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.
    8. Kevin H. O'Rourke & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2002. "From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution Since 1500," CEG Working Papers 20023, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    9. James Nolan & Zoe Laulederkind, 2022. "Plane to See? Empirical Analysis of the 1999–2006 Air Cargo Cartel," Advances in Airline Economics, in: The International Air Cargo Industry, volume 9, pages 241-262, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    10. Ashok Chanabasangouda Patil & Shailesh Rastogi, 2020. "Multifractal Analysis of Market Efficiency across Structural Breaks: Implications for the Adaptive Market Hypothesis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, October.
    11. Joscha Beckmann & Ansgar Belke & Michael Kühl, 2009. "How Stable Are Monetary Models of the Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate?: A Time-Varying Coefficient Approach," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 944, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Jose PINEDA & Rodolfo MÉNDEZ, 2009. "Fiscal Sustainability and Economic Growth in Bolivia," EcoMod2009 21500075, EcoMod.
    13. Addona Vittorio & Yates Philip A, 2010. "A Closer Look at the Relative Age Effect in the National Hockey League," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 6(4), pages 1-19, October.
    14. Davide De Gaetano, 2016. "Forecast Combinations For Realized Volatility In Presence Of Structural Breaks," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0208, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    15. DIMA, Bogdan & DIMA, Ştefana Maria & IOAN, Roxana, 2021. "Remarks on the behaviour of financial market efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. The case of VIX," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    16. Chevallier, Julien, 2011. "Detecting instability in the volatility of carbon prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 99-110, January.
    17. Zhichao Guo & Yuanhua Feng & Thomas Gries, 2015. "Changes of China’s agri-food exports to Germany caused by its accession to WTO and the 2008 financial crisis," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(2), pages 262-279, May.
    18. Abhijit Sharma & Kelvin G Balcombe & Iain M Fraser, 2009. "Non-renewable resource prices: Structural breaks and long term trends," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 805-819.
    19. Omane-Adjepong, Maurice & Boako, Gidoen & Alagidede, Paul, 2018. "Modelling heterogeneous speculation in Ghana’s foreign exchange market: Evidence from ARFIMA-FIGARCH and Semi-Parametric methods," MPRA Paper 86617, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Zakamulin, Valeriy & Hunnes, John A., 2021. "Stock earnings and bond yields in the US 1871–2017: The story of a changing relationship," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 182-197.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Historical Economics; Economic Revolutions; Economic Evolution; European Wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N01 - Economic History - - General - - - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods
    • N00 - Economic History - - General - - - General
    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General

    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:pra:mprapa:32812. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.