Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Was the Black Death a Watershed? Measuring European Regional Inequality in the Very Long Run

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This research investigates the roots of modern economic growth and regional inequality which can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution and the preceding period. In particular, the investigator focuses on the divergence in incomes per capita within Europe before the Industrial Revolution. Economic historians have recently suggested several competing explanations for this divergence, but many of these explanations are rooted in the events that took place around the time or in the aftermath of the Black Death (1347-1350). Therefore, this research constructs new measures of economic activity starting from 1300 in order to explore the factors that contributed to sustained economic growth in Northwestern Europe but hindered it elsewhere. The investigator utilizes a unique data source -- revenues of the Catholic Church -- to study how various regions responded to the Black Death. Given the limitations of the existing data, it remains unclear whether, and via which channels, the massive population losses during the Black Death can be linked to the divergent growth paths of European economies after 1500. The resulting database will illuminate some of the long-standing questions in economic growth and also improve our understanding of pre-modern society. In the recent years, economic historians have suggested several competing explanations for the divergence in the incomes per capita between Europe and Asia, as well as within Europe, before the Industrial Revolution. Many of these explanations are rooted in the events that took place around the time or in the aftermath of the Black Death. With the exception of a handful of countries, however, the existing data on incomes in the late Middle Ages is fragmented and ill-suited for testing these hypotheses. This research uses data on revenues of the Catholic Church, which were collected as the taxes on clergy, to measure the dynamics of regional inequality in Europe in a more direct fashion. The Catholic Church was a uniquely cohesive and capable institution that used advanced bookkeeping methods, routinely updated registries of its personnel, and transferred vast amounts of wealth all over Europe. Besides its geographic scope, the assembled panel-like database has the following advantages: (i) Church revenues are available at annual intervals right before, during the course of, and immediately after the Black Death; (ii) the primary spatial unit is diocese, which allows the researcher to study subnational variation in income levels; (iii) at a given point in time, most transactions were made in the same currency. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.