Towards an explanation of inequality in pre-modern societies:the role of colonies and high population density

Milanovic, Branko (2016): Towards an explanation of inequality in pre-modern societies:the role of colonies and high population density.

Abstract

Using the newly expanded set of 40 social tables from pre-modern societies, the paper tries to find out the factors associated with the level of inequality and the inequality extraction ratio (how close to the maximum inequality have the elites pushed the actual inequality). We find strong evidence that elites in colonies were more extractive, and that more densely populated countries exhibited lower extraction ratios. We propose several possibilities linking high population density to low inequality and to low elite extraction.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Inequality, inequality extraction ratio, pre modern
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I30 - General; N - Economic History > N0 - General; N - Economic History > N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy

References

Alfani, Guido (2010). “The effects of plague on the distribution of property: Ivrea, Northern Italy 1630”, Population Studies, vol. 64(1), pp. 61-75.

Alfani, Guido (2014), “Economic inequality in the northwestern Italy: a long-term view (fourteenth to eighteenth century)”, Dondena Working Paper No. 61, University Bocconi, Milan.

Alfani, Guido and Francesco Ammannati (2014), “Economic inequality and poverty in the very long run: The case of Florentine State (late thirteenth-early nineteenth centuries)”, Dondena Working Paper No. 70, University Bocconi, Milan.

Alfani Guido and Wouter Ryckbosch (2016), “Growing apart in early modern Europe: A comparison of inequality trends in Italy and the Low Countries and Italy compared, 1500-1900”, Explorations in Economic History.

Alvarez-Nogal, Carlos and Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2004), “The rise and decline of Spain 800-1850”, Paper presented at the 15th World Economic History Congress, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Alvarez-Nogal, Carlos and Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2007), “The decline of Spain 1500-1850: Conjectural estimates”, European Review of Economic History, vol. 11, pp. 319-366.

Alvarez-Nogal, Carlos and Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2013), "The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850)," Economic History Review, vol. 66(1), pages 1-37.

Bertola, Luis, Cecilia Castelnuevo, Javier Rodriguez and Henry Willebald (2008), “Income distribution in the Latin American Southern Cone during the first globalization boom: ca 1870-1920”, Paper presented at the Midterm conference of the international sociological association, University of Neuchâtel, June 26-28.

Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2013), “The first update of the Maddison project: Reestimating growth before 1820”, January.

Canbakal, Hülya (2012), “Wealth and inequality in Ottoman Bursa, 1500-1840”, draft paper. Available at http://www.econ.yale.edu/~egcenter/Wealth%20and%20Inequality%20in%20Ottoman%20Bursa-Canbakal.pdf.

Coşgel, Metin (2008), “Estimating Rural Incomes and Inequality in the Ottoman Empire”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 40, No. 3, August, p 374.

Coşgel, Metin and Boğaç A. Ergene (2012), “Inequality of wealth in the Ottoman Empire: War, weather, and long-term trends in eighteenth century Kastamonu”, Journal of Economic History, vol. 72, pp. 308-331.

Do, Quoc Ahn and Felipe Campante (2009), “Keeping dictators honest: The role of population concentration”, Singapore Management University, Working papers in economics and statistics, No. 01-2009.

Herlihy, David (1978), “The distribution of wealth in a Renaissance Community: Florence 1427“, in P. Abrams, E. A. Wright (eds.). Towns in societies : essays in economic history and historical sociology, Bristol, Cambridge University Press, pp. 131-157.

Lindert, Peter H. and Jeffrey Williamson (2016), Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700, Princeton University Press.

Lopez Jerez, Monserrat (2014), “Deltas apart: Factor endowments, colonial extraction and pathways of agricultural development in Vietnam”, Ph. D. dissertation defended at Luns University, December 19, 2014.

McCants, Anne (2007), “Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam:, Explorations in Economic History, 44, pp. 1-21.

Merette, Sarah (2013), “Preliminary analysis of inequality in colonial Tonkin and Cochinchina”, mimeo, June.

Modalsli, Jorgen (2015), “Inequality in the very long run: inferring inequality from data on social groups, Journal of Economic Inequality, June, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp 225–247.

Milanovic, Branko (2016), Global inequality: A new approach for the age of globalization, Harvard University Press.

Milanovic, Branko, Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson (2011), “Pre-industrial inequality”, Economic Journal, March, vol. 121, No. 1 (March), pp. 255-272.

Milanovic, Branko Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson (2007), “Measuring ancient inequality” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 13550, October 2007.

Nicolini, Esteban and Fernando Ramos-Palencia (2016), “Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre-industrial economy: Old Castille (Spain) in the middle of the 18th century”, Economic History Review, vol. 69, issue 3, August, pp. 747–772.

Prados de la Escosura, Leandro (2007), “Inequality and poverty in Latin America: A long-run exploration”, in T.H. Hatton, Kevin H. O’Rourke and A. M. Taylor (eds.), The new comparative economic history: Essays in honor of Jeffrey G. Williamson, Cambridge: Mass, chapter 12.

Ober, Josiah (2015), The rise and fall of classical Greece, Princeton University Press, 2015.

Rodriguez Weber, Javier (2014), La economic politica de la desigualdad en Chile, 1850-2009, Tesis de doctodado en historia economica, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo.

Reis, Jaime (2016), “Deviant behavior: inequality in Portugal 1565-1770”, Cliometrica, forthcoming.

Ryckbosch, Wouter (2014), “Inequality and growth before the Industrial Revolution: A case study of the Low Countries (14th-19th centuries)”, Bocconi University, Dondena Working Papers No, 67.

Scheidel, Walter (2017), The great leveler, Princeton University Press.

van Zanden, Jan Luiten (1995), “Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve: western Europe during the early modern period”, The Economic History Review, vol. 48, issue 4, pp. 1-23. November.

Veyne, Paul (2001), La Société romaine, Seuil: Paris.