Working Paper: NBER ID: w28623
Authors: Paul Bouscasse; Emi Nakamura; J.N. Steinsson
Abstract: We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these Malthusian dynamics. We find that productivity growth was zero prior to 1600. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Thus, the onset of productivity growth preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England. We estimate productivity growth of 2% per decade between 1600 and 1800, increasing to 5% per decade between 1810 and 1860. Much of the increase in output growth during the Industrial Revolution is explained by structural change—the falling importance of land in production—rather than to faster productivity growth. Stagnant real wages in the 18th and early 19th centuries—“Engel’s Pause”—is explained by rapid population growth putting downward pressure on real wages. Yet, feedback from population growth to real wages is sufficiently weak to permit sustained deviations from the “iron law of wages” prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Keywords: Productivity Growth; Economic History; Malthusian Dynamics
JEL Codes: N13; O11; O47
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1600 (O49) | no significant economic change (N13) |
| onset of productivity growth in 1600 (O49) | socio-economic conditions of the time (N93) |
| falling land share of production (E25) | increase in output growth during the Industrial Revolution (O49) |
| broad-based economic changes (F69) | institutional reforms in 17th-century England (H11) |
| Malthusian population dynamics (J11) | correlation between productivity and population growth (O49) |