Preliminary Programme

This paper presents the first results of a project aimed at exploring the long-term (fourteenth-eighteenth centuries) trends in wealth inequality in England, connecting them to economic and demographic dynamics. We make use of fiscal sources such as the Lay Subsidies of the first half of the fourteenth century (mainly those of 1327 and 1332), the Tudor subsidies (in particular, those of 1524/25) and the hearth taxes of the second half of the seventeenth century. These sources include assessments of movable properties and/or real estate at a national level and have wide social coverage (although with different exemptions in each case). Our database covers a wide and a varied sample of counties and municipalities. In addition, sources of a different kind, such as the Tudor military surveys of 1522 and the social tables elaborated for the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries are considered.
In sharp contrast with much of Southern and Central Europe, the English fiscal system did not provide us with systematic and homogeneous sources through the centuries as was the case, for example, in central-northern Italy, southern France and eastern Spain throughout the late medieval and early modern period. However, the key importance of England in the general economic history of the European continent suggests the opportunity of using what is available to try and figure out whether it followed a path similar to that described by recent research for other parts of Europe, or if it has to be considered, also from this point of view, an exceptional case. (Show less)

The reversal of the trend of decline in inequality in the recent decades has challenged the Kuznetsian optimism about the ultimate role of growth in the distribution of income and wealth and rekindled interest in the relation between growth and inequality in the very long run. While most studies of early modern growth so far confirm a positive relation between the two, demographic, institutional and political economic diversity emerge as important factors in the mechanics of this relation as at present and remain largely uncharted for much of the early modern world. We seek to contribute to this literature by providing evidence from a relatively less examined case, the Ottoman Empire. Using probate inventories from seven cities in the Empire, we examine patterns of accumulation and distribution of wealth from 1500 to 1840.
As to be expected by the sheer size of the Ottoman world, there was a large degree of regional diversity in the level of inequality in the sixteenth century, which was replaced by convergence in the following centuries. We find a net increase in inequality in the long run in all but two of the cities under study. This parallels trends observed in several places in early modern Europe. We also find medium-term fluctuations that match secular waves of demographic change, urbanization and commercialization. Accordingly, there is also a strong correlation between wealth and inequality, particularly in periods of growth, that is, in the eighteenth century and to a lesser extent, in the sixteenth century. These findings allow us to speak of an early phase “Kuznetsian” situation in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, too. In this paper we build on these preliminary findings and examine the role of a number of variables in shaping regional diversity in equality and long-term trends. Specifically, we look at the correlation between inequality and the sources of wealth, particularly, real estate and financial assets, as well as book ownership as a proxy for human capital. (Show less)

This paper provides a comparison of long-term changes in wealth inequality in three separate regions of Europe: Liguria in Italy, Southern France, and Catalonia in Spain. Taken together, these three regions cover a long Mediterranean belt, encompassing three different ancient European state (the Republic of Genoa, the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Spain). These three areas have some common aspects: they were all maritime regions heavily involved in Mediterranean trades, and they had very similar local fiscal systems. Our analysis compares information coming from the property tax records (called estimi in Italy) of a selection of communities of the three areas, both urban and rural. These sources provide us with useful information about wealth distribution (especially real estate: lands and buildings). Local long-term dynamics are explored and compared. Regional aggregate measures of wealth inequality are also presented, built with the methodology recently introduced by the EINITE research project. (Show less)

Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by high levels of income inequality. In this paper, we study whether present-day patterns of inequality can be traced back to the colonial period by reconstructing income distributions in a sample of representative colonies. To do so, we use data from colonial records to build new “social tables” for French colonies in West and Central Africa and we combine them with available information on British colonies in East and Southern Africa. We use these measures to study whether income inequality grew or decreased in the post-colonial period and we frame our findings in terms of the debate on extractive institutions, by using the concept of “inequality possibility frontier”. (Show less)