Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Condition of the Working Class in Britain, 1300-

20060111_clark_new_data

Data built by Greg Clark on real wages coupled with population estimates.

I read this as showing slow improvements in technology from 1300 to 1600 offset by the coming of the "little ice age." Thus from 1300-1600 when population went up real wages went down, and vice versa. After 1600, with the climate no longer deteriorating, improvements in technology get you a more favorable population-real wages tradeoff. After 1700 the speed at which the tradeoff moves left accelerates ("agricultural revolution") and after 1800 it accelerate again ("industrial revolution").

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