Economic inequality in the rural Southern Low Countries during the Fifteenth century: sources, data and reflection (original) (raw)
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, seminar participants at Arild and Davis, and the referees for helpful suggestions. 1 Rousseau, Les Confessions, book 6 (a quip later attributed, falsely, to Marie Antoinette). 2 A direct predecessor to this study is Kula, Economic Theory, pp. 119-31. In Kula's pioneering exercise, we see the first good sketch of the importance of differences in cost-of-living movements, though without any link-up with income measures and with some limitations of commodity coverage and geographic coverage. Kula offered stylized "terms of trade" measures. His stylized nobility sold only rye, divided by a useful price series for a "basket of goods" consisting of good-quality cloth, goodquality paper, French wine, pepper, coffee, and sugar. Absent from this list were any meat, drink other than wine, or labor services, a luxury purchase we have emphasized. His stylized peasants sold a mixture of rye, oats, butter, and eggs, in exchange for cloth, nails, and salt. Aside from Kula, the closest approach to some of our present points was made by Wilhelm Abel (Crises agraires), but he mentioned only food versus other goods, and left the price effects unquantified.