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Economic Inequality in Northwestern Italy: A Long-Term View (Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2015

Guido Alfani
Guido Alfani*
Affiliation:
Guido Alfani is Associate Professor, Department of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi University — Dondena Centre and IGIER, via Roentgen 1, 20136 Milan, MI Italy. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article provides a picture of economic inequality in northwestern Italy (Piedmont), 1300–1800. Regional studies of this kind are rare, and none has as long a timescale. The new data proposed illuminate little-known aspects of wealth distribution and general economic inequality in preindustrial times, supporting the idea that during the Early Modern period, inequality grew everywhere, independently from whether the economy was growing or stagnating. This challenges earlier views that explained inequality growth as the consequence of economic development. The importance of demographic processes is underlined, and the impact of the Black Death and other mortality crises is analyzed.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 75 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 1058 - 1096
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2015 

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Footnotes

I thank Maristella Botticini, Peter Lindert, Branko Milanovic, Luca Mocarelli, Tommy Murphy, Hector García Montero, participants at the conference sessions Towards a comparative approach of rural inequality in the transition debate (Rural History Conference, Bern, Switzerland, August 2013), Long Run Growth and Living Standards (Economic History Association Conference, Washington DC, U.S.A., September 2013), Inequality in Europe, from the pre-industrial society to the welfare state (Swedish Economic History Meeting, Lund, Sweden, September 2013), and at the EINITE Workshop Measuring Inequality in the Past: Methods and Perspectives (Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, December 2013), as well as the editor of this Journal, Ann Carlos, and the anonymous referees for their many helpful comments. I also thank Davide De Franco for having helped in collecting data from several communities in Piedmont, and Matteo Di Tullio for having helped in collecting data from Cherasco. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant agreement No. 283802, EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300–1800.

References

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