Book Chapter

Economic inequality in Germany, 1500-1800

  • Ulrich Pfister

The chapter reviews existing evidence regarding four aspects of economic inequality: relative factor rents, which relate to the factorial distribution of income and also underlie the so-called Williamson index (y/wus), which is correlated with the Gini index of household income; real inequality in terms of opposite movements of the price of consumer baskets consumed by different strata of society; the inequality of pay according to gender and skill, as well as between town and countryside; and wealth inequality, particularly with respect to the access to land. The main result is that, with given technology and agrarian institutions, there is a positive correlation between population and inequality.

  • Keywords:
  • economic inequality,
  • economic history,
  • germany,
  • pre-industrial age,
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Ulrich Pfister

University of Münster, Germany

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Pages: 301-324
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Economic inequality in Germany, 1500-1800

Authors

Ulrich Pfister

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5.20

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Disuguaglianza economica nelle società preindustriali: cause ed effetti / Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies: causes and effect

Editors

Giampiero Nigro

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

488

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-052-8

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-053-5

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-054-2

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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