Seminario IECON "Comparing Income and Wealth Inequality in Pre-Industrial Economies: the case of Castile (Spain) in the eighteenth- century"

Presenta Esteban Nicolini (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán - UC3M) en co-autoría con F. Ramos Palencia

Abstract 

"Most research on the history of inequality in pre-industrial economies has focused on either wealth or income. Characterizing the distribution of wealth (resp. income) is problematic owing to insufficient information about the distribution’s low (resp., high) end. Because the sources and methodologies differ between these two approaches, their results are not readily comparable and it is difficult to establish links between the respective distributions that result. In this paper, we shall use a unique data set for different regions of Spain circa 1750 and present results—the first for any pre–20th-century economy—on wealth, income and several sources of income for the same sample of households. Information on wealth and income is derived from (respectively) probate inventories and the Ensenada Cadastre. Our main findings are that a household’s position in the income distribution is strongly correlated with its position in the wealth distribution and that increases in a household’s wealth are associated with less-than-proportional increases in its income. We also confirm that in traditional agrarian sectors the income distribution is strongly influenced by the distribution of land, in the more dynamic sectors associated to manufactures, services, and urban networks, the most important determinant of income inequality is the distribution of labour earnings".

Martes 13/08/2019

12 hs, Salón Multifuncional

Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración