Stefano Fenoaltea

Slavery and Supervision in Comparative Perspective: A Model

The familiar transaction-costs model is extended to allow for the varying costs and benefits of supervision and pain incentives on the one hand, and ordinary rewards on the other, in differentially effort- and care-intensive activities. Applied to unfree labor, this model accounts for the observed patterns of slave governance and manumission in extractive, industrial, agricultural, and service activities in antiquity and in the New World. Applied to free labor, it accounts for wage work on large estates in labor-surplus medieval England or modern Italy, the choice between bonuses and penalties in industrial contracts, and the growing paternalism of our own time.

The growth of the Italian economy, 1861-1913: Preliminary second-generation estimates

This article presents new estimates of aggregate production in postunification Italy: the first since the original Istat-Vitali estimates of some forty years ago not to recombine their component series, and to be based entirely on new research. The new 1911-price GDP series incorporates the recent Federico series for agriculture, the authors recent series for industry, and newly derived series for services that extrapolate the recent Zamagni estimates of their value added in 191 1. The new time series for the il sectors specified by the original estimates often differ widely from their predecessors. The new aggregate yields a long-term growth rate well above that of the original series, but not as high as that of Maddisons revision. The end-of-the-century acceleration that characterised all the earlier aggregates disappears: total production followed in muted form the long swing in industrial production, which in turn reflected a simple investment cycle. The implications of the new series in the context of the ongoing debates in the literature are also briefly discussed. Italy was among the very first countries to boast a complete set of historical national accounts, from Unification (1861) on. As was soon pointed out, however, the estimates for the initial half-century were based on very poor data, and appeared seriously to misrepresent the path of total product. Quantitative historians have devoted considerable effort to the reconstruction of the national accounts basic building blocks; and enough material is now available to permit the first thoroughgoing recalculation of Italys aggregate product from Unification to the First World War.

Notes on the rate of industrial growth in Italy, 1861-1913

This article reconsiders industrial growth in post-Unification Italy in light of a new set of sector-specific production estimates. Though still in part provisional, the new series confirm that the production of durables (and related materials) was dominated by the Kuznets cycle. A similar cycle is documented in the growth rate of the residual, excluding foodstuffs, and extended by reasonable assumption to foodstuffs as well. The new series thus support the traditional view of the 1880s as a period of widespread prosperity and above-trend consumption rather than the opposite, now dominant view.This article presents the first comprehensive results of a long-term research project that owes much to the constant encouragement of Pierluigi Ciocca and Gianni Toniolo, to extended exchanges with Giovanni Federico, to the kindness of the librarians at the Bank of Italy and the Istituto centrale di statistica, and not least, for their financial support, to the Ente per gli studi monetari, bancari e finanziari “Luigi Einaudi,†the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ministero dellUniversitA e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica. The usual disclaimer applies.

Peeking Backward: Regional Aspects of Industrial Growth in Post-Unification Italy

The new sectoral estimates of industrial production in 1871, 1881, 1901, and 1911 are regionally allocated using census labor-force data. The regional aggregates suggest that the industrial triangle emerged over these decades out of a traditional surplus-recycling economy. The concomitant change in the industrial rankings argues against attributing the regions different paths to their different initial conditions; surprisingly, too, overall growth does not seem closely tied to industrial development. The disaggregated estimates suggest in turn that the industrial structure of the various regions remained relatively similar, as if comparative advantages were generically industrial rather than sector-specific. A recent article on the industrial growth of post-Unification Italy completed the set of sector-level production series with ad hoc estimates, and took a peek at the likely path of aggregate production. If one is going to peek, one might as well get an eyeful: this article combines the new production figures with census labor-force data to estimate industrial production in each of Italys 16 regions (Figure 1) at four usefully separated dates (1871, 1881, 1901, and 1911). Those census data have long been used to illuminate the relative development of Italys regions; the new national estimates allow their conversion into more direct measures of production. These measures are of course imprecise, as the algorithm corrects the labor-force figures for differences in product per worker over time and across sectors, but not for interregional differences within each sector; but the patterns they reveal are already of considerable interest. The estimates for industry as a whole point to a widening of industrys regional base over the four decades at hand: the industrial triangle represented by Piedmont, Lombardy, and Liguria stands out in 1911, but in 1871 only Lombardy was manifestly above the rest. A discontinuity in that evolution appears around 1881, with implications for a number of long-standing debates.

Through the Magnifying Glass: Provincial Aspects of Industrial Growth in Post‐Unification Italy

This article presents estimates of industrial production in post�?Unification Italys 69 provinces in the census years 1871, 1881, 1901, and 1911. Initially industry was largely artisanal, and located in the former political capitals; but even then the waterfalls of the subalpine north�?west attracted what factory industry there was. Contrary to widespread opinion, in the aftermath of Unification the industrial and overall growth leaders were actually in the south, where selected provinces reaped the gains from the freer foreign trade, and infrastructure investment, that accompanied the loss of independence. Over the later nineteenth century industry concentrated into the ‘industrial triangle’; but even there industrialization remained sharply local, and excluded the right bank of the upper Po. The early twentieth century, in turn, brought a measure of industrial diffusion - to the centre/north�?east, where it was tied to the production of perishables on recently improved land - and concentration within the north�?western triangle itself, into its major cities, as progress in energy transmission effectively moved the waterfalls into the plains.

Authority, Efficiency, and Agricultural Organization in Medieval England and Beyond: A Hypothesis

Recent accounts of medieval agricultural organization begin not with a description of “the†manor but with a warning that no single archetype may be considered appropriate. From place to place, from generation to generation, a property might be exploited as a single unit, divided between tenancies and demesne, or wholly partitioned into tenancies; and the land would be worked by a correspondingly varied mixture of “employees†and independent labor. This complex historical record is still far from being explained by a suitable model. In the secondary sources, the varying size of the demesne is most frequently attributed to changes in relative prices: the demesne is buoyant, it is argued, when output prices are high and wages low; when prices fall and wages rise, rents become more attractive and the demesne is parcelled out. The difficulty with this explanation, however, is that rents are not independent of output prices and wages: in simple economic theory, rent so adjusts to prices and wages as to always equal the surplus that could be earned by direct exploitation, and the proportion of tenant land on an estate is a matter of indifference. This does not of course mean that it was so in fact; it does mean, however, that one must carefully specify which of the many considerations neglected by that simple theory are in fact critical to the problem at hand.

The Rise and Fall of A Theoretical Model: The Manorial System

Douglass North and Robert Thomas recently proposed a model of the rise and fall of the manorial system. There is much to be admired in this work, which explores an unusually broad historical vision with great analytical acumen; but my purpose here is to examine some of its less compelling features. In section II, I consider the nature of feudalism, and develop empirical arguments against the wholly voluntaristic and non-exploitative interpretation proposed by North and Thomas. Section III examines their analysis of the “classic†manor, which I believe errs both in limiting the feasible contracts to forms of direct barter and in attributing the lowest transaction costs to labor dues even within that restricted set. Section IV reviews the proposed explanation of the later evolution of the manorial system, disputing both the continued use of the transaction costs model and the extensions of it that consider custom as an institutional barrier to efficiency, and population growth and inflation as the exogenous motors of change. Section V provides a brief concluding summary and evaluation.

Production and Consumption in Post-Unification Italy: New Evidence, New Conjectures

Il percorso delleconomia italiana e palesemente segnato da una crisi nei primi anni Novanta, e da una crescita notevole nelleta giolittiana. Negli anni Ottanta, invece, il progresso industriale e la febbre edilizia si contrappongono alla crisi agraria dovuta al crollo del prezzo del grano, e il quadro complessivo si presta a interpretazioni divergenti. Secondo una consolidata tradizione storiografica nellItalia allora agricola la crisi agraria sarebbe stata una crisi generale, segnata da una miseria di massa causa a sua volta dellimpennata dellemigrazione. Lanalisi economica suggerirebbe invece una diffusa prosperita, specie per i lavoratori; la crisi generale e la stessa crisi agraria sarebbero chimere. LItalia era agricola, ma importatrice di grano; come un calo oggi del prezzo del petrolio, il calo allora del prezzo del grano era sicuramente, nel complesso, ampiamente benefico. Il mutamento dei prezzi relativi avrebbe poi indotto uno spostamento dalla produzione di cereali, intensivi in terra, alla produzione di beni agricoli e industriali intensivi in lavoro: con una riduzione della rendita a danno dei proprietari (e nel breve periodo degli affittuari) delle terre da grano, e un aumento dei salari reali. Negli anni Ottanta, poi, leconomia italiana era sostenuta da un aumento dellofferta di capitale estero, esattamente come nel periodo giolittiano; si ripetera pure in quel periodo limpennata dellemigrazione, che non puo pertanto essere considerata indice di malessere. Il calo dei consumi negli anni Ottanta si ritrova solo nelle serie ISTAT/ Barberi, che notoriamente sottostimano la produzione e le disponibilita di cereali tra gli anni Settanta e il primo Novecento. Le poche serie attendibili dei consumi alimentari, le nuove serie dei consumi di lana e di cotone indicano tutte un aumento notevole dei consumi negli anni Ottanta, e di nuovo durante il boom giolittiano. Le serie disponibili dei salari, per i lavoratori delle industrie tessili e delle costruzioni, indicano pure un forte aumento nel salario reale negli anni Ottanta, aumento che peraltro si rafforza ulteriormente con una revisione dellindice del costo della vita. Nuovi indici dei salari dei manovali, e (per la sola Lombardia) dei salari agricoli, confermano che laumento dei salari reali negli anni Ottanta sia stato un fenomeno generale. Le statistiche disponibili appoggiano dunque pienamente linterpretazione degli anni Ottanta come periodo di prosperita complessiva; i lavoratori in particolare risultano avvantaggiati dal calo dei prezzi dei cereali, e danneggiati dunque dal protezionismo agrario. Poco dopo la pubblicazione delle serie ISTAT/Barberi dei consumi di cereali si era proposto di eliminarne i movimenti palesemente spuri, ipotizzando semplicemente un consumo pro capite costante. In base alle nuove informazioni sullandamento dei salari e dei consumi tessili si puo legittimamente ipotizzare una variazione dei consumi pro capite di cereali: in aumento, e non in calo, negli anni Ottanta. Si puo infine ipotizzare che la crisi agraria si ritrovi nella documentazione depoca come la crisi del Quattrocento in Inghilterra. Anche questa si e rivelata una crisi dei soli proprietari terrieri, legata al basso prezzo del grano e alla prosperita dei lavoratori; gli storici sono stati fuorviati dai documenti, che rispecchiano il punto di vista delle classi abbienti.

Transaction Costs, Whig History, and the Common Fields

was cultivated as common or open fields. These two terms are often used interchangeably. Where they are distinguished, as they are here, &dquo;open fields&dquo; refers specifically to the physical layout of the village arable, which consisted largely or entirely of a few large blocks of land within which individual cultivators held numerous scattered unfenced strips; &dquo;common fields&dquo; refers more comprehensively to the agricultural system characterized by open fields, common pasture on the stubble or fallow as well as the waste, and common management by an assembly of cultivators. To modem observers used to independent, consolidated farms, the common-field system is puzzling indeed. That intermingled holdings might have benefited from coordination seems clear enough; but why should individual holdings have been so fragmented and intermingled in the first place? Numerous explanations for the scattering of strips have been proposed over the years by medieval historians, and, more recently, by cliometric economists. None of these competing hypotheses has proved so compelling as to drive the others from the field, and the current tendency is to an ecumenical acceptance of all the most popular explanations of scattering as partially or locally correct. I propose rather to dismiss them en masse as logically and empirically untenable, and to champion a simple alternative that would have been obvious but for our ideological blinders. The approach adopted here is that of the new institutional economics.

The Growth of the Utilities Industries in Italy, 1861–1913

This article presents new estimates of the Italian utilities industries production from 1861 to 1913. The improvements over the currently available series include the restriction of the electricity series to the production of the electric utilities, the extrapolation of the gas production series to 1861, and the calculation of production series for the water supply industry. These new estimates suggest that the existing aggregate production series significantly overstates the utilities growth rate. The existing utilities series for other countries do not incorporate separate estimates for the water supply industry, and also appear to overstate the industryapos;s growth rate.