How did Europe escape the “Iron Law of Wages?” We construct a simple Malthusian model
with two sectors and multiple steady states, and use it to explain why European per capita …

The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food
preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires …

A long-standing tradition in the literature concerning living standards in pre-industrial France
has focused on the study of specific regions, what Philip Hoffman () has eloquently …

We construct a new series of GDP per capita for France for the period 1280–1850 using the
demand-side approach. Our estimates point to a long-run stability of the French economy …

We study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with
economic and population growth at the global level. We use a two‐sector Schumpeterian …

In the present paper we advance a theory of pre-industrial growth where body size and
population size are endogenously determined. Despite the fact that parents invest in both …

We structurally estimate a two‐sector Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous
population and finite land reserves to study the long‐run evolution of global population …

In this paper, I investigate the “little divergence” of late medieval and early modern Europe,
focusing on the long run response of real wages to demographic changes. Through a …

The main goal of this paper is to provide an integrated overview of the literature devoted to
identifying the causes of the British industrial revolution. Why did the industrial revolution, a …

Will natural resources comprise an important constraint on economic development in the
21st century? We use a macroeconomic model (MAVA) to demonstrate the precise nature of …