Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247088 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
EHES Working Paper No. 158
Publisher: 
European Historical Economics Society (EHES), s.l.
Abstract: 
Energy was one of the keys to the remarkable increase in English GDP between 1650 and 1700. Increased per head physical activity and basal metabolic rate led to increased energy consumption. In response, subsistence wages, productivity, wages and incomes increased. Malthusian adjustment explains only 50 per cent of the increase in calorie intake, the other 50 per cent is associated with higher energy consumption. Non-agricultural wages began to differ from agricultural wages. British economic development occurred everywhere, in the city and in the countryside. This approach opens new perspectives to the debate between enclosures and open fields and why underemployment became common among the philosophers' British debates.
Subjects: 
Energy
physical activity
subsistence wages
incomes
wage gap
Malthusian trap
Seventeenth Century
England
JEL: 
B11
J30
N13
N33
N53
N73
Q43
Q54
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.