Benchmarking the Middle Ages. XV century Tuscany in European PerspectiveJan Luiten van Zanden and Emanuele Felice No 81, Working Papers from Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History Abstract: The article presents GDP estimates for XV century Tuscany, based on the 1427 Florentine Catasto, one of the best quantitative sources for the Middle Ages. In 1427, Tuscany was in per capita GDP (in real terms) only slightly above England and Holland; this gap is much smaller than the one resulting from the previous GDP figures, produced by Paolo Malanima, when fit into the Maddison project. Our analysis highlights a fundamental institutional difference, between Florence on the one side, and England and Holland on the other: the former was characterized by high extractive rates in favor of the capital city, to the detriment of the subdued cities and, most of all, of the countryside; and by subsequent market blockades. This may explain why previous estimates, partly based on the construction wages in Florence (within the ‘privileged’ economy), probably overestimated GDP. It may also explain the exceptional artistic blossoming of XV century Florence, despite only a small lead in average GDP. Our work thus helps to shed new light on the history of Renaissance Italy, put into a broader comparative context. Keywords: Economic Growth; GDP; Middle Ages; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0081 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History University of Utrecht, Drift 10, The Netherlands. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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