Fases del la Metodología XP

The estimation of per capita agricultural output is based on the prices of both agricultural goods and manufactures. A new dataset that comprises more than 49,000 price quotes of 26 different items was assembled. Most of the price data used in this study come from classic accounts, printed primary sources and institutional records (Mercuriales des prix) whose detailed description is left to the references section. A virtue of the dataset is its comprehensive regional coverage. The Centre and the North of France together supply most of the price data (about 55 percent) while about 38 percent of observations come from the South, the East and Île-de-France. At the departmental level one observes that Rhône-Alpes provides most of the price quotes followed by Île-de-France and Nord-pas-de Calais while Franche-Comté and Champagne-Ardennes are less represented in the dataset.

The Agricultural Price Index

The agricultural price index includes 15 products divided in two main categories: arable and pastoral products.

I follow Toutain (1961)’s lead, with slight variations, in defining these categories and their sub-components.

11This assumption is customary in the literature. See for example Allen (2001).

On the plausibility of this assumption see Malanima (2011); Parenti (1939).

12See Table 29 for the construction of the shares of agricultural and non agricultural workers in total labor force. Nominal wages in the construction sector were aggregated assuming the following weights: 0.7 for labourers and 0.3 for craftsmen. This weighting scheme is derived by considering the distribution by skill on several building projects be-tween 1300 and 1700.

In particular, the arable products include cereals (wheat, oats, barley and rye), beverages (wine), legumes (peas and beans) and firewood, while pastoral goods comprise meat (beef, mutton, pork and chicken) and dairy (butter, cheese and eggs). The individual component price series of the price indices have been computed using piece wise OLS regressions of the following form:

𝑝_𝑖𝑡= 𝛼 +𝛽𝐺(𝑇_𝑡)_𝑃𝑗+𝛿^′X_it+𝜀_𝑖𝑡 if 𝑡 ∈ 𝑃_𝑗 where 𝑗 ∈ (1, 2, 3, 4) (4.11) and:

• 𝑃1= 1250𝑠 − 1348

• 𝑃₂= 1348 − 1550𝑠

• 𝑃₃= 1550𝑠 − 1690𝑠

• 𝑃4= 1690𝑠 − 1780𝑠

This specification allows us to derive time trends for each commodity while controlling for differences in source, location, quality, quantity and unit of measurement over time, across places and sources (Xit). A func-tion of time (𝐺(𝑇𝑡)) is also included. Estimations are conducted on the same sub-periods as the wage regressions. Tables 33 to 35 of the Ap-pendix show the estimated price series as well as the arable, pasture and agricultural price indices. The aggregate price index was finally obtained as an arithmetic weighted index of the individual price series using as weights the assumed output shares of each commodity.

The shares of commodities in net output changed over time.

For the eighteenth century I estimated the output shares of the com-ponents, sub-components and individual items building upon Toutain (1961). This contribution is an influential attempt to measure agricul-tural productivity and growth in France. Using a vast set of mostly con-temporary secondary sources, Toutain (1961) establishes reasonable esti-mates of the volumes of production sector by sector and an overall index of agricultural production since the eighteenth century. Though criti-cized for the very nature of its sources and the extensive use of backward

extrapolation, his figures provide useful information and are "compati-ble with what we know of the French economy at that time."¹³

I used Toutain (1961)’s production figures to derive the relative impor-tance of each sector and the weight of single commodities within its rel-evant sector. Due to the dearth of data, I do not include in the compu-tations soya, milk and spices. The shares of these items were attributed proportionately to the most similar categories. Before 1700, there are few sources of data readily available and shares have to be inferred indirectly using the evaluations of contemporary authors and the budgets studies that detailed the relative expenditure of several commodities. For the period 1550-1699, the relative shares of the components of the index were largely derived from the evaluations of Moreau de Jonnès (1867) that provides information on the extension of arable and pasture lands as well as the volume of production of wheat, other cereals and wine in France from the reign of Henry IV (1589-1610) to the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715).

Using these pieces of evidence, I concluded that cereals should have amounted to about 80 per cent of arable product while wheat was about 33 per cent of the overall production of cereals. One important feature is the much greater importance of firewood during the Middle Ages and the Modern time when wood output must have been a much greater share of production as it was used both as construction material and as the main source of heating (Devèze, 1961).

Based on this, I estimated that in the years before 1700, wood was 10 percent of output from French agriculture while I retained the evalua-tion of Toutain (1961) for the eighteenth century (about 6 percent). Fur-thermore, these figures are consistent with the weights implied by Clark (2004)’s agricultural price index for England.

It is important to note that as one goes back in time the price of some items becomes unavailable. In that case the share of the missing item has been imputed proportionately to the commodities included in the same sector. For example, between 1280 and 1500 the share of wool has been attributed to linen.

13Daudin (2012).

Earlier figures have been set matching information from the expenditure shares of several budget studies as provided by Allen (2001) for Europe, Clark (2005) for England and using results presented in Chapter 2 for France.

On the whole, data before 1700 are speculative and represent only a rough approximation of real output shares. Nevertheless, the exact defi-nition of the weighting scheme has little bearing on final results.

First, because the wide spectrum of goods included in the indices reduces substantially possible errors contained in individual price series.

Second, as most of the price series included in the arable as well as the pasture indices experienced similar trend improvements, the definition of the weighting scheme has a low impact on the computation of the av-erage trend in prices.¹⁴

Tables 19 to 25 give the resulting weights assigned to the components, sub-components and individual items included in the arable and pasture indices as well as the weights of the overall agricultural index.

Table 19:Weights of the components of the Arable Index by period

Period 1280-1298 1299-1319 1320-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Cereals 0.92 0.89 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.60 0.62

Wine 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.09 0.17 0.17

Wood 0.10 0.10 0.06 0.06 0.05

Legumes 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.05 0.17 0.16

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Devèze (1961); Toutain (1961). See text.

14Notice that wine and legumes rose more than the other items included in the arable index and the same occurred for chicken prices in the pasture index. Nonetheless, the shares of chicken and legumes were relatively low as compared to other items. We tried to vary the share of wine but results were largely unchanged.

Table 20:Weights of the sub-components of the Arable Index by period

Period 1280-1298 1299-1319 1320-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Wheat 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.27 0.32 0.25

Rye 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.27 0.38 0.30

Barley 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.24 0.12 0.21

Oats 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.24 0.18 0.24

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Wine 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Firewood 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Beans / Peas 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Devèze (1961); Toutain (1961). See text.

Table 21: Weights of the individual components of the Arable Index by period

Period 1280-1298 1299-1319 1320-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Wheat 0.30 0.29 0.26 0.26 0.21 0.19 0.16

Rye 0.20 0.20 0.18 0.18 0.21 0.23 0.19

Barley 0.21 0.20 0.18 0.18 0.19 0.07 0.13

Oats 0.20 0.20 0.18 0.18 0.19 0.11 0.15

Wine 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.09 0.17 0.17

Firewood 0.10 0.10 0.06 0.06 0.05

Beans / Peas 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.05 0.17 0.16

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Devèze (1961); Toutain (1961). See text.

Table 22:Weights of the components of the Pasture Index by period

Period 1280-1308 1309-1332 1333-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Meat 0.45 0.45 0.45 0.45 0.45 0.45 0.45

Dairy 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.55

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Toutain (1961). See text.

Table 23:Weights of the sub-components of the Pasture Index by period

Period 1280-1308 1309-1332 1333-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Beef 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42

Mutton 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17 0.17

Pork 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25

Chicken 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Butter 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33

Eggs 1.00 0.50 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33

Cheese 0.50 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Toutain (1961). See text.

Table 24: Weights of the individual components of the Pasture Index by period

Period 1280-1308 1309-1332 1333-1549 1550-1699 1700-1749 1750-1769 1770-1789

Beef 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19

Mutton 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08

Pork 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11

Chicken 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07

Butter 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18

Eggs 0.55 0.28 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18

Cheese 0.28 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Toutain (1961). See text.

Table 25: Weights of the individual components of the Agricultural Index by period

Period 1300 - 1550 1550 - 1700 1700 - 1780 1780-1789

Arable 0.75 0.81 0.81 0.81

Pasture 0.25 0.19 0.19 0.19

Total weight 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

Sources:de Jonnès (1867); Toutain (1961). See text.

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00

1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 Year

Agricultural Index Pasture Index Arable Index

Figure 47:Agricultural index and its components (1700 = 1)

Figure 47 shows the evolution of arable, pasture and agricultural prices.

One may notice that the indices followed a similar evolution. While dur-ing the Middle Ages prices averaged 10 per cent of their level in 1700, by the second half of the sixteenth century they started to rise dramatically.

At the end of 1500 they were already 70 per cent of the 1700 level. When the increase of prices came to an halt by the second half of 1600, prices had reached the 1700 levels. In the course of the eighteenth century a rapid expansion of inflation brought prices to double in less than a cen-tury.

There are few terms of comparisons to check the reliability of our esti-mation because most of the existing series do not regard France as whole or are limited to the eighteenth century. According to Labrousse (1932), agricultural prices increased by about 166 per cent between 1726-1741 and 1785-1789. This evolution is broadly consistent with the estimates offered here that imply agricultural prices rose by about 170 per cent in the same period. In addition, I checked the series against the agri-cultural price index proposed by Allen (2000, p.13) for France for the period 1400-1800. This index differs from the one proposed here both in

composition¹⁵and for the spatial coverage of the series that is limited to the Paris Basin and the Strasburg’s area. Yet, as Figure 48 demonstrates, the two series are very similar along the way.

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75

1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 Year

Paris (Allen 2001) France

Figure 48:Agricultural price index (1700 = 1)

The Industrial Price Index

The price index of manufactured goods is an arithmetic weighted dex with the output shares of each commodity used as weights. This in-dex includes eleven products divided in five categories, namely textiles (linen and wool clothes), toiletries (soap), construction materials (lime and tiles), lighting (candles and oil light) and metals (coal, lead, copper and iron). Iron was included as it represented the main input in mak-ing sickles, cutlery and other work instruments. Other metals as well as lime and tiles were used as construction materials. For the eighteenth century we dispose sufficient evidence to reconstruct the output shares of the French industry. The weighting scheme elaborates on Markovitch (1965) and Toutain (1987). Weights are rescaled to take into account of the fact that the paper and food industries were not considered in our

15This is a Laspeyres index that includes bread, beans or peas, meat, butter or olive oil, cheese, eggs and beer or wine.