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Money, prices, wages, and ‘profit inflation’ in Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and England during the Price Revolution era, ca. 1520 - ca. 1650

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  • Munro, John H.

Abstract

This article re-examines Earl Hamilton’s famous 1929 thesis on ‘Profit Inflation’ and the ‘birth of modern industrial capitalism’: namely, that the inflationary forces of the Price Revolution era produced a widening gap between prices and wages, thus providing industrial entrepreneurs with windfall profits, which they reinvested in larger-scale, more capital intensive forms of industry. Hamilton’s analyses of price and wage data for 16th- and 17th-century Spain, France, and England led him to conclude that: Spain had enjoyed virtually no ‘profit inflation’, since wages had generally kept pace with prices; and that early-modern England had experienced the greatest degree of such ‘profit inflation’. Such a contrast in their national economic experiences helps to explain, in Hamilton’s view, why Spain subsequently ‘declined’, while England became the homeland of the modern Industrial Revolution. A major reason for the significance and fame of the Hamilton thesis was its enthusiastic endorsement by John Maynard Keynes, in his Treatise of Money, published the following year, in 1930. Subsequently, the Hamilton ‘profit inflation’ thesis was subjected to severe attacks: by John Nef (1936-37) and David Felix (1956). But they had to rely on the same dubious and indeed often untrustworthy price and wage data for England and France (and of course on Hamilton’s data for Spain, which was of much higher quality). Both rightly noted that the proper comparison had to be made between industrial wages and industrial prices, not the price level in general. Since industrial prices generally rose less than did the overall price level (heavily weighted with foodstuffs), they found much less evidence for ‘profit inflation’ than had Hamilton. Nef developed a counter thesis to argue that sharply rising raw material costs, especially for wood and charcoal, forced industrialists to devise new furnace technologies to burn coal instead of wood or charcoal: changes that not inly reduced such costs but resulted in much larger-scale, more capital-intensive forms of industry. In this revised paper, I offer new data to demonstrate that neither the ‘energy’ nor the new furnace technologies took place until after the 1640s. This study is based on newer sets of price and wage indices that appeared after their publications: those by Phelps Brown and Hopkins for England (which I have modified, after using their data sheets in the LSE Archives), and for this version, additional price date for England. For the southern Netherlands, I have utilized Herman Van der Wee Consumer Price Index. My analyses of both industrial prices and industrial wages suggest that, for England, there is more evidence for potential ‘profit inflation’, in some industries, than Nef or Felix had been willing to concede. But the major discovery was that the Antwerp region continuously experienced, over the 16th and 17th centuries, the contrary phenomenon: what Keynes had called ‘Profit Deflation’ (for him, a truly negative force), in that industrial wages rose faster than industrial prices. And yet indisputably the southern Netherlands had a much more industrialized and more rapidly growing economy than did England, at least until the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568-1609). The concept of ‘profit inflation’ is not, therefore, a useful analytical tool, if based only on labour costs. This study concludes with a brief examination of the effects on inflation on two other factor costs: land, in terms of real rents, and capital, in terms of real interest rates, which did fall with inflation. In all likelihood both such costs did lag behind industrial prices in early-modern England and the Low Countries (and contrary to Eric Kerridge’s 1953 assertions on English rents), though real interest rates lagged more than did real rents. While disputing the Nef thesis, I do analyse the forms and nature of other new, larger-scale industries in this era (mining, metallurgy shipbuilding). I also provide a new appendix on the role of coinage debasements, as an another important monetary factor in determining regional differences in inflation rates; and this contradicts the almost universal assumption that debasements were irrelevant.

Suggested Citation

  • Munro, John H., 2008. "Money, prices, wages, and ‘profit inflation’ in Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and England during the Price Revolution era, ca. 1520 - ca. 1650," MPRA Paper 10849, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jul 2008.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10849
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    2. Lord Beveridge, 1955. "Westminster Wages In The Manorial Era," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 8(1), pages 18-35, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Karaman, K. Kıvanç & Pamuk, Şevket & Yıldırım-Karaman, Seçil, 2020. "Money and monetary stability in Europe, 1300–1914," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 279-300.
    2. Chen, Yao & Palma, Nuno & Ward, Felix, 2021. "Reconstruction of the Spanish money supply, 1492–1810," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. William VanLear, 2015. "Copernicus and the Quantity Theory of Money," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(2), pages 5-20.
    4. Amy Blakeway, 2015. "The sixteenth-century price rise: new evidence from Scotland, 1500–85," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(1), pages 167-190, February.
    5. Jord Hanus, 2013. "Real inequality in the early modern Low Countries: the city of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1500–1660," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(3), pages 733-756, August.
    6. Adam Aboobaker, 2022. "Macroeconomic Determinants of South Africa's Post-Apartheid Income Distribution," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-03693225, HAL.
    7. Mario García-Zúñiga & Ernesto López-Losa, 2019. "Building Workers in Madrid (1737-1805). New Wage Series and Working Lives," Working Papers 0152, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    8. Adam Aboobaker, 2022. "Macroeconomic Determinants of South Africa's Post-Apartheid Income Distribution," Working Papers halshs-03693225, HAL.
    9. John H. Munro, 2012. "The Technology and Economics of Coinage Debasements in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: with special reference to the Low Countries and England," Working Papers tecipa-456, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    gold and silver bullion; money; coinage; Price Revolution; prices; consumer price indices; nominal and real wages; building craftsmen; masons; industrial products; profit-inflation; deflation; Spain; France; England; Netherlands;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O42 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Monetary Growth Models
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

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