IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mul/jrkmxm/doi10.1410-114023y2024i2p221-242.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working time, careers, and the labour market in the early modern period: Evidence from the Royal Palace of Palermo (1579-1609)

Author

Listed:
  • Tancredi Buscemi

Abstract

The functioning of labour market in pre-industrial era is still a puzzling phenomenon. Using the payrolls of the Royal Palace of Palermo, this paper adopts a micro-data approach to disentangle how the labour market operated, focusing on the length of the working year and progression of careers. This paper provides three main insights. First, the estimates confirm the length of the working year, which is commonly assumed to be approximately 250 working days. Second, the primary labour market was segmented, and members of the guilds that belonged to a family network had faster career. Third, in the secondary market, unskilled workers who could not access the primary one were rewarded more time on the building site instead of a wage increase.

Suggested Citation

  • Tancredi Buscemi, 2024. "Working time, careers, and the labour market in the early modern period: Evidence from the Royal Palace of Palermo (1579-1609)," Rivista di storia economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 221-242.
    • Handle: RePEc:mul:jrkmxm:doi:10.1410/114023:y:2024:i:2:p:221-242
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1410/114023
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1410/114023
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mul:jrkmxm:doi:10.1410/114023:y:2024:i:2:p:221-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rivisteweb.it/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.