Običajno začetek industrializacije povezujemo z iznajdbo parnega stroja (James Watt, 1765). Toda vprašanje je, zakaj je do te iznajdbe in njene uveljavitve v industriji prišlo. Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson imata teorijo, da je do tega prišlo v Angliji zaradi superiornega razvoja institucij, predvsem zaradi zaščite privatne lastnine, David Landes pa trdi, da zaradi superiorne angleške kulture. Toda vprašanje je še vedno, zakaj do tega ni prišlo prej?

Bob Allen trdi, da je do tehnološke revolucije v Angliji prišlo zaradi dražje delovne sile v Angliji kot drugod po Evropi, kar je spodbudilo nadomeščanje dela s kapitalom. Mattia Fochesato pa je nedavno postavil hipotezo, da je do velikega razkoraka med plačami v Angliji in preostalo Evropo prišlo zaradi različnega odziva na “črno smrt” (kugo), ki je kosila po Evropi v 14. stoletju (in pokončala med 30 in 60% prebivalstva). Fevdalne institucije v južni Evropi naj bi bile močnejše in naj bi na zmanjšanje števila prebivalstva odgovorile z znižanjem plač, v Angliji pa ne. Razlike v plačah naj bi se ohranile tudi po okrevanju števila prebivalcev in te razlike naj bi v Angliji vplivale kot spodbuda za iskanje tehnologij, ki bi nadomestile dražje delo s kapitalom.

In the South, where feudal institutions were stronger, land-owners responded to the increase in wages, caused by the decline in population, by renegotiating share-cropping contracts, restraining movement of labor, and doing everything they could to reduce wages through extra-market mechanisms. In the North where feudal institutions were weaker, the ability to check wage increase was less. Feudal laws that limited the movement of labor was not always implemented. Fochesato constructs more or less annual series of population and real wages for Northern and Southern countries (England and Netherlands are the “North”; France, Italy and Spain are the “South”) and shows that the response of real wages to a given increase in population (i.e., population recovery after the decimation due to the plague) was very different. In the North, population increase had negligible influence on wages; in the South, population increase reduced wages, eventually back to their pre-1350 levels.

There are of course still the questions that the paper in its present version (it is just a draft) does not answers satisfactorily: what exactly were the feudal institutions responsible for the “wage squeeze”?, how did they function?, was feudalism In the North really that much weaker? Also, there must have been some underlying economic reasons (like increase in productivity) that allowed population to increase in the North without producing negative effects on wages. Obviously, these are the questions that Fochesato’s paper (or perhaps another paper) might try to address. But for now we have here a set of very interesting hypotheses that link the events of 1350s with those some four centuries later, and that were crucial for worldwide economic development.

Vir: Branko Milanovic