Trends in real wages in Denmark since the Late Middle Ages |
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Authors: | Kim Abildgren |
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Institution: | Department of Economics and Monetary Policy, Danmarks Nationalbank |
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Abstract: | This article constructs long-span time series indices on wages in Denmark and explores the growth in living standards in the pre-industrial era. There were several persistent upward and downward trends in real annual earnings from 1500 to 1820, but no clear upward long-term trend. This finding seems hard to reconcile with Maddison's figure for the average annual growth in real GDP per capita in Denmark (0.17%) over the same period. This is the case, even if the growth rate in pre-industrial annual earnings is underestimated by 0.05%–0.06% per annum due to an increased number of working days. |
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Keywords: | Economic growth historical national accounts real GDP per capita real wages |
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