Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Eric Schneider
Author-Workplace-Name: History Faculty and Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK
Author-Email: eric.schneider@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Title: Prices and Production: Agricultural Supply Response in Fourteenth-Century England
Abstract: This paper challenges the growing consensus in the literature (Stone, 2005; Dodds,
2007) that medieval English peasants and manorial managers were price responsive in
their production decisions. Using prices of and acreages planted with wheat, barley,
and oats on 49 manors held by the bishop of Winchester from 1349-70, we estimate
price elasticities of supply for each grain in aggregate and on each particular manor.
Aggregate price elasticities of supply for wheat and oats were not significantly
different than zero, and barley aggregate elasticities of supply were significant but
very low. These elasticities are low compared with price elasticities of supply
estimated for developing and developed countries in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Attempting to explain the variation in the estimated price elasticities for
individual manors, market concentration had a significant, positive effect on price
elasticities of wheat and oat supply. In the end, the low levels of price responsiveness
in the post-Black Death period suggest that commercialisation was not as dominant in
the medieval English economy as has been argued. Thus, the institutional and
structural changes highlighted by Marxist and Neo-Malthusian historians may need to
take a more prominent role in explanations of medieval economic change.
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Length: 30 pages
Creation-Date: 2012-02-22
Number: _097
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/5681/schneider97.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_097