Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:20:51.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A new method for estimating the money demand in pre-industrial economies: probate inventories and Spain in the eighteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2009

ESTEBAN A. NICOLINI  and
FERNANDO RAMOS
ESTEBAN A. NICOLINI
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Figuerola Institute, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, esteban.nicolini@uc3m.es
FERNANDO RAMOS
Affiliation:
Economic History Department, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, fcrampal@upo.es or fernando.ramos.palencia@gmail.com
Get access

Abstract

The study of monetary phenomena and an understanding of price determination in modern Europe are too often limited by scarcity of good-quality data sets on the evolution across time of such variables as money holdings, income, or wealth. In this article we show that information contained in probate inventories can be extremely useful in circumventing this problem. In particular, we combine a data set of 116 inventories from Palencia (in northern Spain) between 1750 and 1770 with census information (Catastro de Ensenada) in order to create a cross-section estimate of money demand, a first for any period before the nineteenth century. Results provide meaningful insights about relationships among money demand, wealth, urbanization and structural change in a pre-industrial economy; they also highlight the potential of probate inventories for improving our general understanding of the monetary history of modern Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2010 , pp. 145 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © European Historical Economics Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R. C. (1988). Inferring yields from probate inventories. Journal of Economic History 48, pp. 117–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2001). The Great Divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War. Explorations in Economic History 38, pp. 411–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allison, P. D. (2002). Missing Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Álvarez Nogal, C. and Prados de la Escosura, L. (2007). The decline of Spain (1500–1850): conjectural estimates. European Review of Economic History 11 (3), pp. 319–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archivo Histórico Provincial de Palencia (Palencia Provincial Historical Archive). Sección Protocolos Notariales, 1750–1765.Google Scholar
Baumol, W. J. (1952). The transactions demand for cash: an inventory theoretic approach. Quarterly Journal of Economics 66, pp. 545–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedell, J. (2000). Archaeology and probate inventories in the study of eighteenth-century life. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (2), pp. 223–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bermingham, A. and Brewer, J. (1995). The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800. Image, Object and Text. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bomberger, W. (1993). Income, wealth, and household demand for deposits. American Economic Review 83, 4, pp. 1034–44.Google Scholar
Bordo, M. and Jonung, L. (1987). The Long Run Behaviour of the Velocity of Circulation: The International Evidence. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Braudel, F. (1967). Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Brown, F. E. (1986). Continuity and change in the urban house: developments in domestic space organisation in seventeenth-century London. Comparative Studies in Society and History 18 (3), pp. 559–61.Google Scholar
Canga Argüelles, J. (1833). Diccionario de Hacienda con aplicación a España. Madrid: Calero y Portocarrero. 2 volumes.Google Scholar
Clavero, B. (1989). Mayorazgo. Propiedad feudal en Castilla, 1369–1836. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.Google Scholar
Clower, R. W. (1967). A reconsideration of the microfoundations of monetary theory. Western Economic Journal 6, pp. 1–9.Google Scholar
Doherty, K. W. and Flynn, D. O. (1989). A microeconomic quantity theory of money and the price revolution. In Cauwenberghe, E. van (ed.), Precious Metals, Coinage and the Changes of Monetary Structures in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 185–208.Google Scholar
Fischer, D. (1989). The price revolution: a monetary interpretation. Journal of Economic History 49, pp. 883–902.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flynn, D. O. (1984). Use and misuse of the quantity theory of money in early modern historiography. In Irsigler, F. and Cauwenberghe, E. van (eds.), Münzprägung, Geldumlauf und Wechselkurse/Mintage, Monetary Circulation and Exchange Rates. Akten der C7-Section des 8th International Economic History Congress Budapest 1982. Trier: THF-Verlag (Trierer Historische Forschungen, Bd.7), pp. 383–419.Google Scholar
García Colmenares, P. (1992). Evolución y crisis de la industria textil castellana. Palencia, 1750–1990. Madrid: Ediciones Mediterráneo.Google Scholar
García, Fernández M. (1995). Herencia y patrimonio familiar en la Castilla del antiguo régimen (1650–1834). Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Google Scholar
Goldfield, S. M. and Sichel, D. E. (1990). The demand for money. In Friedman, B. and Hahn, F. (eds.), Handbook of Monetary Economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 300–56.Google Scholar
Goldstone, J. A. (1984). Urbanization and inflation: lessons from the English price revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. American Journal of Sociology 89, pp. 1122–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstone, J. A. (1991). Monetary versus velocity interpretations of the price revolution: a comment. Journal of Economic History 51 pp. 176–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groves, J. (1994). Piggins, Husslements and Desperate Debts: Social History of North-east Cheshire through Wills and Probate Inventories, 1600–1760. Northern Writers Advisory Services.Google Scholar
Hamilton, E. J. (1934). American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson Jones, A. (1980). American probate inventories: a source to estimate wealth in 1774 in thirteen colonies and three regions. In der Woude, A. van and Schuurman, A. (eds.), Probate Inventories: A New Source for the Historical Study of Wealth, Material Culture and Agricultural Development. Wageningen: Afdeling Agrarische Geschiedenis, pp. 239–56.Google Scholar
Holderness, B. A. (1976). Credit in English rural society before the nineteenth century, with special reference to the period 1650–1720. Agricultural History Review 24 (2), pp. 97–109.Google Scholar
King, P. (1997). Pauper inventories and the material lives of the poor in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In Hitchcock, T., King, P. and Sharpe, P. (eds.), Chronicles of Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840. New York: St Martin's Press, pp. 155–91.Google Scholar
Kiyotaki, N. and Wright, R. (1989). On money as a medium of exchange. Journal of Political Economy 97, pp. 927–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiyotaki, N. and Wright, R. (1993). A search-theoretic approach to monetary economics. American Economic Review 83 (1), pp. 63–77.Google Scholar
Larruga, E. (1995). Memorias políticas y económicas sobre los frutos, fábricas, comercio y minas de España. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, Instituto Aragonés de Fomento, vols. XXXII and XXXIII. First edition 1787.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. K. and Mizen, P. (2000). Monetary Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lindert, P. (1980). English occupations, 1670–1811. Journal of Economic History 40 (4), pp. 685–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindert, P. (1985). English population, wages and prices, 1541–1913. Journal Interdisciplinary History 15, pp. 609–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohr, S. L. (1999). Sampling. Design and Analysis. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.Google Scholar
Lucas, R. E. (1988). Money demand in the United States: a quantitative review. Carnegie-Rochester Conferences Series on Public Policy 29, pp. 137–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, N. J. (1995). Population, money supply and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700. Economic History Review 48, pp. 238–57.Google Scholar
McKendrick, N. (1982). The consumer revolution of eighteenth-century England. In McKendrick, N., Brewer, J. and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. London: Europe Publications Limited, pp. 9–33.Google Scholar
Meltzer, A. H. (1963). The demand for money: the evidence from the time series. Journal of Political Economy 71 (3), pp. 219–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milanovic, B., Lindert, P. and Williamson, J. (2007). Measuring ancient inequality. NBER Working Papers, no. 13550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno, Lázaro J. (2002). ¿Fomentó el capitalismo agrario la desigualdad? Salarios y niveles de vida en Castilla la Vieja, 1751–1861. In Martínez, J. M. Carrión (ed.), El nivel de vida en la España rural, siglos XVIII-XX. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, pp. 75–112.Google Scholar
Muldrew, C. (1998). The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulligan, C. and Sala-i-Martín, X. (1992). US money demand: surprising cross-sectional estimates. Brooking Papers in Economic Activity 2, pp. 285–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Officer, L. (2005). The quantity theory in New England, 1703–1749: new data to analyze an old question. Explorations in Economic History 42, pp. 101–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, M. (1979). Estimating crop yields from probate inventories: an example from East Anglia, 1585–1735. Journal of Economic History 39, pp. 363–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overton, M. (1980). English probate inventories and the measurement of agricultural change. In der Woude, A. van and Schuurman, A. (eds.), Probate Inventories. Wageningen: Afdeling Agrarische Geschiedenis, pp. 205–16.Google Scholar
Overton, M. (1984). Probate inventories and the reconstruction of agricultural landscapes. In Reed, M. (ed.), Discovering Past Landscapes. London: Croom Helm, pp. 167–94.Google Scholar
Overton, M. (1996). Land and labour productivity in English agriculture 1650–1850. In Mathias, P. and Davis, J. A. (eds.), The Nature of Industrialisation, vol. 5. Agriculture and Industrialisation. London: Blackwell, pp. 17–39.Google Scholar
Overton, M. and Campbell, B. M. S. (1992). Norfolk livestock farming 1250–1740: a comparative study of manorial accounts and probate inventories. Journal of Historical Geography 18 (4), pp. 377–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez Moreda, V. and Reher, D. S. (1997). La población urbana española entre los siglos XVI y XVIII. Una perspectiva demográfica. In Fortea, J. I., Imágenes de la diversidad. El mundo urbano en la Corona de Castilla (S. XVI-XVIII). Santander: Universidad de Cantabria y Asamblea Regional de Cantabria, pp. 129–63.Google Scholar
Plaza Prieto, J. (1976). Estructura Económica de España en el siglo XVIII. Madrid: Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorro.Google Scholar
Ramos Palencia, F. (1999). Una primera aproximación al consumo en el mundo rural castellano a través de los inventarios post-mortem: Palencia, 1750–1840. In Torras, J. and Yun, B. (eds.), Consumo, condiciones de vida y comercialización en Cataluña y Castilla, ss. XVII-XIX. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Educación y Cultura, pp. 107–31.Google Scholar
Ramos Palencia, F. (2001). Pautas de consumo familiar en la Castilla preindustrial: Palencia, 1750–1850. Revista de Historia Económica 19, special issue, pp. 37–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reher, D. S. (1990). Town and Country in Pre-industrial Spain. Cuenca 1550–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roche, D. (1994). The Culture of Clothing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sabio Alcutén, A. (1996). Los mercados informales de crédito y tierra en una comunidad rural aragonesa (1850–1930). Banco de España: Estudios de Historia Económica, no. 34. Madrid.Google Scholar
Sarda, J. (1998). La política monetaria y las fluctuaciones de la economía española en el siglo XIX. Barcelona: Editorial Alta Fulla. First edition 1948.Google Scholar
Sargent, T. and Velde, F. (1999). The big problem of small change. Journal of Money Credit and Banking 31, pp. 137–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shammas, C. (1990). The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Thirsk, J. (1978). Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Tobin, J. (1956). The interest elasticity of the transactions demand for cash. Review of Economics and Statistics 38 (3), pp. 241–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torras Elías, J. and Yun Casalilla, B. (1999). Consumo, Condiciones de vida y Comercialización en Cataluña y Castilla, ss. XVII-XIX. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Educación y Cultura.Google Scholar
Vries, J. de (1984). European Urbanisation, 1500–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vries, J. de (1993). Between purchasing power and the world of goods: understanding the household economy in early modern Europe. In Brewer, J. and Porter, R. (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 85–132.Google Scholar
Weatherill, L. (1988). Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wooldridge, J. M. (2000). Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing.Google Scholar
Woude, A. van der and Shuurman, A. (1980). Probate Inventories: A New Source for the Historical Study of Wealth, Material Culture and Agricultural Development. Wageningen: Afdeling Agrarische Geschiedenis.Google Scholar
Yun Casalilla, B. (1987). Sobre la transición al capitalismo en Castilla. Economía y Sociedad en Tierra de Campos (1500–1814). Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León.Google Scholar
Yun Casalilla, B. (1994). Proposals to quantify long-term performance in the Kingdom of Castile, 1550–1800. In Maddison, A. and van der Wee, H. (eds.), Economic Growth and Structural Change: Comparative Approaches over the Long Run. Milan: Università Bocconi, pp. 97–110.Google Scholar