Pestilence,poverty, and provision: re‐evaluating the role of the popolani in early modern Venice

The labouring classes of early modern Venice, the popolani, made up nearly 90 per cent of the city's population. To this point the relevant historiography has focused almost exclusively on their professional and civic role. It is the core contention of this article that the contribution of the popolani to the Venetian economy and society far exceeded their documented professional and civic function. Using as a case study the homogeneous group of the shipbuilders and sailors of Venice and drawing on newly discovered primary sources from the Venetian State Archives, this article shows the distinct contributions of the popolani to the city's economy and society through their charity to those in need. This took the form of sizeable dotal and charitable donations within and beyond the family. In one of the first attempts to explore the philanthropy of the Venetian workforce, this article challenges the existing scholarly view that charity was the sole responsibility of the government and the nobility in early modern Venice. It further shows that marriage was not merely a financial union for the popolani; it was a sanctuary for lasting companionship. Ultimately, the article offers a fresh vista onto the socio‐economic role of the popolani in early modern Venice.     

Indonesia Update 2010 Employment,living standards and poverty in contemporary Indonesia

The Indonesia Update Conference, now in its 28th year, was held at the Australian National University on 24–25 September. Convened by Chris Manning (Indonesia Project, ANU) and Sudarno Sumarto (SMERU Research Institute, Jakarta), the conference attracted around 300 participants from academia, government, NGOs and the business community, including many from Indonesia. Apart from the traditional political and economic updates, both of which are published in this issue of BIES, six broad topics were covered: employment, migration and microenterprises; education and health; health care for the poor; trends in poverty and social protection; government interventions; and the politics of poverty.     

Cities,market integration,and going to sea: stunting and the standard of living in early nineteenth‐century England and Wales1

A new source, 1840s Admiralty seamen's tickets, is used to explore three anthropometric issues. First, did being born in a city, with its associated disamenities, lead to stunting? Second, did being born near a city, whose markets sucked away foodstuffs, lead to stunting? Third, did child labour lead to stunting? We find that only those born in very large cities suffered a level of stunting that contemporaries could have observed. Being born near a city, which gave parents opportunities to trade away family calories, and perhaps increased exposure to disease, did not cause stunting. Britain was a well‐integrated market; all families, whatever their locations, had options to trade and faced similar disease environments. Finally, although adults who had gone to sea young were shorter than those who did not enlist until fully grown, going to sea did not stunt. Instead, plentiful food at sea attracted stunted adolescents, who reversed most of their stunting as a result. But child labour at sea was different from other forms of children's work because wages were largely hypothecated to the child as food and shelter onboard. In contrast, where wages were paid to the child or his parents in cash, they became submerged in the household economy and their benefits were shared with other family members.     

Portuguese living standards, 1720–1980, in European comparison: heights,income, and human capital1

When and why did the Portuguese become the shortest Europeans? In order to find the answer to this question, we trace the trend in Portuguese living standards from the 1720s until recent times. We find that during the early nineteenth century average height in Portugal did not differ significantly from average height in most other European countries, but that when, around 1850, European anthropometric values began to climb sharply, Portugal's did not. In a panel analysis of 12 countries, we find that delay in human‐capital formation was the chief factor hindering any improvement in the biological standard of living in Portugal.     

Regional income inequality and poverty level in Russia: An analysis adjusted for the purchasing power of the ruble

This paper presents the findings of a study of income inequality and poverty level in Russian regions with regard to the purchasing power of the rouble in regions. The possibility of income equalization by means of distribution opportunity of leveling-off incomes at the expense of their redistribution is appraised.     

Trade openness,FDI, and income inequality: Evidence from sub‐Saharan Africa

The motivation for this study stems from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN‐SDGs) and their impact by 2030. The UN highlights 17 SDGs that address pertinent local and global issues, one of which—SDG‐10—has been devoted to reducing inequality. This study investigates the nexus between trade openness, foreign direct investment (FDI), and income inequality in sub‐Saharan Africa using panel data from 2000 to 2015 and the generalized method of moment (GMM) technique approach. The findings show that FDI and income have a negative, statistically significant relationship with income inequality, signifying that as FDI and income per capita increase, the level of income inequality decreases. However, trade openness, education, political stability, corruption, and rule of law have a positive, statistically significant relationship with inequality. This study, therefore, offers some recommendations that will help policymakers. First, develop good policies to attract more foreign investors, which will contribute to creating employment opportunities in the region. Second, create more infrastructures to provide good quality education. Third, implement a good policy to motivate local production which will contribute to creating jobs. Fourth, build a strong institution(s) to fight against corruption.     

The poverty of solidarity: the size and structure of informal income smoothing among worker households in Helsinki, 1928

Abstract

Informal income smoothing by households before the post-Second World War expansion in public welfare has gained attention in the history of poverty and social insurance. Little direct empirical evidence has been available. Finnish household budgets from 1928 with intra-year panel data on informal transactions enable analysis of the use of savings, loans and informal assistance to counter income variation by worker families in Helsinki. Income shares of transfers were small compared with labour-based methods of supplementing the earnings of the surveyed male breadwinner families. Within the year, however, the combined use of assistance, credit, and savings accounts compensated on average 36% of income fluctuations, while means such as added workers or taking in lodgers appeared ineffective on the short run. Informal assistance mattered for the poorest households, but provided inferior coverage compared with that attained through credit and savings by more affluent workers. Income inequality was therefore replicated as risk-management inequality.     

The biological standard of living in early nineteenth‐century West Africa: new anthropometric evidence for northern Ghana and Burkina Faso1

West Africans are on average shorter than Europeans today. Whether this was already the case at the end of the Atlantic slave trade is an important question for the history of nutrition and physical welfare. We present the first study of changing heights for people born mostly in what are now northern Ghana and Burkina Faso during the early nineteenth century. The dataset, not used before for anthropometry, documents men born between 1800 and 1849. Mostly purchased from slave owners, they were recruited into the Dutch army to serve in the Dutch East Indies. We find that height development was stagnant between 1800 and 1830 and deteriorated strongly during the 1840s. In international comparison and after taking selectivity issues into account, these Ghanaian and Burkinabe recruits were notably shorter than north‐western Europeans but not shorter than southern Europeans during this period.     

Commerce,clusters, and community: a re‐evaluation of the occupational geography of London,c. 1400–c. 1550

The economic geography of cities is often thought to have changed dramatically between the medieval and early modern eras. The medieval city is seen as having been strictly regulated, both in terms of markets, and in terms of space. The early modern city, by contrast, is associated not only with growth, but with the breakdown of rigid regulation by guilds and a new commercial outlook. However, empirical studies of the spatial organization of medieval cities have been limited, and quantitative surveys of urban economic geography have focused on the seventeenth century and later. This article analyses the spatial distribution of occupations in the City of London between the 1370s and the 1550s using a large probate dataset. It examines occupations that remained clustered or dispersed, but concentrates on the apparent breakdown in economic clustering among London's leading trades. Prosopographical analysis reveals that merchants and retailers became more specialized, but that this was accommodated within London's existing guild‐based occupational identities, which had become ossified. Rather than the end of the middle ages having marked a dramatic change from guild‐based spatial organisation, occupational clusters simply continued to evolve in line with the principles of locational economics throughout the period.     

Food prices and the standard of living in London in the ‘century of revolution’, 1580‐1700

This article presents a new price series for seventeenth‐century London and uses the data to construct the first cost of living index for the capital for that period. Comparison with the Phelps Brown Hopkins (PBH) series suggests that although short‐term variations were very similar, there is some suggestion that prices in London were more inflationary after the middle of the seventeenth century than in the PBH series. A new London real wage series, also presented, is consequently less buoyant than that constructed by PBH for their southern building craftsmen.     

De‐industrialization and re‐industrialization in the Middle East: reflections on the cotton industry in Egypt and in the Izmir region

This article presents an investigation of the process of decline and rebirth of textile manufacturing in two Middle Eastern regions, Egypt and the Izmir region, during the first wave of globalization (1850–1914). Through the application of the ‘Dutch disease’ model, it explores the linkages between terms of trade and industrialization. These are further related to the evolution of price transmission between domestic and global raw cotton markets. Findings indicate that different levels of market integration have contributed to diverging trajectories in industrial development in the two regions: while in Egypt the process of de‐industrialization was not reversed, in the Izmir region weaker international price transmission facilitated the creation of a nascent domestic textile industry. However, terms of trade patterns and relative price movements are only one of the causes that can explain the differences between the two regions.     

Temporary Migration, the Informal Economy and Structural Change: London's Bicycle Rickshaw Riders

In the context of social, economic and political change, and of a continuing fall in the real cost of travel, temporary migrations to London, as to other major cities in the global North, have become increasingly common. Indeed, some have speculated that they may come to replace permanent migrations. This trend has intersected with 'informalization' of lower-status jobs in some cities of the global North, including London, and the general depression of migrant wages in low-end jobs in the formal sector. In this context, debate has developed about the role of temporary migrations in migrants' long-term and short-term strategies, and about their impact on host societies. Drawing on a sustainable livelihoods approach the short-term and long-term life strategies and livelihood strategies of 60 Colombian and Polish bicycle rickshaw ('pedicab') riders in London are analysed and compared. Despite the differences in the status of the two groups, findings are that both groups develop and draw on cultural and social capital in the workplace to facilitate dealings with the local economy and polity; both have had an influence on the local economic sector in which they operate; and both migrate temporarily as part of a life strategy at home, as part of which their migrations have a touristic and cultural, as well as instrumental purpose.     

Influence of RMB Cross‐border Settlement on the Chinese Economy

In 2014, the amount of RMB cross‐border settlement had reached RMB7.6tn. It is important to evaluate the potential influence of RMB internationalization on China's macroeconomy. In the present study, a framework that includes monetary supply and demand was created to analyze the influences of RMB cross‐border settlement on China's domestic interest rate, asset price and foreign exchange reserves. It is found that RMB settlement in different BOP items leads to very different effects on China's real economy and the financial market. Based on the analysis, we provide a framework of the policy priorities for RMB internationalization, with the RMB cross‐border settlement items divided into three groups with different priorities. Meanwhile, to support RMB internationalization, exchange rate reforms should be adopted as a priority and a prudent attitude maintained regarding capital account liberalization.