Events

Joint work with Vincent Delabastita (Radboud), Spike Gibbs (King’s College London) and Greg Salter (LSE)

Abstract: This paper takes a new approach to an old question: we present a novel perspective on the structural market changes which followed the Black Death by quantifying the share of agricultural revenue that accrued to labour. We do so by contextualizing wage payments within the production process that this paid labour took place. Our approach encapsulates new data on labour expenses paid by a medieval manor for the provision of agricultural labour and that manor's total revenue, allowing us to calculate the labour share of manorial revenue. We show that, under a plausible set of assumptions, the labour revenue share of revenues is able to inform us on potential structural changes in the agricultural production process following the Black Death, as well as its consequences in terms of changing power dynamics in medieval labour markets. The labour share approach also allows us to integrate both day and annual labour into our analysis, providing new evidence on the differentiated nature these labour inputs labour in medieval agriculture.

The Oxford Seminar in Economic and Social History series for Hilary Term 2026 is convened by Stephen Broadberry and Victoria Gierok. 

For more information on this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact stephen.broadberry@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.