Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, New Results
提供了意大利建筑工人（熟练与非熟练）的新工资指数，修正了早期数据问题，发现17世纪意大利城市经济开始长期衰退，且罗马工人工资高于早期现代伦敦工人，表明高工资本身不足以引发工业化。
We present new wage indices for skilled and unskilled construction workers in Italy. Our data avoid multiple issues pestering earlier wages, making our new indices the first consistent ones for early-modern Italy. Our improved wages, obtained from the St. Peter’s Church in Rome, consolidate the view that urban Italy began a prolonged downturn during the seventeenth century. They also offer sustenance to the idea that epidemics instigated the decline. Comparison with new construction wages for London shows that Roman workers outearned their early-modern English counterparts. This suggests that high wages alone were not enough to trigger industrialization.